For many months we all worked together every day, bashing out ideas, storylining, brainstorming, writing, editing, arguing, fighting, stabbing… well you get the picture. The important thing is that we were working as a team.  Then we assigned individual episodes and we went our own way. We all locked down to focus on our own scripts. The expectation was that one of us would rush ahead, speed write and return with a Lord of the Rings style epic, one of us would plough through without proof reading leaving a script that might have been 5 pages longer had all the missed out words been included.  The final one would be slower going, but practically perfect in everyway.

The reality wasn’t too far from this, the first was finished ahead of the others, the second was missing words and the other… well that was taking time, because perfection takes time. So when second drafts were being produced for the first two scripts, a first draft was still in the writing for the third and but then life was getting in the way with the most selfish acts of nature adding an extra burden. What does it matter when the first two scripts are going great with third drafts and rehearsed readings on the horizon?

So episode 3 arrived, and you can read about the issues here. Put basically the main story wasn’t working and although there was no finger pointing at the time, as the episode headed for its first rewrite it was noticed by everyone how quickly it was getting re-written. This script was receiving a 75% rewrite so why something that took months to originally write was now nearly finished in a fortnight was turning heads and causing us to ask, “Why wasn’t it this fast last time?”

The truth is, as we know, the main story didn’t work and writing a story that doesn’t work is nearly impossible. So as the writer fell further and further behind, there was no cry for help because they should be able to fix this problem. Meanwhile the other writers running ahead didn’t look back to see why the fallen soldier was struggling to keep up, maybe that writer is just lazy or procrastinating.

After months of working together on everything we split apart and became selfish about our own work. We didn’t ask each other for help, but then no one asked if we needed help either. Episode 3 arrived after a heavy rewrite and there was no doubt that it was much improved. The new storyline worked a treat, the characters and the action was more active and although it was not practically perfect in every way, the fallen soldier was up and running with comrades either side giving a helping hand to mount the obstacles.

———-

Of course things are not always as simple as they seem and I have left many nuggets out of this story to make it palatable for you readers. I am sure my writers in crime have a slightly different opinion of what took place before, during and after; but they can bite me.

Tags: feedback, help, process, Script, writing, writing partners

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 24th, 2009 at 12:07 pm and is filed under My Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.