iA is once again proud to partner with NYC Midnight as a title sponsor for their international 2024 Screen Writing Challenge.

Since 2002, NYC Midnight has organized the annual Inspiring Challenges for Storytellers. Writers receive prompts and must adhere to specific time limits and word count restrictions. The challenges start and finish at 11:59 PM New York time, aligning with the event’s name.

This year, as a title sponsor, we’re providing the top 10 finishers with their own copy of iA Writer for iOS, macOS, or Windows!

About the Challenge

The Screenwriting Challenge (SCC2024) is now in its 21st year. It offers international writers the opportunity to compete with peers, receive professional feedback, and win great prizes.1

How it works

For this challenge, writers are randomly assigned to groups and given a genre, subject, and character to work with. After each round, judges select the top writers from each group to move on to the next stage. Below is an overview of the contest:

  1. In the first round, writers receive a first assignment for an original short screenplay of a maximum of 12 pages to finish in eight days. The top 5 writers from each group advance.
  2. In the second round, selected writers have 3 days to write another screenplay, this time not longer than 8 pages. The top 3 writers in each group advance.
  3. In the final round writers have just 24 hours to write a screenplay with a maximum of 5 pages.

The 2024 challenge starts on March 15th with the 1st round and ends on July 31st with the results of the final round.2

Benefits

Besides helping you keep a regular writing habit, there are other good reasons to participate in NYC Midnight’s :

  • Receive feedback from the judges for every submission
  • Gain access to the NYC Midnight writing community
  • Writers retain all the rights to the screenplays they create
  • Winners can have their screenplays published on the NYC Website
  • Great prizes to win, from thousands of dollars to free writing tools

How iA Writer helps

In 2023 we added native support for Fountain files. Seasoned screenwriters are likely already familiar with Fountain, a plain text syntax that leverages the strength of Markdown and is tailored for screenwriters.

Check out our Fountain template announcement post to learn all about Fountain syntax and how you can maximize screenwriting productivity in Writer. We’ve recently updated this template to version 1.1 with improvements based on user feedback.

In a contest with tight deadlines, time management and focus are paramount. Our app has been loved by amateur and professional writers for many years because it is made for writing and nothing else. Here is how Writer can help you:

Live Preview

Watch your screenplay render in real-time as you work. Or you can choose to work fully focused in the Editor while Preview remains on call at any time.

Focus Mode

The signature feature of iA Writer allows you to focus on one sentence or paragraph at a time. How does it work?

Stylecheck

Easily spot fillers, redundancies, or clichés that might be creeping into your text. Cut it down to the essentials. You can also create your custom patterns to highlight expressions that you want to avoid.

Syntax Highlight

Pinpoint awkward verbs, repetitive nouns, or the excessive use of certain parts of speech. How does this help?

Using Markdown, you can keep your hands on the keyboard and quickly format your work as you go. You can speed up your formatting using shortcuts. Word count will come in handy, too.

No AI!

NYC Midnight’s official rules ban using Artificial Intelligence (AI). With iA Writer, you can keep track of what is coming from you and what you pasted. Our brand new Authorship feature is available on Writer for macOS and iOS. It will be your most reliable ally in tracking the origin of your text and being sure that you keep and submit your own words.3

Are you ready to jump in? Registration for the 2024 Screenwriting Challenge is open until March 14, 2024. For full details please check out the NYC Midnight website.

NYC Midnight Screenwriting Challenge iA Writer

Download your free iA Writer trial for SCC2024

  1. The full list of the prizes is available here: SCC2024 Prizes. ↩

  2. A detailed calendar for SCC2024 is available here: Dates. ↩

  3. NYC Midnight, like iA, has been among the first to step back and carefully consider the use of AI in writing. They have updated their official rules to prohibit the use of AI in their challenges as early as March 2023. ↩