Posts Tagged With: television writing

“Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.”
―Joyce Carol Oates

It is easy for writers, or anyone really, to get their hackles up at the slightest provocation.  But criticism is part of the job description.  You need thick skin.  Like alligator/armadillo/dragon hide.  Because you are going get butt-hurt at some point, whether you’re trying to be cool or not, you will.  It’s part of being creative.  The real test of your professionalism is how you take it.  The most important thing to know is that if you can’t learn to listen to the criticism, not only will you not grow as a writer, you will also never work as a writer.

A bedtime story for you all:

I was contacted a while back to work on a script adaptation of a self-published book.  The author was highly interested (who wouldn’t be?) in having their book adapted, however they felt the book had been written in such a way that there was no real work to be done; one could simply type the book into screenwriting software and voila! a marketable script.  This is not the case. Ever.  Even the best, most highly regarded best seller are adapted, cut, stitched, changed and generally destroyed in order to make a film.  It’s just the nature of the game (more on adaptations later, that’s a post for another time).  However, this author was having none of it.  I could feel the pushback almost immediately and so wanted to make sure he would be okay with the changes before I did substantial work.  I should note, at the time we did not have the book rights.  That is a huge mistake.  Always get the book rights first then you don’t have to go through what I went through.  So I gently suggested minor changes first, building up to the larger ones.  Nope.  He had really thought these characters, scenes, horrible cliché-ridden plot points through and just couldn’t understand why I would change one word.  After months of back and forth, I bowed out.  His book has not found a publisher and probably won’t be a movie any time soon.  Know why?  Of course you do.  He couldn’t take the criticism.

Fast forward.

I’m contacted to do another adaptation.  First draft goes out and comes back with major revisions.  Know what I did?  Of course you do.  I MADE THE REVISIONS.  Because in the end, in this business, you have to adapt.  Stand your ground for the things that matter and let the other stuff roll off your back.  Take the criticism.

Which brings me to feedback.  Inevitably someone will some day ask you to give them feedback on their writing.  You should do it.  It’s great practice and reading more scripts, any scripts, will improve your own writing as you will start to be able to tell when things are working and when they are not.  Even better, you’ll learn to give notes which will someday help you take them too.  But friendly feedback is different from studio notes, therefore you should not tell your writer how to fix things, but rather give them an impression of how different elements feel and leave the fix up to them.  I.e. the dialogue is wrong vs. the beat felt rushed.  See the difference?

In the end, once you slough off that newbie layer of naivety and ego, you’ll be able to tell the worthwhile criticism from the trash.  They are both out there, and believe me when I tell you, EVERY piece of writing could use some improvement.  Though once you realize that, the trick will become knowing when to stop.

But that’s also a post for another time.