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Nicholl Letters, Notes and the 1999 competition

by Greg Beal

All 4,150 Nicholl letters were placed in the mail on Friday, July 23. Every single entrant was mailed a letter, whatever their status in the competition.

Each year I write notes on some letters in the competition that let entrants know that a particular script was close. Here are the notes and their meaning this year:

(Remember, there were 244 quarterfinalists, which was a record number.)

*Just missed -- among the next 100 scripts.*

With ties, there were 108 scripts in this group. #245 - 352.

*Close -- in the top 10% of all scripts.*

Top 10% is exactly 415. With ties this group went just over -- #353 - 418.

*Close -- in the next 10% of all scripts.*

That means the 10% after the quarterfinalists. With ties, the group includes #419 - 737.

It was possible to receive a triple read and not fit into the above categories. One strong score and two weak ones would do it. Only a few scripts fell into this group.

It was also possible to receive two decent scores or one solid score and one weaker score and fall into a group that would have reached the next 10% in previous years. Over 300 scripts were in this group.

On a few letters I did not define *close.* In most instances, that was because I was writing *Better news to follow* or because the writer had multiple scripts in the close category. Sorry, but I seemed to place a limit on the number of words I would scrawl on the bottom of a page.

And the *better news* note proved to be unnecessary as we managed to put all the quarterfinal letters into the mail at the very end of the day on Friday.

As I mentioned in the letters, scores were higher this year than in any previous competition. All else being basically the same -- scoring system, first round judges -- the higher scores suggest that the level of screenplay writing among pre-professionals is on the rise. That seems to me a good thing. It does, however, make the competition that much tougher.

As always, we do not distribute any additional information about entrants' placements, nor do we provide any notes. Please do not ask us to do so.

If you didn't receive a note, place yourself in the double-read category and move on from there.

Updated: 07/27/1999

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