Having Just Finished My First Year Of My Screenwriting Masters Program, I Wanna Share This Thing That

Having just finished my first year of my screenwriting masters program, i wanna share this thing that I was told at the very start of the year that I have not been able to stop thinking about

they got all 28 of us screenwriters in a room on like the second day and straight up told us—

“you will suffer for your entire career if you make this into a competition.” 

they told us that, while we might like the write similar things, like in the same genre, or same settings—we’d never be in competition, simply because we were all different people.

from our big differences in life experience and in personality, down to our smaller differences in story preferences and writing style, it all made everything we all did unique.

and while we were all one of a million people trying to achieve the same goal of making writing a career—individually we were the only ones who could tell our stories. 

You are the only one who can write like you, who can draw like you, who can cosplay like you, who can sing like you, who can make art like you. Don’t ruin the love you have for your craft by comparing yourself to others, by putting yourself in competition with them just because you want to be “the best”.

And finally, here’s the tough love part that we all got reminded of constantly—

The moment you decide you are better than everyone, is the moment you fail. Because you will have closed yourself off to valuable critique. You will have inflated your ego so big that the second you get rejected you’ll spiral. You will have become so high and mighty that one day you’ll look around and realize you have pushed all of your peers, and your entire support system, away. 

There literally is no “best”. There is only growing with others as artists, supporting your peers, and telling your story in the way only you can. That’s how you succeed.