Steven M. Cross

Screenwriter and Playwright

Poplar Bluff, Missouri

Member Since:
April 2015

Last online:
> 2 weeks ago

Invites sent:
23

About Steven

I am a semi-retired educator and freelance writer. In the last two years, I have optioned one screenplay and sold another one. I also had two YA contemporary novels and two fantasy novels published. Before 2018, I published seven plays, two middle-grade novels, and one Young Adult Novel. One of my screenplays reached a quarterfinalist status in the Bluecat competition. I've written 16 screenplays, five of which are good. I've had four quarterfinalists finishes in contests and one top 100. In nonfiction, I've done everything from Sunday school materials to working on a Daily Newspaper to doing questions for a testing company to publishing an article in the English Journal, "Dead Poets Do Tell Tales," which was inspired by my favorite movie. I live in Poplar Bluff, MO, (home to the creators of Designing Women), so I'm not really in the screenwriting mainstream, and I suspect that might help deter me from ever really succeeding as a screenwriter, but I can dream. It would be nice to get an agent. Most of the screenplays I write are character-driven. They range from a mentally ill teenager to a teacher who has trouble with reality to a Tweener who lives and dies for baseball. I believe that a script can't be that good if the characters aren't in some way interesting. I've been married for almost 40 years and I love spoiling grandchildren and watching St. Louis Cardinals' baseball. I've made a lot of connections here but would love to make more.

Unique traits: I am a cancer survivor, and I was diagnosed as bipolar about 30 years ago.

Gender:
Male

Height:
6' 1"

Hair:
Receding

Hair color:
Grey

Eyes:
Hazel

Badges

Photos

Videos

Simple structure for screenplays if you are a pantser

Loglines

Finding Her Way Budget: $100K - $1M | Horror A seriously injured teen must find her way through the maze of her own head before she can find her way to the prom or be lost forever.
Mosaic Budget: $100K - $1M | Drama A closeted lesbian art teacher, mentors a brilliant art student with multiple personality disorder, with one personality that could destroy both of them unless the teacher can figure out how to reach her.
Lost Reel Budget: $1M - $5M | Independent ⋄ Experimental A seriously disturbed writer wants to restart his life when he goes to a lake cottage, but as he uncovers more and more of his past, he realizes that what he finds may ruin him professionally and personally.
Pussycat, Pussycat Budget: $0 - $100K | Independent ⋄ Experimental An elderly nursing home patient has just one thing left in her life, an old stuffed cat that meows and purrs, and when the staff takes that, she realizes she will have to fight back even if it means her death.
Home Sweets Home Budget: $100K - $1M | Family A cantankerous old woman tries to help the family she once rejected, but her efforts will fail unless she can find the balance between baked goods and baseball to change things.
Pussycat, Pussycat Budget: $0 - $100K | Experimental ⋄ Drama An elderly nursing home patient has just one thing left in her life, an old stuffed cat that meows and purrs, and when the staff takes that, she realizes she will have to fight back even if it means her death.
More than Blood and Bone Budget: $1M - $5M | Thriller ⋄ Drama After his girlfriend kills herself in a suicide pact, a mentally ill teen with violent tendencies must stop a reign of terror by ruthless bullies before they destroy him and his friends.
Home Sweets Home Budget: $1M - $5M | Family ⋄ Comedy A cantankerous old woman tries to help the family she once rejected, but her efforts will fail unless she can find the balance between baked goods and baseball to change things.
Crazy S.O.B. Budget: $1M - $5M | Independent ⋄ Experimental A bipolar drama teacher, further maddened by unrequited love, sinks into a deep depression when he becomes a target for dismissal for not casting a school board member's daughter as the lead in a play he does not want to direct.
Mosaic Budget: $100K - $1M | Independent ⋄ Romance A closeted lesbian art teacher, mentors a brilliant art student with multiple personality disorder, with one personality that could destroy both of them unless the teacher can figure out how to reach her.
Freak Thriller A mentally ill teenager, who has been such a loser his entire life that he can't even kill himself correctly, moves to a new school with a new parent and battles the same old depression and bullies (and hallucinations) he has always battled in an effort to start a new life, but it is only when he nearly dies that he succeeds.
In Sight Budget: $1M - $5M | Drama ⋄ Independent With her newly acquired gift of reading minds, a teenage poetess does more harm than good but tries to redeem herself before she does irreparable damage to the most vulnerable people in her lives ... including herself.
The Greater Good Budget: $0 - $100K | Sci-fi After a wife has twins, her husband must decide who will have to die in his family so paradise will keep its zero population growth.
Coffee and a Cupcake Budget: $0 - $100K | Romance ⋄ Comedy When a talented marketing manager eats the best cupcake and drinks the best cup of coffee in the mall she schemes to bring two shop owners together even though they can't stand each other.

View all 14 loglines

Credits

Freak (Quarterfinalist Fresh Voices Screenplay) (2015)
Film by Fresh Voices Competition Writer
Fall Of Knight (2015)
Print by Book Trope Writer
Walt Michaels Is A Weenie (top ten comedy category screenplay competition) (2012)
Film by Exposurama Screenplay Cont. writer
Haunted Hamlet (2004)
Theater by Brooklyn Publishers Writer