I finally managed to get a printout of my 1st Draft of "Unit X", I haven't touched it for about 6 weeks and went through it with the red pen on the train yesterday.
Actually it was better than I remembered. Even a section I wrote when I was feeling completely rubbish was pretty good.
Which was nice.
So I made the changes that I marked down, started on the train, and finished that up this evening.
In fact I was happy enough to send it off for comment to Philip Shelley, and also to my newly acquired US Army advisor in the States. My advisor will read it and tell me if anything stands out as being intrinsically wrong. Finding him was a doddle. If you need an expert just go to Yahoo!Answers, and look for someone who regularly answers questions on the subject you want, then e-mail them.
Do you subscribe to InkTip? If you have finished work of decent quality then you should consider it. Just getting the free newsletter is fascinating, it gives you a feel for what's wanted (at least, in the US) and there are so many opportunities.
I just got a personal e-mail from them, I've been joined for a year, asking if there was any reason I hadn't put a script up on their site. I explained that I was unsure because most of their stuff is feature or Movie of the Week, and I'm in the UK. But I got a nice e-mail back explaining how they have the different categories including various ones for TV, plus people from all over the world etc.
I know - they want me to give them money. But that's fair enough, InkTip is a highly reputable site for producers and directors to find writers, they provide the service and if we want to use it then we should pay for it. In fact they are so reputable that if someone breaks their rules (like claiming they have a finished script when they don't) they get kicked off so fast they won't see it coming.
Funnily enough I had been contemplating putting something up on InkTip so the e-mail was very timely. Perhaps fate is telling me this is the time[1].
What's on the turntable? "You Take My Breath Away" by Queen from "A Day At The Races"
[1] I don't believe in fate, but nor do I believe in coincidences. I do believe we make our own luck.
5 comments:
very cool. congrats on the progress...
The mighty red pen!
Funny, I often have the same feeling of hatred until I take a break and look at something and think "huh thats not actually as bad as I thought"
Not on Inktip yet...I must remember to check out these things.
Charles
Whoa there boy ... did I say "hate"? I never hate my work - ever. I just usually love it a bit more than I loved Unit X, it was quite hard to write.
I'm expecting lots of notes.
How rude of me.
I really must watch my language sometimes...Apologies.
Thinking about it I never hate my work either it is more a...low expectancy which is usually proven wrong when someone reads it.
How was it hard to write? I am having problems with characters at the moment. A recurring theme in my adventures!
Charles
It was hard because I didn't have the characters firmly established - and that was because I was writing something fundamentally US-based, and I'm British. Massive culture gap - much bigger than most people imagine.
First time through I couldn't hear the characters talking which made the dialogue awkward in places. It got easier.
I don't obsess about character, I do the minimum groundwork (a rough idea of character basically) and let them develop as I write.
Toby Whithouse (Being Human) is someone who writes pages on character before starting - but I suspect that's mainly due to his actor training.
But everyone is different.
"Writing is rewriting" so who cares if the character changes as you're writing? You can fix it in the next draft because you'll know the dialogue needs to be altered slightly.
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