Screenwriting competitions and AI: what the Nicholl rules say

Screenwriting competitions set their own AI rules. The Nicholl bars AI-generated dialogue, characters and scene description. Check before you submit.

The Black List's 2026–2027 Nicholl programme page reproduces the Academy's rule: "Scripts that include dialogue, characters, or scene description generated by artificial intelligence (AI) are ineligible for this competition." That is broader than a ban on pasting generated dialogue into a screenplay. Characters count too.

This is the Nicholl rule, not a rule for every screenwriting competition. Read the current terms for the programme you want to enter. An app's description of its AI features cannot tell you whether your particular script qualifies. If the terms leave your use of AI unclear, ask the organiser before paying an entry fee.

The public submission route has changed too. For 2026–2027, the Nicholl accepts recommendations from official partners. The Black List and the Writers Guild Foundation provide public portals. The Black List portal opened on 8 June 2026 and closed on 19 June when it reached 2,500 submissions, before its listed 22 June deadline. Those submissions are already closed. The programme also warns that entering through both public portals risks disqualification. These are this cycle's dates and terms, not a forecast for the next one.

For a writer choosing software, separate formatting from generation. A screenplay editor can paginate your own dialogue without inventing it. An AI feature that supplies a character, a speech or scene description does something different. The useful question is not simply whether the app has AI. It is what the AI contributed to the submitted work.

I build Beatstack, a Mac app for planning acts, sequences, scenes and beats on a board. Its AI proposes outline changes for the writer to approve rather than writing screenplay pages. That is not a guarantee of competition eligibility. An outline suggestion can still introduce a character or material you later use in the script. Approval does not make generated material human-written. For competition work, you can plan manually without using AI, then write the pages yourself.

Beatstack costs $39.95 once, with a 15-day free trial, no account and project files on your own disk. It exports screenplay files as .fdx or Fountain. If you are choosing where to write the pages, Final Draft vs Fade In compares two desktop editors, and free screenwriting software explains the free tiers and demos. Before submitting, check the competition's full rules against how you actually made the script.