November 1 to 30, 2026
First Draft November.
One feature-length first draft, started from a blank page on the first of the month, finished by the last. It is free. There is no jury, no prize and no entry fee, and nobody reads your script. The only thing anyone counts is your pages.
We write to you once a day in November, and then we stop. No account to create.
First Draft November
34of 90 pages
The deal.
Four rules, and they all fit in one screen. Everything else is up to you.
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A blank page on the first.
Notes, outlines and index cards are yours to bring, as many as you want. Pages written before November are not. Everyone starts the month on the same empty page.
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Ninety pages.
A feature, in screenplay format. Ninety formatted pages is roughly ninety minutes of film, which is why that number and not a word count.
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Done by the thirtieth.
Three pages a day gets you there with a day to spare. Miss one and the next day costs you four. That arithmetic is the whole challenge.
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Bad pages count.
A first draft is allowed to be bad, and the ones that reach the end usually are. Nobody here is judging it. You are being counted, not read.
Your pages count themselves.
Every writing month before this one ran on the honour system: you typed your own number into a box at the end of the day. This one does not need you to. If you write in Google Docs or Word with Screenplay Editor installed, it already knows what a formatted page is, so it counts them as you write.
Nothing leaves your document except that number. We do not read a line of your script, we do not store your text, and there is nothing to upload anywhere. That has been true of this software since the first day, and a writing challenge is not a reason to change it. How we handle your writing.
No extension, or you write somewhere else entirely? You are still welcome. You enter your page count yourself, the way writers have always done it. The counter is the easy version, it is not the ticket in.
What you get for signing up.
Three things, and none of them is a badge.
The counter
Pages today, pages so far, days left, and whether you are ahead or behind. It is the one number that tells you the truth at eleven at night.
An email each morning
Two minutes to read, written by a director who has had to finish drafts on a deadline. One problem of the craft a day, not a motivational quote.
A poster on day thirty
Your title, your pages, your name, made to print. Yours whether you reach ninety or stop at forty, because forty is forty more than you had.
Who is behind this.
I am a French director living in Rome. I wrote both of my features in Google Docs, badly formatted, because the software made for this costs two hundred and fifty dollars and I did not have it. That is where this tool comes from.
The reason I am running a month and not a competition is that the hardest thing about a first screenplay has never been talent or notes or coverage. It is arriving at page ninety at all. A deadline that other people are also keeping is the only trick I know that works, and the one everybody used for it shut down last year. So here is another one.
HugoHugo Thomas, director of Willy 1er (Cannes, ACID) and Juniors.
Ninety pages is closer than it looks.
Free. One email a day in November, then we leave you alone.
Open to anyone, anywhere, writing in any language. Features, pilots and stage plays all welcome, ninety pages is ninety pages. You keep every right to everything you write, we make no claim on it and we never see it.