Once again, it was another whirlwind weekend of fun and excitement. 4,000 writers descended upon the LAX Marriott & Renaissance Hotels for four days of networking, lectures, pitching, and of course, trying their luck at the 2007 CS Open.

As many of you know (since a lot of you participated!) the CS Open is the world's only live writing tournament. Every year, hundreds of writers put their writing-under-the-gun skills to the test, all vying for a chance to win that big $5,000 prize. Coverage, Ink. has been coordinating the competition since Creative Screenwriting founder Erik Bauer first got the idea for a live writing tournament back in 2001.

700 people were given 90 minutes to write an original scene, by hand, based on scene parameters I read to them. Those scenes were then evaluated by the Coverage, Ink. team, with the top 10% (this year, everyone who scored a 90 or above) moving to round 2.

We also had a lot of folks trying to better their odds by enrolling in several round 1 sections--and in fact, one of our finalists watched his scores rise round by round. After writing five original scenes (and probably crippling his writing hand,) he scored that 90 and made it into round 2.

The Round 2 folks then gathered Saturday night, where they had to write yet another brand-new scene, which were then evaluated on the spot by CI. The top eleven were then notified to return to the room Sunday morning to write one last scene.

Then the real fun began--the performances. Each of the three scenes written that very morning were performed live on stage by actors at the Expo closing ceremonies. And this is where we learned just how the CS Open is really a microcosm for the filmmaking process, because in less than a day, the scene was written, edited, staged, performed, and then evaluated by an audience! And so the handwritten words on the page really came to life in the case of some of the scenes.

We also witnessed firsthand how the performances of the material, even moreso than the material itself, affected the way the audience voted. For example, the staging and performance of Adam Balsam's scene certainly helped him cinch the win. In the end, Balsam triumphed, and he gave a rousing, motivating speech to the crowd of 1,000 fellow writers.

Balsam has been doing the CS Open year after year since the very beginning, and he commented how the first few years his scene scores were always in the 70s… not exactly winning material. But then slowly his scores started to move up, until last year when he cracked the high 80s. Every year he did a little better. Well, this year, he did 5 GRAND better. Way to go, Adam!

After an exhausting 3-day weekend, CI folded its proverbial tent and went home to crash HARD. Did I mention just how much #$&^*!@%*#! walking we had to do, back and forth from one hotel to the other? Actually, it was just as bad at the Convention Center, but at least this year there was a BK right across the street ;) Plus there were printing screwups resulting in confusion as no one knew what time their section started.

But we rolled with it, and hopefully no one went away unhappy. You can bet we'll be back next year for YEAR 8, and who knows--maybe next year YOU'LL win the big bucks!

For those interested in the scene prompts, you can find them posted on www.screenwritingexpo.com. Here's the round three prompt for this year. The 10 finalists had to write their own interpretation of this:

Your PROTAGONIST is having a hard time convincing FOUR TEAMMATES of the validity of his or her plan. Protagonist seems to think it's a great idea; their only chance. Others disagree, finding the plan foolhardy, fraught with danger or possible embarrassment. But when the ANTAGONIST suddenly gets the drop on the protagonist and teammates, the good guys have to decide: Fight? Run? Stall? Whine? Negotiate? Break into a song and dance routine? You can take any approach with this material that you like-any genre, setting or style-but make sure you give your protagonist and antagonist some compelling, non-cliché dialogue. Good luck!

As always, it was a fabulous, exhilarating time. Congratulations to our winners Adam Balsam, Ben Broyles and Aled Ordu, and to the other top ten finishers: Kevin Sheridan, Vivian Lee Amber Moore, Jeff Pulice, Mike Pace, Chris Todd, Ritchard Shadian and Eric Ingram.