Archives
Are You Ready To Go?
One thing BANG2WRITE clients often ask me is "When is my script ready to send to agents and producers?"
The answer? I have NO bloody idea.
I'm being serious. If one part of screenwriting is the actual writing and redrafting, then another is having enough ego to say: "This draft is the best I can get it. My characters, my arena, my dialogue, my plotline - all of it is GREAT! So, people out in movie land, look at it! Be overwhelmed! Make it!" Or words to that effect, at least ; )
As new writers, we're incapable of judging when a draft is ready. We'll send out drafts willy nilly, thinking we've put the time and effort in, so it must be okay (and I defy ANY writer to tell me they have not done this at least once!). This is why there are a thousand-plus screenplays on various production company readers' desks with three billion characters in, totally mad holes in the plot, crazy format, lack of arena or on-the-nose dialogue (and that's just for starters! In the last four months I've received no less than THREE scripts at Bang2Write divided into chapters like books! For real!).
In an ideal world of course, putting time and effort in means one should yield good results. However, as any writer knows, one can spend fifty thousand hours on a screenplay and still come up with a load of crap - no one, it seems, is immune to this. Just having a good idea does not neccessarily mean that idea hits the target: throwing a strop about it does not neccessarily mean one doesn't have to go back to page 1 either. Writing time is never wasted. We're all waiting for that big pay-off, whether it's recognition, commission or loadsa money (preferably all three in my book!).
New writers don't appreciate that drafts have to be the best one can get them; producers don't deal in potential, they deal with what is physically on the page. I feel I can say this, since when I graduated in 2003 I sent Near To Darkness in a previous draft to just about every literary agent and independent production company I could find on the 'net (get this, four producers since have even remembered me for it when I met with them for something else! Some might say this was a good thing and maybe I could take solace if it hadn't been for one producer at one meeting saying, "Oh yeah, you're the smashed piano girl, right? That bloody script was a real downer." He then proceeded to call me Holly Hunter through the rest of the meeting. I didn't get the call-back either.)
New writers need someone to help them understand when a script is ready then, sure, but I don't think it gets much easier as one gets more experienced. I have only limited success as a screenwriter in my own right (only a short film I was commissioned on by Studio Schoque last year, The Design, was entirely my idea script-wise...I'm otherwise what my husband calls a "Literary ho" in that I write anything for anyone, whether it's CD-Roms, games or most recently, a short film for one producer about the less-than-uplifting subject of BPD!). However, I'm obviously a dedicated spec writer in that I spend god-knows-how-many hours a week in-between reading on my portfolio of horrors, dramas, supernatural-thrillers... Even a romantic comedy sneaked in under the wire this year! I also believe that "practice makes (sort of) perfect" and that I'm a much better writer than I was last year, the year before and definitely more than in 2003.
Yet do I always get it right when I think my stuff is ready to go? Let's look at the evidence. This came just this morning from the BBC Writers' Room:
"This is a professionally written piece which benefits from well-paced dialogue and an intriguing central concept."
Well, thanks very much! So far, so good...However, all is lost in just the second line:
"The author has created a complex mixed-genre narrative which is essentially composed of two plots."
And there we have it, Ladies and Gentleman. A King Lear draft, exposed by The Beeb of all people. Argh.
Of course, I'm not too gutted since I had already identified this problem literally within weeks of posting the damn thing. I've even written a further three drafts in the four months it's taken for my report to arrive! That's it you see... New writers might be surprised when their rejection letters come, but those who've had more than a few rejections already read readers' reports and say, "Damn it. They're right. I wouldn't have taken my script either!"
So...Which is worse?!
bang2write at 14:11:00 o'clock BST Blog about this entry |
Add to del.icio.us | 
digg this
-
Killing babies eh...Careful of that analogy Dom, emotional pregnant woman alert!! ; )
You're quite right though. I often ask writers why a particular scene is present in a script and a fave answer is "I love the tension/dialogue/characters!" Maybe it is a good scene. However, if it takes it away from the story you want to tell, as you say, it's taking you away from that elusive "bull's eye". Just recently JK demanded I give up on my Uriel character in Divine Rites and merge him with another. My heart sank, as I love Uriel, but knew he was right. Now I have a character who is literally 4000 times better. -
I'm in the middle of a major rewrite of EP1 of WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD. It's 90 pages and I want it down to 60 so I've been hacking away at it. It's surprising how much stuff I'd written that wasn't relevent to the story I wanted to tell. The stuff I had written was good but it just didn't fit into this episode. It wandered too much and watered down the tension. I've managed to cut nearly 12 pages so far.
It's proved to me how easy it is to get carried away when writing and that a clear head is needed while redrafting. I'm now not afraid to "kill my babies" and it's amazing how much more focused a script can become if you're ruthless during the redraft. -
Thanks OP, always appreciated! It's the one I entered for Open Eye. I pitched it as "The Waltons gone wrong with salami."
Ah yes - the fine line. I don't understand why so many writers seem to WANT to sabotage themselves. I had a boyfriend once who not only killed off all his contacts, he actually killed off a lot of mine just due to my association with him. (I then of course killed him and buried him in the garden). Seriously though, it followed me around like a bad smell for quite a while (the association, not the odour of his putrefying flesh). -
I think that's what I meant about that fine line. If you send your work out you have to be prepared for criticism, and I think those writers who who are so over-protective of "their baby" aren't ready to learn from that criticism. Of course, sometimes feedback can be blunt and unprofessional, and in that case I can understand it is upsetting. But I think most script readers try to be supportive of the writer's efforts, so yes, it is frustrating when the feedback is not accepted in the spirit in which it is intended.
Will keep my fingers crossed for you for the outstanding Beeb script :-)
13/04/06 01:35