This is beautiful.
I think similar thoughts every time I hear a political ‘debate.’
Not enough Wilson. 
While we’re on the topic, I’d like to see more of Margene on Big Love. And I do mean “more of.”
There doesn’t seem to be, though. Everyone seems to have liked it.
Was that the original challenge? What exactly do you mean by “professional quality”? Formatted correctly? Entertaining? Better than 'Til Death? No typos? I’m not sure that the real challenge was to be perfect on the technical points. The challenge was to write a script as good as the ones on TV. Some people think he did, some don’t. Invariably, the people who don’t are saying that they, as professionals, don’t think it was up to par. The people who actually watch TV say it was.
What exactly are the people who liked the script supposed to be embarrassed about? Liking it, thinking it’s as good as some of the crap on TV right now? I’m not embarrassed, sorry. If I thought it was bad, I would have said so, too.
I think he pissed a pretty decent first draft of a script without any of the resources and support that a professional writer of House would have. Don’t you think, if he were in a professional setting, with access to all the help and advantages that entails, that he would have been professional quality? If not, why not? In what way is it so lacking? You are unwilling to acknowledge that he, in fact, had to do MORE than the average House writer-- he had to do ALL the medical research, he didn’t have the creators to bounce ideas off and guide him. Taking that into account, I don’t see what more you could have expected.
That this is your opinion is not surprising. In fact, it’s kind of boring. And it’s also not surprising that I disagree. You can say it all you want, but that doesn’t make it so, and it doesn’t make me agree with you.
I think that House is a mediocre show with boring and formulaic writing. I watched seven or eight episodes a couple years ago at the urging of a friend whose taste I normally like. I didn’t watch it again until last night. I wanted to see it so that it would be fresh in my mind when I read Dio’s script. My opinion of the show remains unchanged.
I don’t know a thing about professional TV scripts and I have no doubt that the Dio’s script is full of technical errors. That said, this was an OUTSTANDING effort. This was every bit as good as a typical House story and even had some SDMB inside jokes thrown in for good measure. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
Again, great job. I thought that you’d do well but this exceeded my expectations. You should be very, very proud.
Congratulations on finishing!
It was entertaining, but as storyteller mentioned, the characterization was off. Every creature, real or not, has a certain voice, and the characters in this script weren’t written correctly. You probably had Foreman the closest, but he was hardly in it.
Medical issues aren’t worth quibbling about, the show itself is so riddled with them as to make it ridiculous.
I’ll let others take on the actual construction of the script.
But, again, I suspect you are a good writer, but you’d do better with your own characters.
-Lil
He was full of bluster and he delivered the goods, which I think is ace.
That thread is quite an entertaining reread! Since you brought it up, can you please point me where Diogenes used the words “production quality script” like you claim (post #122)? Honest question, maybe I missed it.
I did not make the claim that writing good TV scripts is child’s play. It’s a job like any other, with some good and bad points. I also didn’t comment the writer’s strike.
We’re not going to convince each other. The time frame is a non-issue to me. This was done on his spare time, while learning the format and researching the medical jargon. Two weeks is more than reasonable. There’s good interference and there’s bad interference. Which is why I think the script should be judged on its own merits. And everybody in most walks of life has to own up to a suit, writers aren’t special in that regard. I accept the wordiness criticism on faith, but is that really going to trip a talented (or even mediocre) writer?
Yeah and cricetus at least had the good grace to concede that Diogenes met the challenge. So?
Good enough to be worthy of committing to film, such that if it were submitted to the actual production team behind House, it would - with the same amount of amendment as a standard script submitted and no more - serve as adequate.
False dichotomy. I will bet you a jillion dollars that every person in this thread who is a professional is also a person who actually watches TV. Also - the fact that you’re so certain that it would work on screen - in defiance of the opinion of the people who get paid to do it - tells me that you’re an inadequate judge. Look, the fact that it reads well to you does not mean that it will play well on screen. Performed by actors, it would be long, wordy, excessively expository, and written in a single voice.
I don’t.
No.
Do you actually care about my opinion? I ask because in a few lines you will dismiss it out of hand. Why bother asking if you’re going handwave away any criticism? I do not consider it to be of professional quality because:
(1) It is heavy-handed with exposition, laying out facts about plot and character in a clumsy fashion that, when delivered by an actor, would feel awkward to the viewer.
(2) The dialogue is excessively wordy, and roundabout, for speaking by an actor. Some of it reads fine on the page as prose - as dialogue in a novel much of it would be OK - but as dialogue to be said aloud it is stilted and un-natural. There is a difference between writing dialogue in prose and dialogue for performance.
(3) The characters, as I said before, do not sound like the characters that David Shore created. You have dismissed this opinion as “boring,” which is incredibly obnoxious and arrogant, but that makes it no less true.
What the hell does any of this even mean? “That this is [my] opinion is not surprising?” It is astonishing that you so effectively blend arrogance with ignorance in just a few sentences, but hey, kudos to you for managing it.
Do amateur writers ever submit scripts and get them produced by the House team? I doubt it. Those scripts are produced in an environment that helps their quality a LOT. Dio did not have access to those advantages. If you correct for that, I think his script is pretty damn good.
Can someone please repost what the exact nature of the challenge was? I think if we could agree on that, the argument would be largely resolved.
I’m arrogant? I’M arrogant, when you say that, simply because I disagree with you, I am ipso facto an inadequate judge? You are the expert, therefore if you say it’s no good, therefore it is true, and anyone who disagrees with you is wrong by definition? Wow. Look in the fucking mirror before you call someone else arrogant.
Look, the fact that it doesn’t read well to you does not mean that it’s not good. You are not the ultimate and only judge of these matters. Other people’s opinions are also valid. I know, it’s hard to accept that other opinions do exist and count for something, but there it is.
You answer me, knowing I am not going to agree with you, because you enjoy expounding upon your own rightness and superiority.
What’s boring is how predictably self-righteous you are and how condescendingly dismissive you are of Dio’s efforts. I don’t agree with you means I’m obnoxious and arrogant? But when you disagree with me, you’re right and I’m ignorant? Really? Give me a fucking break. I’ve seen every single episode of House, so I think my opinion does count for something here. You don’t agree because I don’t have the credentials that are required in your world to have an opinion that differs from yours. It is to laugh, buddy.
Oh, pot, kettle.
I made a challenge with very clear expectations laid out in the OP. I consider that challenge met and surpassed. I don’t think the nuh huh/is so dialogue is likely to heighten or lessen anyone’s appreciation of his effort, so I wouldn’t mind if the topic was, er, closed. So to speak. Cough.
I could piss a better script than this.
I kid, I kid. I’ve never watched an episode of House, but:
It was an entertaining read and a well-written script. Wordier than what you’d want on TV, yes, but not horribly wordy. (The comment that the characters have the same voice is well taken.) The jokes were pretty good and the in-jokes were very amusing. The digs at the writers were funny, and the script seemed to get better as it moved out of the scene-setting and into the medical procedural part of the story. The twists were really pretty good. I’m impressed that Dio lived up to his end of this thing, but I’m also impressed that he managed to work all of his vehement religious and political views into a medical drama. I didn’t see that coming.
Ruby, before I do the point by point thing, a serious question: has it ever occurred to you that anyone, ever, might know more about literally anything that you do? Because the breadth of subjects on which you claim expertise is astounding.
And I don’t. And what you’re refusing to address is that the people who’ve posted opinions closer to mine than to yours - ie, relatively critical opinions - have been reasonably nice about it, within the limits of how nice it’s possible to be when submitting criticism. You, on the other hand, blasted the living fuck out of Pochacco for having the temerity to do something other than tell Diogenes how wonderful his script is.
Three things:
(1) I make no pretense at being an expert in television writing; it is not my field. I am a professional writer. I know more about writing - and about the evaluation of writing - than you do. I promise you that. You don’t have to believe me, of course, but the fact that you don’t and won’t is the whole point, more precisely:
(2) It is not the fact that you disagree with me that brands you an inadequate judge. It is the fact that you can brook no disagreement with your opinion, and have no ability to incorporate the knowledge of those with experience in the field in question. An adequate judge would consider experienced and trained opinions, give them weight, use them to add nuance and color to the opinions they already have. You read a line of Dio’s dialogue and say, “I think that’s great,” and someone else - someone who evaluates scripts for a living (once again, I’m referring to others in this thread) - comes in and says that X, Y, and Z are problematic, and your response is to stick your fingers in your ears and attack him for daring to speak. Thus does your arrogance make you an inadequate critic, because a decent critic is capable of learning from others; you’re too certain that you know more about everyfuckingthing than everyone else in the world to be in any danger of learning from anyone.
Of course. And we could have had an interesting discussion about the variance in opinion on the subject. That sort of thing is why the arts can be fun. Intelligent discussion of the script might have been beneficial to everyone, because there are a lot of useful perspectives represented in this thread. I have no problem with the variance of opinion. But when Pochacco came in here and offered an opinion in opposition to yours, you got nasty and tried to shut down the discussion (“give it a fucking rest, Pochacco”). So I guess other people’s opinions are valid, as long as they agree with yours, right?
I answer you because you fucking asked, you ridiculous person. And because I enjoy talking about writing. But mostly because you fucking asked.
So is there room to disagree with you that it’s professional quality work without being characterized as such? Because it seems the sum total of the evidence you have to suggest that I’ve been condescending or dismissive is that: (1) I don’t think it’s a professional-quality script.
Yeah, that’s about it. I don’t.
You are ignorant, Ruby, primarily because you have no understanding of the things you do not know. In this thread and its predecessor, I learned a bunch of things about writing in a variety of media from people who know more about it than I do. I use those things, which I glean from other people, to supplement my own experience and training in developing an opinion.
You do not do this, because you can’t learn from anyone else, because you are fairly sure that whatever the subject, you already know everything there is to know about it.
The only credential required to participate in a decent literary criticism debate in “my world” (whatever the fuck that means - again, where do you even get this shit?) is the possession of genuine intellectual curiosity - the recognition that there are things you don’t know, and benefit to be had from interaction with others. You have no intellectual curiosity, and so literary conversation - any conversation - is lost on you, because you’re not actually interested in listening to anyone’s opinions unless they’re identical to your own.
Please put the strawman away. I never claimed that Diogenes used those exact words. You know that full well, so why do you insist on belaboring this point?
What Diogenes claimed is that TV writing is an easy task, and that he could write such a script despite a complete lack of experience. Such a claim makes no sense unless the script can pass muster – in other words, it must be of production quality. Heck, he went far beyond that claim; he went so far as to assert that he could piss such a script out.
Whether he specifically used the phrase “production quality script” is simply irrelevant.
Actually - if anyone is interested in talking about this seriously - I think part of the problem with Diogenes’ script (a fairly fixable part, actually), is that it’s trying to shoehorn in a bit too much. The inclusion of so many attempted themes and approaches works if you’re reading it as prose, but maybe not as well if you’re trying to do it in a 42-minute dramatic presentation… it makes the whole thing seem a little scattershot. Does that make any sense?
I don’t think its quite fair of us to use Diogenes’ script as a vehicle for exploring more general narrative issues unless he’s interested in being part of that discussion. However, I wouldn’t mind continuing the conversation if we stuck to general principles rather than the specifics of his effort.
I, for one, wouldn’t mind hearing more from **Elenfair ** about the architectural constraints of television writing. As I said far, far upthread, my primary experience is in writing for videogames which present their own particular challenges. For example we don’t have to worry about hitting arbitrary time limits for the duration of each cutscene, but we do have to contend with arbitrarily long gaps between each narrative chunk.
Really? What subjects have I claimed expertise on? I’d like cites on your personal attack here. Go ahead.
I do evaluate writing professionally. Right now, it’s the writing of 7th graders, which may well have lowered my standards… but I’ve edited professionally too. Not for TV, and I never claimed that kind of expertise. The only expertise I have claimed in this conversation is that of a reasonably intelligent, literate person who has seen every episode of House in the last year.
Pochacco offered a 26 point criticism. Do you think that was really necessary? It seemed excessive, condescending, and ludicrous to me. He could have offered his opinion without being so, to use your term, wordy. I think his criticism needed to be tightened, tightened tightened.
Sure you do. You have. It is from this lofty place that you dismiss Dio’s efforts.
You do? What are your qualifications?
What you fail to realize is that many of the people who are trying to deride Dio’s efforts have a stake in his failure-- that of their own egos. I don’t think they can be objective. Which is not to say his script is perfect. It’s obviously got a lot of little 
s at the SDMB and his own politics. That wouldn’t be OK in a script that was going on TV. But that wasn’t the challenge, either. cricetus acknowledges that what Dio produced was more than adequate to the standards of the challenge as set out in this thread’s OP. I’m not sure what the purpose of a 26 point critique is other that masturbatory derision.
I disagree. An adequate judge would trust her own judgment and not appeal to so-called “experts” with egos to protect and axes to grind. Like I said, I acknowledge flaws in Dio’s script, but the amount of slack I am willing to cut him is in proportion to how important this challenge really is to me, Dio, and the rest of the world, which is to say, not much. I don’t have any stake in this but giving someone a fair shake. You and others seem to have an agenda beyond the parameters of this challenge. If you had any perspective on this, you’d see that.
Come on, man, that’s not an opinion, that’s a screed and it’s a ludicrous, pompous attempt to take a crap on someone’s legitimate offering. If criticism were offered in proportion to the import and purpose of the effort, that would be fine. It wasn’t, IMO. Thus, it’s not the spirit of the criticism but the nature of it that I object to.
No, really, it’s that no one who thinks it’s a superlative response to the challenge given is an adequate judge of it. Only people who think it isn’t are qualified to offer an opinion. That’s what you said.
More self-righteousness from you. Boring. I’m not ignorant-- I reread the OP to see if Dio met the challenge. He did, damn well. Anything beyond that is you needing to crap on him to prop up your feeling of superiority. Give him some constructive criticism, sure. Ripping him to shreds? Not warranted or deserved. That’s my opinion, and I don’t see where there’s room for you to call me ignorant for holding it.
I can’t learn from anyone else? That’s a completely idiotic thing to say to me. I hope you realize that you’re being totally an ad hominem asshole right there.
I have no intellectual curiosity? Where do you get this shit? You get to condemn me as a person, totally deny that I learn anything from other people and am completely devoid of intellectual curiosity because I defended Dio’s script? Do you feel good about that being the basis of your dismissal of me? You don’t even know me. Again, taking a crap on someone in order to feel better about yourself. What a lame way to make a point in a debate.
After these attacks, my feeling is that you are not worthy of having an intellectual debate because you have to devalue your opponent’s worth as a thinking being rather than disagreeing with their actual points. Seriously, you are not as smart as you think you are, and you have not shown yourself to be capable of an intellectual debate in this thread without resorting to immature name-calling. Wow. Just, wow.
Rubystreak is an expert at not being a pretentious asshole!!
The professional critiques don’t bother me too much. I don’t agree with every single point but
I’m open to it. I knew the formatting was screwed but that’s nothing that couldn’t be learned. I was a little surpised to hear that it was too wordy. I was actually worried it might be under time and I padded some of the dialogue in spots. My initial inclination was to be a lot more pithy. Maybe I should have stuck with that but it felt like the scenes were playing too fast when I read them out loud.
Getting the “voices” for soem of the characters was a little difficult since a few of them (like Chase and Cameron) are pretty bland too begin with and don’t serve as much more than expositors and plot advancers even in the real show.
House’s personality isn’t that far away from my own so he was the easiest to write dialogue for. He’s not exactly like me, though. I wouldn’t make the sexual jokes that he makes, for instance, and he’s more anti-religious than I am.
All in all, it was an interesting exercise. Obviously I would have some work to do to get to a professional level but I don’t think it would be absolutely beyond me. It’s not like thinking I could play for the NFL or something.
One thing it did do was help me blow some dust off my writing motor and make me want to get back to working on one of the 7 or 8 novels I’ve started. It does feel good to just get to the end of something.
Actually, I only covered about a quarter of script, so I probably would have hit about a 100 points if I’d kept it up.
The thing is, that’s how it’s done if you’re going to do it professionally. You go over it line by line and flag everything that looks problematic. **Diogenes ** was trying to write a script that was comparable to professional scripts so I judged it by those standards.
I actually felt bad that I didn’t write feedback for the whole thing. **Diogenes ** took many hours to write it and I felt like I wasn’t respecting that effort by bailing after only an hour of critique.
**Jamaika ** recognized what I was doing. I was taking Diogenes’ work seriously. Amateurs get pats on the head and praise for trying. Professionals get run through the wringer. I’ve been through the wringer myself many times. You get used to it.
I’m not sure how seriously it was meant to be taken, and I think you took it TOO seriously. It’s a challenge issued on an internet board. He lived up to it. You don’t think so. Shrug.