Monday, October 10, 2011

Good notes

I just got some of the best notes I've ever had. Last week I posted the first draft of my latest, How My Wedding Dress Got This Dirty, to a group of amazing writers, and over the past couple of days I've gotten three sets of notes. And they were great.

Usually when I get notes on a first draft, they're all about a page one rewrite. This time I got notes about how to fix problems in the existing script, positive notes about how the whole things works as a whole but needs some tweaks with character relationships.

So for once, I did it right the first time.

I think moving slowly and rethinking my decisions paid off. Normally I rely on my first instinct for the scene. I see a character behaving a certain way, so that's how I write it. Sure, I'll adjust the scene a bit to make it stronger, but I usually don't consider erasing an entire day's worth of work and starting over. This time I did. If I woke up and realized the last 6 pages were crap, I deleted them outright and wrote a whole new scene.

It probably helps that this is quite possibly the most commercial thing I've ever written.

Anyway, I'm glad. I didn't write anything this past weekend, partly because I was obsessing over my new phone (I finally found out what the fuss over Angry Birds is all about) while watching episodes of Farscape, and partly because I wanted to sit with the notes a while. Usually as soon as I get notes I dive back in, but for this script I wanted to continue the slow, thoughtful method I've been using. Think first, then write.

So far so good.

2 comments:

  1. Congrats on getting good notes!!! I think you are right about working slower. I am the queen of page one rewrites myself....

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  2. So the birds in Angry birds were placeholders while folks making game figured out game mechanics. And the birds made everyone laugh. So they kept them. I gave game on phone to 5 yr old while getting eye checkup, monkey quickly picked up game and loved it. So fun, addictive, and all-ages friendly, they really nailed the game.

    Getting tweak vs substantial change notes, so nice, requires celebration.

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