Having people read your work

Cloned Beef,

I have to say that my opinion of feedback is nearly opposite. Part of the reason I feel this way is that screenwriting is a craft more than an art (good screenplays may also have artistic merit, don't get me wrong). Also, since screenwriting is a collaborative medium, it's our job to make something that many people can get on board and make. Every person, from Producer to director to actor will read a script and provide notes. Hopefully excellent notes to make the story better. Actors, for example, tend to be wonderful in pointing out how to flesh out their characters.

Sure, some notes may be way off base, but I that's when you grin, thank a person and tell them you'll keep it in mind... especially when they are an executive considering your project. If you aren't a team player on a film project, they'll just get another writer.

So, I'm very grateful that a person would take their time to talk to me about my work and, if they can view the material objectively, I can get great notes. Screenwriting is a medium of notes, rewrites, and selling yourself and your script to buyers. So, while it's not something that comes natural to my ego to hear... I feel it's my job to buck it up and use those notes the best I can.

Cheers,
Kay

clonedbeef said:

I resent the fact that this art form seems to be the only one that subjects itself to such treatment

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You might resent the fact that a film is a collaborative art form, but that won't change the simple fact that it is collaborative.

If you dislike it so much, why choose screenwriting ?

When it comes down to it though most of it will be personal taste, like any other piece of art...that is where I have a problem.

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You can't expect somone to invest $20 million into making a film that is to your taste. They will only finance the art if they are confident that it matches that taste of at least 6 million people ... and each of those people must be ready to pay at least $10 to watch it, and choose it over another film.

If you want to present your unique vision, and not adjust it to match the taste of at least 6 million others, then it might be best to choose a different medium.

Mac

A painting or a piece of music is a finished thing. A screenplay isn't. It's a plan. A blueprint for creating something much larger than itself; a proposal that's supposed to convince someone to spend two years and sixty million dollars making it happen. If you were trying to convince someone to spend that amount of money, you'd double-check your work, wouldn't you?

Further, yes, screenwriting is an art form but it's chiefly a craft and a structural exercise; one that has to be executed perfectly. For the most part, marketable screenplays smell the same. Readers and producers are looking for these comfortable and easily identifiable similarities. If they're not there, they'll very quickly decide it's not a script they can work with. The feedback you get will hopefully identify whether your structure and craft are correctly placed and good enough to pass this first, incredibly difficult hurdle. That's why feedback from people who know what they're talking about is invaluable.

There's room for art and craft in a screenplay but if you don't check you've nailed your act breaks and have clearly identified a theme then what you say won't matter because how you've chosen to say it will get it put in the 'return to sender' pile asap.

Being a scriptwriter is closer than being an architect. If you don't think they don't get a lot of input on their projects and modifications and so forth, boy do you have another thing coming.

Further more you are in the LEARNING stages. Go to any art class. There are always suggestions to improve, weaknesses pointed out, and so forth. You have no idea what you're talking about.

So here's how I see it.

A. You can get critiques on your work, listen carefully to what people are telling you, see the flaws come to the surface, fix them, work on the craft, hone it, and become better after much work, sweat, hardship, knockdowns, and so forth.

B. You can keep it a hobby, an art, and never let anyone tell you anything is wrong with your precious babies.

C. You can quit and pick an "art form" that doesn't involve critiquing. You'll be hard pressed to find one out there. It doesn't exist. Actors get critiqued, knocked down, coached. Artists take classes, get grades, get knocked down, rejected, and so forth. Musicians (especially musicians).

Why is it that people tend to think that writing is something they don't have to actually learn how to do? It's HARD WORK. It's not just "Poof" you're a great writer. It takes writing, rewriting, editing, more rewriting and so forth over several years before you start getting good, even those with the knack. If you're looking for instant gratification or pats on the head you have chosen the wrong field. Even the greats get knocked down. It's a tough crowd to please.

Actually, I don't think the term you are looking for is Script Doctor. I think you are looking for consulant or maybe a coverage service. (Script Doctor, to my knowledge, is more like William Goldman taking a pass at Good Will Hunting and would come with a pricetag you wouldn't believe).

Good consulting and coverage services have credentials and up to date industry experience. These people should have won awards, have produced or recognizable material. Experience should be recent, not like "I used to write for a cartoon in the 70's."

clonedbeef said:

I think I may have created the wrong impression from my original post, I was really referring to showing material to people with little to no knowledge of the process or business. I consider sending my script to one of those script doctor's but I don't know if it would be worth it, it probably would be, I think what it really comes down to is taking it all with a grain of salt.

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I almost always only hear "I don't take criticism and my work is perfect" kind of attitude from newbies so I took you as one. Since you say here that's not what you're saying, then I did get the wrong impression.

Well considering you have no idea of my background I sense a particular arrogance, I can smell it because I have it too! I started on the creative path young with drawing, acting and drama classes, creative writing and art class in high school, and attending art and design college, I am very familiar with the arts and always have a personal project in the works, in fact creativity is most of my identity.

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Again, I can only go on what you give me. Most newbies sneer at the idea of recieving criticism and input into their projects where as most people who have been around for a while get it. Then again there are those who have beena round for a while *cough* Anne Rice *cough* and forget it in their own arrogance.

We call it Golden Word Syndrom and anyone can fall victim to it.

I would suggest trying to Share Your Work section of this forum, you can get some pretty good feedback without paying for it.

Also if you don't want this to be a collaborative project you can always take the option of doing it all yourself and not dealing with a team as you have done before.

It's all up to you. I just get sick to death of people, especially newcomers, who think they're perfect and aren't willing to listen and apply feedback that would ultimately help them become a better writer. If that's not you, then you have my apologies for misreading your first post but it looks like I wasn't the only one.

clonedbeef said:

I am going to have a few different people read my first feature screenplay when I complete it and before I promote it but I resent the fact that this art form seems to be the only one that subjects itself to such treatment.

I know many different types of artists, painters, musicians, etcetera, and I see/hear finished work of theirs but expecting them to take suggestions from me as other then a grain of salt would be ludicrous, how is it that we as writers are expected to get some sort of approval before we are supposed to consider something complete?

I do understand it's usefulness to a degree, what I want people to do is to write down any questions or concerns regarding my script, if more then one person's opinion aligns then it may be something I need to seriously look at, from a subjective point of view I am sure there are things that I have overlooked or things that I have not made clear enough for an outside observer. When it comes down to it though most of it will be personal taste, like any other piece of art...that is where I have a problem.

I am curious how others view this part of the process, and what they try to get out of comments by people that read their work at the stage of near completion.

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Well, most people have their tastes, and I think that the way in which you view the opinions of others is absolutely the correct one -- but how else would you ever do it?

On the other hand, there is such a thing as a professional evalutation, and that's not the same as simply an evaluation based on taste.

That's the difference between calling in an interior designer to judge how your house looks in an aesthetic sense, and some may think it's beautiful and some may think it's hideous -- and calling in an engineer to evaluate its structural integrity. In the latter case, there will almost certainly be unanimity in respect to *structural* issues -- so long as you are dealing with people who are appropriately trained to recognize issues of structure. What holds a house up.

And there are both aesthetic and structural issues in stories. Aesthetic problems often stem from structural ones, but you shouldn't mistake one for the other. If you don't have sufficient load bearing support to hold up your floor, that's not just "somebody's opinion."

It means your house is going to fall down.

It's important to understand that, first -- there are such legitimate and objective concerns that can be advanced in respect to stories and second, while everybody's got an "opinion" -- not everybody is an engineer. Not everybody is trained to give that kind of advice.

Also, what you're saying isn't true at all. It is extremely common for plays to go "into previews" which means that they are essentially taking an unfinished play and putting in front of an audience so that they can see how it plays -- where it's slow, what's working, what isn't.

This is a process that always involves the playwright and it is very common for plays to undergo major changes as a result of what playwrights learn when they see their work (which has often already undergone significant changes *in rehearsal* simply as a result of seeing the play performed on a stage) performed in front of an actual audience.

It's only then that it ceases to be an abstraction -- you stop dealing with how you *think* an audience is going to respond to a particular line or a particular scene and start dealing with how they are really going to respond.

Then you know. The scene works. It doesn't work. It drags. It doesn't drag. They understand what you're getting at. They don't.

So that process of putting work in front of an audience and getting a reaction -- in order to get precisely the kind of reactions that you speak about -- if everybody is laughing here, you know you got it right. If everbody's looking at their watches their -- you know you got it wrong and the scene still needs work.

That is, they're not asking the audience to fix it. They are simply asking the audience to be an audience. It's their job to do the fixing.

NMS

My 2 cents:
I'm also a musician, and dreamed of being a illustrator / animator but just sucked at it. So I am a little miffed at the suggestion that creative people with these primary skills don't get critiqued and have to adjust our style to survive as professionals. Hell yes, we do.
Anyway, if you have a director's reel or some kind of shorts portfolio, that's great. You get better access if you work as a director or editor or something at that level, especially if you have a script you feel only you can direct. Studios give preference to writers who have some other job in the business - cashier / scriptwriter not so much.
I have scripts like that too, more European if you will - but I'm not querying prodcos with those. Not at my level of career (being, I don't have one). I'm going to push out the commercial catchy stuff that will get me a calling card for a big studio...or maybe an actual film made with a small one. That is just the way it is.

I will say this about criticism. No, it's not all just a matter of personal taste. Some things, as NMS said, are not things of personal tastes. They are structural problems and structural problems are always set up unknowingly by the writer themselves.

You also have to know exactly what type of screenplay or film you are interested in writing and keep that in mind when you are accepting criticism.

Give your screenplay to people who are untutored. When they have finished reading it, ask them questions about it. NEVER start explaining and interrupting them or try to change their minds or alter their opinions as they are talking because you will never get to the heart of their true repsonse. But, if you do this, you will very quickly pick up what they are keying into and what doesn't come across at all for them. ANd if it doesn't come across, then you have to look at what you have done and wonder why.

Ask them what did they get out of it.

The assumption that actors know anything about story is a faulty one. Believe me, often a room full of actors will give you the worst advice you can possibly hope to get. They'll lead you in all sorts of directions that have nothing to do with the script you are trying to write. Often, it will be loaded with personal political beliefs or view of what interests them. Repsonses like, "I'd like to see more of the dog" even though the dog is not part of the story isn't uncommon.

Know that sometimes people will make suggestions (especially actors) that are fine, except that it is really part of another story. An untutored response is better than a half-tutored response.

Finally, eventually, what you need to find is someone who knows and understands script. And someone in whose taste you trust. Because they will be able to take that untutored response and make some sense of it.

What no one has mentioned here is there are loads of examples of the collaborative process destroying a perfectly good script.

But you must have feedback. Make sure you're not a crazy person stuck alone in a room.

Sometimes you can go all the way out on a limb to find out you're the only one there.

ricetalks said:

What no one has mentioned here is there are loads of examples of the collaborative process destroying a perfectly good script.

But you must have feedback. Make sure you're not a crazy person stuck alone in a room.

Sometimes you can go all the way out on a limb to find out you're the only one there.

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There's no question but that that's true. But it's also true that the collaborative process has yielded wonderful work that wouldn't have been as good but for the creators being open to that process.

Things like Casablanca represent the collaborative efforts of several different writers who brought different strengths to the end result.

Something like Jaws, likewise, was based on the contributions of many different writers, some credited, some not, under the guidance of a director -- but the end result was obviously strongly collaborative. It's not only one guy.

What is important is that there be a single guiding vision. One person's idea of what the final result ought to be, shaping what and where the final project will go.

Projects are ruined when different voices pull in different directions. And they can also be ruined when one voice is so powerful, but insecure, that that person refuses to listen to any other voice.

NMS

Agreed, agreed, agreed all round. You have to take a step back. Know what you want and also know you probably haven't done the job you think you've done.

Definately collaboration can work and a good collaboration will work well. But it is not the be all and end all and any and all collaborations are not always good. You've got to be open to what you hear. Know what it is you want to have accomplished but don't trust yourself. Don't trust that you have accomplished it. Because if nobody understands it, you haven't accomplished it.

Not everybody can be wrong all the time; everytime.

These things might be contradictory, and they are, but you have to hoold both and know how to reconcile them. That is my advice on taking criticism from a wide range of what will often be diverging opinions. Look for what is common. Look for the criticisms that ring true. Listen to the possibilities.

My critique group met last night and went over some of my writing.

Yes, there were plenty of 'opinion' type comments (No, I'm NOT going to change the title because you think another one is cooler) but there were also two major problems people spotted, as well as three other issues. Easily fixable (thank goodness!) but still things that will really improve the script when I change them.

Without the group's feedback I probably wouldn't have spotted them. And even the 'opinion' style comments were very helpful.

And now I can fix the script before I show to others .. so people outside of my critique group will be under the illusion that I'm a better writer than I really am !

Good luck,

Mac
(... and maybe that title change isn't as bad as I thought ?)