First Draft November
November 1 to 30, 2026
Ninety pages in thirty days.
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 entry fee, and during the month nobody reads your script: the only thing anyone counts is your pages. In December, Fauve Productions reads five of the finished drafts.
No account to create. One email a day in November, then we stop.
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 is judging it in November. You are being counted, not read.
Write in anything
The challenge is the deadline, not the software. Use what you already write with, and enter your page count yourself, the way writers have always done it.
- Final Draft
- Fade In
- Highland
- WriterDuet
- Celtx
- Google Docs
- Word
- A notebook
If you write in Google Docs or Word with Screenplay Editor, the pages count themselves as you type, and the counter tells you every night whether you are ahead or behind. Nothing leaves your document except that number: no one reads a line, no one stores your text.
Everything else, the daily email, the poster at the end, the deadline shared with everyone else, is the same whatever you write in. The counter is the easy version, it is not the ticket in.
What comes with it
Four things, and none of them is a badge.
Five drafts read by Fauve Productions
Finishers who want to be read send their draft at the end of the month. Fauve Productions, a French film and stage production company, reads five of them in December and sends each writer a few lines back.
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.
A free month of Screenplay Editor Pro
For everyone signed up, for all of November, if you want it. It is the organiser's own tool, see below, and it is never required.
Who is running this
I am a French director. 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 since NaNoWriMo closed there was none left for scripts. So here is one.
HugoHugo Thomas, director of Willy 1er (Cannes, ACID) and Juniors, both on Netflix.
Plainly: I also make Screenplay Editor, a screenwriting tool that works inside Google Docs and Word. It is what makes the automatic page counter and the daily emails possible, and it is why the free month exists. You do not need it to take part, and nothing here pushes you towards it beyond this paragraph.
Partners
The people and tools that help this month happen. Want to add yours, a newsletter, a school, another production company? Write to hugopthomas@gmail.com.
Fauve Productions
Film and stage production, France. Reads five finished first drafts in December and writes back to each author. fauveproductions.com
Screenplay Editor
Counts the pages and unlocks Pro for the month. screenplayeditor.app
CipherWrite
Lists First Draft November in its guide to this year's November writing challenges. Read it
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, unless you choose to send it to Fauve Productions at the end of the month.