Save the Cat!

The author's name of Save the Cat! is Blake Snyder, a screenply writer of some renown.

One path that aspiring screewriters have readily available to them is a venue called Screenplay Writing Competitions.  They are somewhat akin to beauty pageants in that one cannot swing a dead cat without hitting a competition. (No pun intended.) And anybody can stage one.

Some competitions have an entry fee, which would seem to vary with the whim of the contest organizers, and some are free.  The free ones, I've noticed, are very difficult to enter online.  Two come to mind immediately:  Amazon's monthly screenwriting contest; and Ron Howard's screenwriting competition via YouTube.  After trying numerous times to enter with Amazon, and getting "error" notices for data entry points; and trying to FIND Ron Howard's contest on YouTube, I've concluded they've been hacked by aspiring screenwriters trying to narrow the competition field. 

Blake Snyder makes an interesting point about these competitions in his book:  They are essentially a useless waste of time and entry fees.  No producer, agent, or movie company will give a shit whether you've won a competition, or even twenty of them.  Kinda like the old adage, "With that and $5 you can get a cup of coffee."

So I will leave them to the hackers.  Good luck, you saps!