When Laura Kroeger won the 2025 Feature Grand Prize of Final Draft’s Big Break Screenwriting Competition she stepped into a year that not only reshaped her career, but also her point of view on screenwriting.
Her winning screenplay, Bigger in Texas, is a sharp, subversive dramedy about a forty-something ex-pageant queen who finds the perfect vigilante solution to her midlife crisis by exploiting Texas’ sex toy ban to blackmail powerful men. Kroeger describes the tone succinctly: “It’s a dramedy. It’s like Erin Brockovich meets Hustlers.”
It’s fresh and original while being clever with a sense of humor. Exactly like Kroeger herself.
She says she began writing screenplays because she loved movies and saw it as a practical way to get started in filmmaking.
“I didn't have to get a very expensive piece of equipment to start. I could start on my own with a word processor or with Final Draft and teach myself the craft with the resources that I had available to me. But then I just fell in love with it. I mean, there's nothing more fun than getting to make decisions about character and plot for a story that didn't exist before you dreamt it up,” she says.
A Week That Changed Everything
Within a week of taking the Final Draft Big Break Feature Grand Prize, Kroeger signed with a manager, an almost unheard-of turnaround in an industry known for its long waits.
“I signed with Max Gonzalez at Fourth Wall Management,” she says. “And that has been super helpful.”
That momentum carried directly into Big Break’s signature industry immersion week. Final Draft flew Kroeger to Los Angeles for a packed week of meetings alongside the TV Grand Prize winner, Maia Mulcahy.
“I've gotten to meet people that I've only ever dreamed of meeting. I've had coffee with my idols, I've been able to work with producers and production companies that I've admired for a really long time,” she says.
The trip culminated in an industry milestone: attending the WGA Awards.
“At the end of the week, we went to the WGA Awards all together as a team,” she says. “Which was so much fun.”
Creating Relationships
What sets Kroeger’s post–Big Break year apart isn’t just access to industry people, it’s how she’s used that access.
“I’ve been going on generals, I’ve been pitching both Bigger in Texas as well as other projects, things that I haven’t written yet,” she says. “Most of the generals that I’ve gone on have been really great opportunities to meet producers who like my work. But a couple of them have turned into longer working relationships.”
She’s currently developing potential adaptations with a production company that collaborates with major directors while championing early-career writers. She’s also pitched on open writing assignments, including one that came from a piece of advice that’s become important in relationship building.
The Advice That Opened Doors
One of the most impactful lessons Kroeger received came from a writer on an Emmy-winning comedy series.
“I got a piece of advice to always ask if there’s a problem that I can help people solve,” she says.
Rather than pitching just her own scripts, Kroeger started asking producers for their toughest unsolved projects.
“On one particular general, I asked for their thorniest open writing assignment, the one that they haven’t figured out how to crack yet,” she says. “So I was able to pitch on that, and then that created a working relationship.”
For an emerging writer, she says, having the courage to face a challenge is essential.
“When they have a problem that they haven’t solved, like a piece of IP they can’t crack, it’s really no skin off of their nose to let me take a crack at it,” Kroeger says. “If I can impress them, that’s an opportunity that I didn’t necessarily have before.”
Writing From Lived Experience On and Off the Page
Kroeger’s perspective is shaped not just by screenwriting, but by her life outside Hollywood. She lives in Washington, D.C. where she once worked in government, and still balances writing with a day job at a romance bookstore.
“I read a lot, which I think is really helpful, also, as a writer,” she says. “I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes characters fun to read or what makes them not fun to read.”
That immersion informs both her writing and her development work, especially when it comes to adaptation. “I talk to a lot of people about what they like about adaptations and what they don’t like,” she says. “That really helps.”
She doesn’t see living outside of Hollywood as a problem.
“Zoom is a very useful tool and half the time they don’t necessarily know that I don’t live in LA,” she says.
Writing Women Who Feel Real
When asked what advice she’d give writers crafting female protagonists, Kroeger says it comes down to authenticity.
“I think readers can tell whether a strong female protagonist feels authentic or not,” she says. “A strong female character just means a real female character. Women’s rights and women’s wrongs.”
Flaws aren’t liabilities: they’re necessary. “There’s all sorts of flaws and unlikability that you can draw on to make a female protagonist very well-rounded and watchable.”
What Comes Next
Bigger in Texas continues to circulate, building interest with producers, but Kroeger is careful not to stand still. She has this important advice.
“Be ready to talk about not just the script that you are getting buzz on, but what you’re working on next,” she says.
That readiness, paired with openness, collaboration, and craft, is what Big Break is all about.
“It feels like everything has changed,” Kroeger says with a smile.
For writers wondering whether competitions matter, her journey offers a clear answer: when paired with preparation, generosity, and strategic follow-through, Big Break isn’t just a win, it’s a launchpad to the next phase in your career.
Final Draft’s Big Break Screenwriting Contest opens March 23, 2026 for entries. For more information, visit finaldraft.com/big-break-screenwriting-contest.