Austin Screenwriters Group

If I could be any more happy, I guess I could be living in Cloud 9 right now.

I'm a regular visitor to the Austin Screenwriters Group meetings. They have meetings the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of each month at The Book People bookstore in Austin. In there we participate in reading scripts done by other members of the group. This helps in receiving a lot of input on your work and you get to hear your dialogs instead of just reading it by yourself.

I was forced to stop going after April due to finances, and the cost of gas alone is a killer, specially if you live 60 + miles away from Austin.

I was hoping to return to the ASG as things were more stable, with my wife's new job. I was expecting to start going around mid July.

Last week I received an e-mail from the ASG Yahoo Group. Nancy Smith, one of the members, left a notice that on the July 1st was going to be short script readings, due to an unexpected change in plans from the scheduled member who was going to present her work that day. The writer was not going to have her full script ready for the meeting, she was going to bring an unfinished draft and a short script. Nancy was asking all members who had a short script to include it on the schedule.

I wrote an e-mail to Nancy and said that I have one for my fanfilm project. She answered me back, saying that I was most welcome to bring it!

I had the copies made and I was at Book People early at 9:00 am. Some members started arriving at the conference area, including some visiting actors. I was selected to start first. I distributed the copies of the script, and one of the actors played my main character. The reading started.

It was one of the best experiences in my life. Just listening to the dialog! My characters came to life. All my fears and doubts that I had on my script were gone! The group laughed on the right parts, I glanced around seeing nods of approval from the members. Some were writing notes on the copies they had.

After the last line was read, there was applause. Then came the critiques. The overall story was great, they loved the dialog. I was suggested to add something for the beginning of the story. The thing that they suggested I could fix was the way I used some verbs and to break up the paragraphs, mostly technical aspects of the script. Otherwise the reaction to the script was very positive!

That was a great experience to have, it was my first script read by an audience. If you are a screenwriter, this would be a great experience.

Another good thing that happened that day was that the actor who read my main character is very interested in playing the part. Even though he is younger than what the character is supposed to be, but his presence and, most importantly, his voice was enough to tell me that he is my #1 candidate to play my hero. That and he is a good physical actor, rides horses and sounds like a very rough badass Clint Eastwood.

My little Western film is taking shape now.

Now comes the hard part... getting the money and finding a crew.

BTW. Happy 4th of July!