Last week The Disciple Program sold to Universal for big bucks and with Mark Wahlberg attached to star. And the arguing began.

For those of you who have not been obsessing over this particular development, let me 'splain:

A while back, aspiring screenwriter Tyler Marceca entered the Industry Insider Screenwriting Contest, in which he was given a vague logline (After waking to find his wife dead in their backyard, a man conducts his own investigation, and uncovers the hidden life of a woman he thought he knew) with which to write the beginning of a screenplay. The top writers were then given guidance from professionals to build an entire screenplay from those initial pages. Tyler won and developed a script called The Disciple Program.

While he was already gaining some traction with his contest win, Tyler submitted this script to Carson Reeves at the Scriptshadow blog for notes. Carson loved the script and generated a lot of buzz for it, and Tyler was signed by WME and Anonymous Content. On Friday, The Disciple Program sold with a director and actor attached. And Tyler is on his way.

I don't know Tyler personally. These are just the facts as I have gleaned them.

This whole series of events has generated some rather aggressive discussion among the screenwriting populace. There are those who are in a kerfuffle over whether or not Carson is responsible for Tyler's success. Carson helped in a big way, no doubt, but let's get one thing straight: Tyler is responsible for Tyler's success.

No matter what you think of the script (I think it was great with pacing and an easy read because I have an English teacher's vocabulary skills, but a bit predictable), you have to respect Tyler's devotion to the craft here. He entered a contest where the prize wasn't money so much as it was hard work under a mentor's supervision. But he didn't stop there. He knew he could do more with the script, so he sought out more help in the form of notes from Carson.

I have my issues with paying for notes. Namely, there are very few screenplay consultants who are worth the price. I can name four, although I personally have never paid for a note in my life. For some people, though, paid notes are a very useful tool. See This Post by the Bitter Script Reader for really good advice on the subject.

Anyway, Tyler worked on this script, and then worked on it, and worked on it again. That much is obvious from his story. And when he hooked up with WME, they gave him notes and he worked on it again. He could have rested on his contest-winning laurels and imagined himself a perfect writer with nothing left to learn, but he didn't.

Honestly, all this fighting people are doing over whether or not Scriptshadow helped Tyler out or not, over whether or not the script is truly amazing, it doesn't matter. That's not the moral of this story. The moral of this story is, this guy worked his ass off to make this the best script he could possibly write, and now he's a professional screenwriter.

Over at Scriptshadow, Carson  has posted links to the first ten pages of each of the top five winners of his recent contest. My pages are from entry number four, Nice Girls Don't Kill. Feel free to download and see what you think. They were all interesting reads, and one script in particular kicked my ass, but I won't elaborate until after Carson posts his own reviews.

I learned quite a bit from reading these pages, particularly how easy it is to do nothing for ten pages when you think your reader is a little slow, and how much better it is when you get to the point as quickly as possible.

Have a read. See what you think.

A debate rages through the screenwriting world today. John August started it. And Done Deal continued it.

His premise is that Carson Reeve's website Scriptshadow, where "Carson" reviews both produced and unproduced screenplays and posts links to the scripts on his site. August says this hurts screenwriters because it puts their screenplays under lock and key so Carson can't get at them.

I gotta say, if that's true, Carson took less than a year to become one of the most powerful guys in Hollywood without even working at a studio. You know that's gotta get him a lot of tail.

I see what JA is saying. I think if I were a pro screenwriter I'd be pretty pissed if some upstart reviewed my script and said it was crap, but probably no more irritated than if some upstart reviewed my movie and said it was crap.

My theory on the subject is that if Carson can get the scripts, Carson absolutely should review them. I'm not so sure he should be posting links to them. As much as I enjoy having access to those scripts, I'm not sure posting them is okay. On the other hand, let's say Carson posts a bad review. I can download the script and read it for myself and I might disagree. In the end I think that should be the writer's choice.

Someone on Done Deal posted a viable solution. Tell the writer you will review his script and offer him the opportunity to give you a newer draft and to choose whether or no you want him to post it. The studio will probably object to it 9 times out of 10, but personally I don't go to Carson's site for the script. If I really really want the script I can get it elsewhere. I go there for the reviews and the following discussion and the opportunity it gives us to talk about what makes a spec screenplay work.

My two pennies.