Some actors get 15 minutes of fame, Owain Johnston has had an hour.

He won the BMDS Famous for 15 Minutes play-writing competition on Saturday evening — his fourth time.

The prize was the much-coveted Golden Inkwell, and $250.

Six 15-minute plays are chosen for production at Daylesford Theatre. Each is given a director and a small amateur cast. At the end of the performance run, a winner is chosen.

This year, the 33-year-old had the novelty of performing in his own play.

“The director, Deborah Joell, and I had a running joke,” he said. “If I went off script she would say, ‘The writer obviously wrote that line that way for a reason’. I would say, ‘I’m not doing improv; it’s a rewrite’.

“The advantage of acting in your own play is that you already know your character. The disadvantage is, if something goes wrong, you can’t blame the writer.”

His play, Nemeses, is about a man who returns home to find a young woman (played by Emily Ross) occupying his apartment. She has cut up his electronics cables and declared herself his arch nemesis. She’s obsessed with comic books and super heroes.

“Like a lot of people, I have spent a lot of time watching movies based on Marvel comics,” he said. “They are not very realistic. The idea of having an arch nemesis in real life is sort of ridiculous. Even if you have a rivalry with someone, both of you think you’re the good guy.

“The worst humans in history have generally thought they were the good guys.”

After all the plays were read, one person told him his was the darkest.

“Someone got murdered in one of the other plays,” he said. “That says something.”

All the scripts he’s entered have not been winners.

“About five of my scripts haven’t made it,” he said. “I haven’t won for the last two years.

“The first year, I didn’t read the rules properly and entered four scripts instead of the allowed two. Only one of them was accepted.”

That play, Inter-Mortem, won in 2008.

Now, he is thinking of where he can go next with his playwriting.

“After I accepted the trophy, Carol Birch, a competitor and very talented writer, said when are you going to finally write a full-length play?”

He did just that while a student at Flagler College in Florida.

“Unfortunately, it was awful,” he said. “I had a look at it again, recently, and it was cringeworthy.”

He’s hoping to try again. He thinks his experience as a journalist with the The Royal Gazette for the past five years, has given him some insight.

“It has helped with dialogue,” he said. “When I first started, I was writing short stories, but I struggled with the dialogue. Then I thought I would write a play just so I could improve that. Listening to people talk all day helps. It also teaches you to write to a deadline.”