Nichols Felowship/specs sales thriving - details here 👇

David Stem

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Jun 12 (edited) • General discussion

Good morning, Forge. Here's what's moving in the industry today.

The Nicholl Fellowships submission window is open right now — and it closes fast. Public entries through The Black List opened June 8 and close July 6, or when 2,500 scripts come in, whichever hits first. The Academy hands five writers $35,000 and a year of mentorship, and they don't care who you are or what you've done. They care about the script. If you've got a feature draft sitting at "almost," this is your deadline. Stop polishing the logline and submit.

Eva Victor wrote and directed their way out of nowhere with "Sorry, Baby" — and Deadline put the full screenplay online to read. Victor was known as an actor. No directing credits, no produced features. They wrote a quiet, painful story about reclaiming power after trauma, A24 bought it out of Park City, and it ended the year with Globe and Indie Spirit nominations for screenplay and director. Read the script. Watch how a first-timer earns an emotional turn instead of announcing it.

The spec market is louder than it's been in years — 23 original specs and pitches sold to studios and streamers across last summer, with nine in August alone. That's the biggest single month since March 2017. The takeaway isn't "sell a spec tomorrow." It's that buyers are hungry for original voices again after a decade of IP. The door you were told was closed is propped back open. Have something ready to walk through it.

First features keep getting bought — John Early's debut "Maddie's Secret" landed at Magnolia, joining a wave of debut filmmakers getting distribution this festival season. None of these people had a track record the year before. They had a finished thing that made someone feel something. That's the whole game. Finish the thing.

A reality check worth hearing — panelists at SXSW this spring called the old "festival-to-streaming pipeline" dead for 99% of creators. Don't read that as defeat. Read it as permission to stop waiting for one gatekeeper to anoint you. The writers breaking through right now are building audiences, entering competitions, and making their own noise. The path changed. It didn't close.

If you want to level up your writing, Premium or VIP are the places to be.

Premium includes all live group coaching calls, where I work through your scenes with you and you get real feedback from the writers in this room. That's where drafts actually move. If you've been lurking, this is the upgrade that kicks off your growth, as the writers in Premium will attest. (Just ask them!)

Join Premium Here.

And if you want the deepest level of work with me, VIP is open, but slots are very limited. DM me directly if that's you.

Discussion question: You've got a feature draft you keep calling "almost ready." Be honest with the room: what's the real reason you haven't submitted it anywhere yet? Name the fear out loud and let's look at it together.

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Nichols Felowship/specs sales thriving - details here 👇