Wednesday 17 September 2008

getting feedback from a writing group

Sometimes feedback is so spot on that it's almost funny. Amongst positive responses to the writing style of my short film script, the following elements were picked up: that there was a key scene that was too reminiscent of a particularly striking advert a few years ago (everyone in the group remembered it, and so did I once it had been pointed out - I think they call that unconscious plagiarism) and that the two main characters were written at different levels of character development and complexity and almost belonged to different films. This was really funny once I saw it. What had happened in the frenzy of writing the whole thing straight off was that I had started writing a funny, snappy five minute film, featuring the first character, and then once it became clear to me that the film was more like ten minutes long, I had allowed the second character to steal the show. He was a warmer and more complex character and elicited more audience response.
I got the feedback a while ago and have left the script aside for a while. I came back to it today and, with the help of the detailed feedback, I think I can take it back to a five minute script and work a bit on developing the main character. What a privilege it is to have a group of people giving such astute feedback. It could have taken me ages to notice all the things they picked up.

4 comments:

Finn said...

Top bloggin mum. Keep it up. x

josie said...

Aw, that's sweet. Thanks Finn. Sadly I seem to be pretty intermittent with it at present.

Finn said...

Come on then...

Write about something hugely mundane to get you back in the habit.

julie said...

Hi Josie, have just read your blog for the first time - thanks for the nice mentions of me. The blog is linked to the online course so by week 17 you may be getting all sorts of bloggers responding to you.... Julie