MISSION

The Mission of the New Century Writer Awards® Contest.

The New Century Writer Awards® (NCWA) was established to provide valuable outlet to recognize the quality screenplays, stage plays, fiction and poetry of both unpublished and emerging writers with only small or minor creative writing credits. We also provide cash awards to the Top 10 writers in each of our five creative writing contests since monetary awards help legitimize and validate a writer's good hard work.

The NCWA seeks quality, character driven stories in all genres to consider for presentation to publishers for possible publication, and to producers for possible film production. Screenplays and stage plays for both small and large film budgets are welcome since we have access to producers representing all genres and budget levels, and magazine editors who seek fiction in all genres.

The final judges of each annual contest include top industry producers, directors, film marketing professionals, fiction writers, playwrights, fiction editors, screenwriters, executive producers, and literary agents.

Our Philosophy

Breaking into film writing and publishing has never been easy for new and unknown writers. Fortunately, burgeoning numbers of independent film makers and publishers are providing these writers with opportunities never before available in the history of American filmmaking and publishing. Writers who are getting their first break in independent film or independent publishing are then moving more easily into the commercial markets.

To keep up with the exploding independent movement, the Hollywood film and television markets are aggressively seeking new stories and new writers.

There has never been as much opportunity as there is today for good writers, and the writing contests offered each year are becoming a vital means for unknown and lesser established writers to break into print and film.

Presently there are over fifty feature-length scriptwriting and one-hundred playwriting competitions offered across the United States each year. A few pay large cash awards but the majority pay little or nothing, and most have restrictions on subject matter, the writer’s geographical location, or gender. These restrictions severely limit opportunity.

Only one or two other film-related contests consider stage plays and short fiction. This is a shame when you consider the fact that some of the best movies ever produced began as stage plays and short fiction. The classic Hitchcock films The Birds and Rear Window started as short stories, as did Jodie Foster’s Home for the Holidays.

On Golden Pond, Marvin’s Room, Glengarry Glen Ross, Driving Miss Daisy, and The House of Yes were first written as stage plays.

To make matters worse, the higher paying print markets for short stories are disappearing because of high paper and mailing costs, and fewer first time novelists are being published due to the consolidation of publishing houses by the media giants. Other contests for short fiction writers provide very small cash awards. To help close this gap we offer one of the highest 1st place cash awards for novels, and we now provide a publishing outlet for poets and short story writers via our alliance with Scissor Press (publishers of the print magazine Verbicide).

With these things in mind, we open our doors to movie scripts, stage plays, short fiction, poems, and novels from writers of all races, nationalities, and backgrounds, living in any country across the globe who write in English. We do this to give an open-door opportunity to as many creative writers as possible.

There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of good writers who are as yet undiscovered and have great stories to tell. This contest is another chance for the world to discover those story telling voices.

We look forward to reading your entry(ies) and wish you the best of luck in this and other contests, as well as much success in all your writing projects.

If you are interested in entering, please proceed to the SUBMISSION INFORMATION page.