Script Frenzy Strikes Boston

On a porch on a breezy courtyard at Allston's Church of Saints Luke and Margaret, Travis Kelley of Roslindale draws a chart on a large piece of paper. Fighting the wind, Kelley writes down the column heads "name," "beginning word count," "goal," and "final word count."

Kelley was a municipal liaison for National Novel Writing Month last November, and he can't get enough of these deadline-driven exercises. This month, he is serving as a municipal liaison for Script Frenzy, the latest goal-oriented writing project from the team that started National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short.

During National Novel Writing Month, participants feverishly churned out a 50,000-page word product. For Script Frenzy, which makes its debut this year, aspiring screenwriters attempt to produce a 20,000-page word screenplay during the month of June.

At the core of the Script Frenzy and NaNoWriMo process is the write-in, a regular meeting of participants in which everyone focuses on his or her screenplay, trying to reach a specific word count for the session.

Municipal liaisons like Kelley and Anna Draves, of New York, encourage the writers toward their stated goal and work on their own manuscripts during that time. Everyone pushes each other. Khadijah Britton, of Allston, loves the write-ins and makes every effort to attend them, even though she's on crutches at the moment. She admits, "I wouldn't write if it weren't for the write-ins."

Many Script Frenzy writers are familiar with the format since they've also done NaNoWriMo, but the screenplay format poses fresh challenges. Kayleigh Shoen says that, even though the screenplay is shorter, "To create a decent screenplay, I think you need to spend much more time figuring out where you want the plot to go, and that means precious minutes when the typing fingers aren't moving."

Kelley says he misses the narrative freedom of the novel, so he's added a voiceover to his script, which is about a Baltimore drag queen who inherits an Arkansas grocery store and must keep it open for his family.

Other Script Frenzy plots include Sandy Hutchinson's, which follows a church that is on the verge of closing down. Hutchinson, of Allston, is also a warden at the Church of Saints Luke and Margaret, and even though the real church doesn't face that problem, she's drawing on her own experiences. Draves is writing about four teenage girls who fight crime together and also have to learn to get along. Shoen sums up her script as "Rugrats meets Magnum PI."

These writers occasionally hit creative roadblocks, and each of them has a solution to the problem. Kelley jokes, "I cry." Draves says her solution is to "take a long break and eat a chocolate muffin." Britton just solves the problem by switching over to a new scene.

Even if the participants don't reach the goals that Kelley has put down on paper, they'll still get a lot from trying. Hutchinson says of her experience so far: "Script Frenzy has encouraged me to try something new that I wouldn't ordinarily have tried."

Image of a Script Frenzy writer putting pen to paper by Travis Kelley.