Every writer has that one piece of feedback that permanently changes how they see their own work. For me, it was realizing that a scene can be technically "correct" good dialogue, clear stakes, clean formatting and still not work, because nothing in it actually changes. A scene has to end somewhere different from where it started, emotionally or narratively, or it's just occupying space on the page.
Once I started asking "what's different by the end of this scene?" for every scene in a draft, entire subplots I thought were fine suddenly revealed themselves as filler.
Curious what note or realization did that for other writers here the one that changed how you evaluate your own pages, not just how you write them?
1 person likes this
John August has a great blog post called 'How to write a scene" https://johnaugust.com/2007/write-scene
There are 7 questions/ exercises to do for every scene in your script. One of the most important ones, in my opinion is: no.2 What's the worst thing that would happen if this scene was omitted? It really helped me see if each scene has a function in the script or if it just needs to go, even if I like it.
1 person likes this
One idea I find really useful when thinking about feedback is separating the reader's reaction from the solution they suggest.
If someone asks for a new scene or a different ending, I try to understand what made them want that change in the first place.
It seems like a useful way to take the feedback seriously without automatically treating every suggested fix as an instruction.
1 person likes this
That's a great question to ask yourself, @Joseph. Thanks for the idea. I got a note from someone about my action lines. I was so worried about white space that I was making my action lines too short, and the reader was confused about what was going on in the script.
1 person likes this
Love this Joseph Biro . Looking for if my scene "turns" was a big change for me too! Because if it doesn't...then nothing happens...so why is it there? (Usually exposition that can be weaved somewhere else)
I realized at some point that I was describing things in action lines that were already evident to the reader from the dialogue and its context, i.e., I was doubling up and thus slowing the pace of the scene. I had to learn to trust my own writing and the reader more.
That's a really good example, Maurice Vaughan.
In a case like that, the reader's confusion is probably the important signal, while "make the action lines longer" would only be one possible solution.
If a second reader had also been confused by the same section but gave you a completely different reason for it, would that make you more confident there was an underlying problem there even if neither proposed solution felt right?
2 people like this
Your right Mr and in my opinion when you want to work on your script you should always focus on anything that you can use in that script in my opinion when you see a movie or playing video games or you go somewhere you should have a writer vision you can analysis a lot of things and making them to a script I always do this and that was good to me