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How (Not) to Critique Another Writer’s (Fiction) Work As a Writer

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cool-cartoon-9173506

I have a writer’s group. It’s not my group per se, but when a fellow blogger started a meetup group I couldn’t resist. It’s not strictly a critique group, though. It’s more a safe and fun place to talk about all things writing.

I’ve been to two meetings and have made some good friends and potential future collaborators.

At our previous meeting, they decided I might as well share the first couple of pages of a feature screenplay. I was psyched because there were a few points I’d like different opinions on. So I gave my elevator pitch and talked about my first 2 scenes, but I couldn’t get any further than that.

A fellow screenwriter didn’t like (or more like didn’t approve of) the transition between two scenes. He was adamant it had to be more obvious than what I had presented. I was adamant the transition was obvious enough.

We didn’t argue, mind you. It was a friendly, polite yet stubborn discussion. It looked like I wasn’t receptive to the feedback. And I wasn’t. Here’ why:

He kept saying “You have to….”.

I didn’t have to do anything. I’d thought about his suggestion before, and I had decided against it. I still was partially considering a similar approach, but I kept saying no.

I really couldn’t see the value of his advice objectively, because when you start any of your feedback sentences with “you have to”, chances are you won’t persuade anyone, unless you’re a studio executive holding my contract, and what you’re suggesting is highly radical and unacceptable.

So in the spirit of giving and receiving feedback more effectively, here are a few sincere pointers from this writer:

  • Keep in mind it’s *all subjective. (More details are below.)
  • Don’t start your suggestions with “you have to”, no matter.

* There are few things in writing that’s set in stone. For instance, whether it’s a novel or a screenplay, there’s certain formatting rules you need to abide by. So if your writer friend or mentee has the formatting wrong, by all means, tell him what he has to do. But any artistic choice that has nothing to do with formatting or expected length (don’t turn over a screenplay that is 300 pages) is just that: a choice.

  • Keep it friendly and polite, and even if you hate it.

“That sucks” is not constructive, and not the slightest bit creative. Where’s the writer in you?

*

I’m not saying you have to lie or sugarcoat. But if you’re giving feedback, I’m guessing you care. So why not try to make it work?

So try these instead:

“These parts don’t work for me because….”

“I don’t like these because ………….”

You can even say you hate it, but many scripts have their redeemable/positive points, so pair the hate with the positive.

I’m not saying you can’t ever be brutal, but honestly, unless you’re given permission to be so (and possibly even then), it won’t really have the effect you’re aiming for.

This advice isn’t about being nice or cute. It’s about making sure you don’t waste your time, breath and effort.

What do you think? Is it just me, or do you also not welcome advice with open arms that start with “you have to….”?

Fiction Twists and Cliches You Need to Stop Using in Your Scripts

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Image via Flickr user Tom Newby.
Image via Flickr user Tom Newby.

(Warning: There’ll be spoilers about Fight Club, Identity, The Sixth Sense, The Others, Passengers and Dawson’s Creek.)

Bang2Write’s Lucy V Hay posts a lot of helpful tips on what will kill your screenplay dead so I thought I’d share my pet peeves when it comes to twists and clichés that either kill or at least severely damage your screenplay.

While I’m not a professional script reader, I’m a screenwriter who watches a lot of movies and reads many scripts. And I’m tired of seeing these in what feels like every 4-5 movies in that genre. Also, TV writers can’t seem to get enough of these twists and clichés either so I’ll include examples from series as well.

Mind you, these weren’t necessarily bad when we first saw them or saw them for the second or even third time. But when we kept seeing them for season after season (in the same show), or TV show after TV show, or movie after movie…Well, it got old.

But hey, new angles are appreciated, so if you have found a way to differentiate, go ahead. Just don’t do the same old, same old – especially if you’re not already a huge writer who can get away with this.

So enjoy, and beware!

– Bipolars and other mental condition sufferers going off meds/never wanting meds.

I’m speaking as someone who has tried and benefited from therapy. Not only claiming all meds are harmful and/or useless is irrational, showing all characters with this attitude is just boring and unimaginative.

Who do I remember from film that goes off meds and off the rails?

– Mad Love starring Drew Barrymore and Chris O’Donnell.

This is a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine, but it could have been less cheesy, had Barrymore’s character not decided to go on a road trip without her meds or access to therapy.

– Mr. Jones starring Richard Gere and Lena Olin

Love saves Jones one way or the other, but he ends up in therapy too.
Because love can’t conquer all if you don’t put in the effort to feel better.

I love Richard Gere and Lena Olin. I ‘m also invested in watching stories with mentally disturbed characters. But mental disorders don’t and shouldn’t equal constant irrationality.

When it’s bipolar you’re talking about, yes, the manias can be enjoyable, especially if you don’t go overboard (like breaking the law to savor the moment to the fullest). But a 40+ something dude who’s been suffering from the disorder half of his life KNOWS how dangerous and life-threatening (his own) the depression part of the equation is. So….

Yes, it has its romantic moments, but really? A 17-year-old bipolar having doubts about meds and therapists, I can get around. A 47-year-old? Not so much.

– Intelligent people skeptical of psychiatrists, even though they are psychiatrists themselves : Perception, Daniel Pierce

What are the words I’m looking for? Oh yes: ironic and hypocritical. Now, Perception is actually one of my favorite shows. I like almost everything about it, except how Daniel Pierce handles his own condition, schizophrenia.

I’m not an expert when it comes to schizophrenia, but I do have personal experience with bipolar, depression and OCD. These are all serious conditions with a lot of medicinal alternatives. And since these are chemical imbalances in the brain and life in general are never fully under your control, routine alone won’t guarantee a healthy, happy life. And the writer knows this because the character is a freaking, world-renowned psychiatrist who doesn’t like medicating himself.

What the actual hell?

– OCD sufferers that have cleaning/counting/ordering compulsions and hardly any obsessions

Let me in on a little secret about OCD. Not all sufferers have compulsions (that can be detected by the outsider). Some even have pure obsessions, meaning it’s all their heads. They’re not necessarily organized and/or obsessively clean. Some couldn’t care less about counting stuff or stepping on the sides.

As Good As It Gets is a good movie. Matchstick Men looks fun. Monk was popular enough. But now that we have had our fun, can we move on to different sides of these disorders?

– MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder) or DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) as the big reveal.

Kudos to Fight Club (yes, I know it was a book first) for the twist. But Identity’s ending just pissed me off.

– He was/she was/they were dead all along!

I’m not the biggest fan of The Sixth Sense because I’m more into stories about people who are alive. But I enjoyed the twist so much, anything I didn’t necessarily love about the movie was forgotten.

It was still an okay twist for The Others, because I found it more engaging on many levels. It also has to do with the fact that I watched it in a eerier atmosphere, so the experience felt more chilly and genuine.

But when the mostly enjoyable Passengers, whose plot appealed a lot more to me than the movies above just broke my heart with that ending.

Either make it known they are dead or alive from the beginning, or I’m disappointed from now on.

– My best friend has been the love of my life, and I haven’t seen it until he/she met somebody else, somebody told me, I hooked up with others and realized….

Friends: Rachel and Joey were okay. Monica and Chandler’s hiding was so funny we were fine with them. Rachel and Joey? Just no. What two more seaons, and Phoebe would divorce Mike to marry Joey?

The worst offender: Dawson’s Creek. Boy, did I love that first season. And Andy and Pacey were fun too. But Joey and Pacey? Joey’s constant dilemma between Pacey and Dawson? Pacey’s hooking up with Jennifer? Dawson’s re-hooking with Jennifer? Oh. My. God.

Others:

What About Brian (TV series), Win a Date with Ted Hamilton, Valentine’s Day, The Switch (fun movie apart from the late realization).

There are many others, and you can read my fun take here.

* Coupling gets a pass because there was never a strong male-female friendship in the first place. Sure, Sally and Patrick did eventually become best friends, but they did consider sex/dating beforehand, so they don’t count.

Did I never write about friends hooking up? Sure, I did. But they either didn’t make friends first or they were aware about the cliché of their situation. Also, they weren’t the main story.

Too much Exposition vs. Not Enough: Biggest Screenwriting Challenges

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Exposition reactions: The right vs. not enough or too much. And you don't want to piss off readers...
Exposition reactions: The right vs. not enough or too much. And you don’t want to piss off readers…

 

So you have a written a decent script. You know you have some solid parts, because you’ve been told so by several professional readers, including competition judges. But your script has issues, and some, if not most, of those issues stem from exposition:

  1. You either have too much.

OR

  1. You don’t have enough.

Problem 1: Too much Exposition

You simply reveal too much. You don’t give your reader enough room to interpret and come to their own conclusions. You spoon-feed. You go overboard with description, dialogue, flashbacks… They get bored. They pass on your project or they simply aren’t crazy about it.

This was the problem I was initially facing.

You want to avoid this. But sometimes you work so diligently to avoid unneeded, unwanted exposition that you end up with not enough…

Problem 2: Not Enough Exposition

After many reads by different readers, I thought I had edited my script to perfection, at least exposition-wise. But then some of the notes made me realize: I might have cut too much as these were questioned:

  • Why my characters went to the lengths that they did,
  • Why some characters reacted the way they did.

So you’re not really allowed to let your characters talk directly about their feelings and motivations (also known as on-the-nose dialogue), so you have to include a lot of subtext and show these through action and scenes.

But of course it’s frowned upon to go over 120, even 100 pages unless you are a well-known writer or your script is plain awesome, which you know it, is subjective:

Problem 3: Subjectivity

So how do you know?

1) You compare professional notes. I wrote a guest post on how to evaluate your script evaluations for Lucy V Hay’s Bang2Write.

2) You follow your gut.

*

Finding the right amount of exposition, as well as the right ways to expose, is one though challenge.

If you want to study more about exposition, you might want to start with these articles on Script Magazine or Bang2Write.

You can however find what works by working diligently on your work, as well as studying your favorite screenplays.

How do you feel about exposition? Do let me know in the comments.

 

Complicated Conflicts, (Un)Acceptable Character Reactions and What This Means For Your Screenplay

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The Hunt, Mads Mikkelsen
Mads Mikkelsen’s character in The Hunt. His so-called friendly countrymen did that to him. Image via cynic critics.com.

I love interesting conflicts and dilemmas. So much so, I often pick my favorite movie conflicts and analyze them on this blog:

Look at these conflicts!

You either have to commit suicide, or someone will murder the person you love.

You will either live with the guilt of your friend’s death, or you’ll “live” 6 years in prison. Right. And that is if you trust the authorities who gave such an option in the first place.

You either suppress every single emotion and live, or fight for the right to feel and die trying. Ouch…

The Hunt, though, is probably the most heart-breaking one of them all. Either your young daughter was molested by your best friend or she’s lying and you’re screwing up his life for…nothing. Holy Crap!

It is a great, albeit expectedly depressing movie. This 2012 Danish film is still on the top 250 list on IMDB, and I’m shocked it didn’t get the Oscar for best foreign film. (Mads Mikkelsen’s luck, always the nominee movie, never the bride winner).

LET THERE BE SPOILERS FOR THE HUNT and RETURN TO PARADISE

So what would you do if you were the father? What would you do if you are the friend? Because guess what? She’s lying, and he is innocent.

The whole town turns on him for nothing. They don’t even bring in an actual child psychologist. And this almost drives our protagonist insane. I don’t get that when it’s revealed that he’s innocent, he stays in that small town where some people still don’t believe him.

What the f…?

Seriously. Look, I get that he grew up there. His teenage son is there. But are your friends still your friends after they believed the worst about you? And it’s not like he lives in a third world country. There are many more towns and countries he can go to, find work and make money, while minimizing the homesickness. Yes, he has a son, who could in a few years join his dad wherever.

But that is me. I grew up in a big city. I don’t feel homesick much. I don’t mind living abroad. I tried hard to put myself in his shoes. I still don’t agree with what he decided. I wouldn’t look twice at those people.

And the ending doesn’t quite indicate he made the right choice if you are honest about last scene.

However, while the ending might not be the most believable (to me at least), it creates the biggest impact. The director Thomas Vinterberg is also the co-writer, so that presents an advantage. He could shoot the movie the way he wanted.

What does this mean about your screenplay’s conflicts and characters’ reactions?

In my drama feature, I have a story conflict that’s hard to sell. In other words, one of the main character’s actions is extreme, though in line with what he’s going through, and what he has experienced.

And not only are some readers having trouble with the conflict (despite enjoying the premise), they are not particularly fond of how a certain character handles the conflict, which puzzles me.

Because if I were that character, I’d do exactly that.

When I ask people around me what they would in that situation, they choose my character’s way.

So how come some readers aren’t into it?

Well, for one, our personalities and outlooks on life determine a certain percentage of how we react to movies (and screenplays). Remember, a couple of years after seeing The Hunt, I’m still singing the “I would so get out of there!” tune.

Whenever a character takes a cheating spouse back, I’m disappointed until that movie/story ends. Cheaters don’t deserve a second chance in my book, unless the situation is extreme, like the person being cheated on is a complete psychopath or something. You can enjoy my fun cheating-condoning posts on my movie blog.

Some found Death Sentence unrealistic. I tend to love revenge flicks. I cheer for parents who go down the extreme route. Even well-educated, seemingly mild-mannered ones. Because:

  1.  Don’t be afraid, I approve of regular folk taking justice into their own hands only in revenge movies
  2.  I can relate to the pain that will result in losing a loved one. Of course they will go crazy and do drastic things. So while the level of Bacon’s character’s success might not necessarily be the realistic aspect of his movie, his losing it over the not-so-certain outcome of the trial makes sense to me. Yes, Braveheart and The Crow are among my favorite movies. How did you know? 🙂

Anyway…

The point is, we react, judge and interpret differently. I find my character’s action, and the other’s reaction completely in line with their personalities, life experiences.

Would I react the same way if I were in the same situation? Yes. But would I be in the same situation? Not likely. For one, I’m not a musician, and my crow-like voice wouldn’t earn me any fans. So I have my characters, my obsession with the rock music world and my imagination to guide me.

So, we again come back to listening to your gut.

But am I to blame a little? Of course I am. Chances are, I couldn’t reflect the extremity & uniqueness of the situation, as well as I should have.

It feels like mission impossible to balance exposition, good dialog, enough (but not too much) backstory while capturing and holding everyone’s attention in a freaking drama. No matter how engaging I try to make it, it’s still a drama, albeit a glamorous and larger-than-life one at that.

So what do you do?

You work on your craft and draft until the story, the story you know is the right one to tell, shines and eliminates (or minimizes) doubts and let everyone enjoy the ride.

I immensely enjoy the stakes in Return to Paradise. I can honestly say I wouldn’t trust the authorities and go back to save my friend, love or no love. But then again, I wouldn’t do drugs so I wouldn’t be in that situation. That doesn’t stop me from rooting for these characters.

You hear stories about screenwriters who can only sell their 11th script. Then you hear the ones about the first/second or third script they wrote being sold. Who wants to bet there were like 30 drafts of that sold script before it got the greenlight?

Happy rewriting!

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