Spoken like a professional. And honestly, I don’t expect you to agree with every single point, or even any of it. Many years ago I was in a writers’ workshop and one of our rules was that ultimately your work is your own. You’re completely free to decide that any critique you receive is utter bullshit.
I sympathize. And perhaps the reason I responded so strongly to it was that it’s one of the big sins that I have to guard against. When I read my own writing aloud I tend to speak significantly faster than the actors do. I suspect it’s because since I know where the scene is headed I just let the words tumble out. I’m not taking the time to sell the dialog the way a good actor does.
I agree. You have a good ear, a good sense for plot, and a lot of what you wrote flowed very smoothly. If you started writing regularly I have no doubt that you could do it professionally if you wanted to.
How many of Dio’s errors were formatting and could easy be learned? How many were about pace/wordiness? how many would not have existed if he’d had his team of 3 experts helping him? And how many were attacks on his characterizations, which I think weren’t warranted. I mean, if a newb member of the House writing team producted that script, what would be the reaction, assuming it were formatted correctly? Honestly. I really am curious. Would it take a couple of revisitions to be “professional quality” or is that level of achievement not possible.
Wondering what people think this piece of writing is supposed to be, really-- what is its function? To fulfill a bet? To impress /disappoint professional writers? To entertain his reader adequately? To write something so professional that it could be put into production instantly? To create a reasonable faxsimile of an episode of House for fun and amusement? I think we all want something different. I was entertained. End of story for me,.
OK, so thus far the primary critic of the teleplay normally writes videogames? Colour me unimpressed. If you are going to present yourself as an authority, one would at least presume you would be working in close to the same genre. I have never watched a weekly videogame, nor seen impressive dialogue delivered between two characters in a videogame. As far as I’m concerned, this thread would have been far better served had all videogame writers kept their opinions to themselves, and left the criticisms to the experts, or at least the purported experts in the field in question. Pochacco, I’m very surprised that you would insert yourself into this thread in such a manner when your experience clearly has nothing to do with television.
Ruby, I was all set to respond to your post. I was going to ask for a bit of discussion about whether anyone here was “ripping him to shreds.” And then I re-read your last response to me (the one before the last one), and it finally hit me:
You are the kind of person who asks a question and then mocks the person you asked for being stupid enough to actually answer you. You can’t change that person, and you certainly can’t have an honest conversation with them, but you can stop wasting your time trying.
It does pass muster. That’s obviously a personal judgment call. I don’t need to defer to the authority of accomplished internet authors to see that.
He did what he claimed. It was a gutsy thing to do. If he had written a crap script people would have mocked him relentlessly (I would too).
I would understand if you’d said you didn’t like the script for whatever reason. But no, you’re going to hold out to the notion that he didn’t do it because it’s not an impeccable work of art according to all the experts that were willing him to fail in the first place. Fine, be an idiot. I know sour grapes taste bitter, I can understand why you’d be like that. I don’t believe there’s anyway Dio could have fulfilled your (yes, your) terms.
Rubystreak, it’s amazing to me that you continue to criticize what Pochaco “did” to Diogenes while the two of them seem to have no issue whatsoever with one another. Like mr. jp, I thought Pochaco’s points were interesting and informative, and I didn’t take it as tearing Diogenes down at all. Learning what Pochaco might consider technically wrong with Dio’s script has in no way taken away from the enjoyment I got out of reading it.
Seriously, I’d love to talk character conservation, continuity, wordiness, architecture, acts and the fact that while Dio’s screenplay would be a top-notch fanfiction or a spoof, but not a draft of a production script by any stretch. I’m going to be slaughtered, no matter what I say. And seriously, I’m going on week 6 of a strike. I’m kind of in a foul mood. Getting piled on? Not my idea of fun right now. I already have the AMPTP asking me and my fellow writers to bend over and take it up the ass with a smile and a “thank you, m’lord!”
For those arguing that he had no resources: he had way more time. We usually spit out production worthy and ready scripts in 4-5 days. We don’t have “research departments”. We may have a consultant or two – but these people don’t sit there doing research for us day and night. No, we just have to become pretty well versed in what we do. That’s why medical dramas often suck as far as being “real”. That’s why crime procedurals hire people like me with a background that covers chemistry, forensics, explosives and cultural anthropology (and military goodness of all sorts). I’m practically a one woman research department, and I write. Many of us are LIKE that. Also? Many of us are also playwrights, moms, dads… involved in other things… and we work insane hours. It’s a labor of love.
Anyway, just a few points, I guess. Save the piling on for another day, okay? Okay. Is Dio’s script fun? Yes. Is it funny? Sure. Is it great that he finished it? Damned fucking right it is! Can he write? Yeah! Was this a spec-script for a television show? No. Does it pass muster in that respect? No. Is it on par with what I see from first year screenwriting students who apply for internships at work? No. Why? They have better knowledge of the basics. Does this take away from what Dio did? Hell no! I think what he did took guts and it was pretty cool. What do I do? I’m a television writer.
As it currently stands, if read out loud, you would find that Dio’s teleplay would sound very artificial, especially in the hands of Laurie. He just doesn’t talk that way. The characterization sounds mostly okay on paper but an expert ear will tell you – it doesn’t scan. The formatting also makes it very hard to read. Beats aren’t formatted right, the flow doesn’t follow.
The acts aren’t broken up correctly. As it currently reads, the episode could run about 10 minutes long once all the medical scenes and transitions are put in. The act cuts would help reshape it, but it will throw off all the pacing.
The wordiness is part of the problem. People always assume fast reads, but that does NOT happen both on stage and on film. In fact, assume relatively slow reads AND factor in “time for shit to happen.”
Parentheticals. Bane of the script editor’s existence and biggest newbie mistake. Take the fuckers out. Don’t describe shit. Seriously. That’s shooting script fodder and the director’s job. Describe inflection, sure, and shit like (going up the stairs) or (entering CAFETERIA) but do NOT go into a description of a room or a setting. NOT YOUR JOB. You would get SLAUGHTERED for this. Spec scripts should NEVER contain long parentheticals unless you’re a big-wig writer people know and love. Some newbies have gotten away with it because they were bloody brilliant. Most of the time, if your script has a long one, people toss it right away and won’t read your work. Save 'em for shooting scripts, if you’re asked. NEVER describe character action in parentheticals - it insults directors
I can’t answer for Rubystrek, but I think it’s probably Pochacco’s “bash first, bash second and then slightly mention its a good job” attitude. Plus, I still feel he’s pulling a few of his “notes” out of his ass. Why the hell would House know what Hello Kitty is? There’s also the fact that most people assumed the professional writers would unfairly crap all over Dio’s effort.
Then there’s the fact that he’s not even a TV writer, he’s a video game writer. I love video games, it’s possible I’ve even reviewed some of Pochacco’s games on a site I write for, but nobody respects the storylines in video games. Even the best ones are still considered pretty weak by anyone who plays because of the complications of the industry.
This is not meant to be insulting Pochacco, just merely pointing out that your “commenting from an expert position” might rub some people the wrong way.
A friend of mine, who unfortunately died quite young last year, had been a television writer and producer for about 30 years. Many years ago Grant Shaud, Miles Silverberg from Murphy Brown was in Australia and it was Chris’s job to look after him. They went out drinking most nights and got on famously. Shaud told Chris that if he ever went to Hollywood he would get him a shot at writing a Murphy Brown script.
I was amazed and told him what a great offer it seemed to be and he just laughed. He explained that the writers for Murphy Brown would all be immersed in the MB Universe, they would know who to ask for a food joke or a sex joke, which characters could be made fun of in which ways, how to pace everyone’s dialogue, which current affairs points to hit and on and on. He went to LA and sat in on a week’s script sessions and read throughs and marvelled at the professionalism.
He produced a TV show that I wrote some comedy scripts for (and got paid by a major network). When he asked me if I wanted to try writing for him I said, “I’m sure I can write stuff as good as most of the comedies on TV.”
He replied, “There are already people writing stuff as good as what’s on TV. The idea is to write stuff that is better. If you can’t why bother?”
I’m not a writing professional, but I’ve watched a lot of House. I agree that this sounds like a good effort from someone who’s a writer but not a TV writer. It wouldn’t get accepted to be produced, but it might earn some modest praise from the story editor of the sort, “You have some writing talent. Take a course in TV writing. Watch some more of the show.”
When is this supposed to have happened? People’s situations change in House. This is apparently in the second season. If this were submitted to the program now, they would reply, “Why are you submitting a script for the second season?” I realize that this is probably impossible for Diogenes the Cynic in this challenge, but a real House script has to fit into the development of the characters.
House doesn’t make political comments in the show the way that he does in this script. He doesn’t seem to have any firm political beliefs. He’s an atheist, but he is just as disrepectful to a New Agey-type who claims to have seen the light in a near-death experience as he would be to a fundamentalist. House also doesn’t make internet jokes. He wouldn’t talk about a JILF.
I’m not going to assess whether or not Diogenes ‘won’ the challenge, because A) I’m not qualified and B) I’m not really sure what the exact challenge was.
I will say I enjoyed reading it, and I congratulate Diogenes from taking up the challenge and carrying through with writing the entire script.
There were two aspects that bothered me while I was reading it that I don’t think have been pointed out elsewhere:
Was the medical mystery carried out as, um, complexly as in the usual script? It seems to me that there are generally more wrong diagnoses to be tested and discarded. Like this script had two rounds, and I was expecting three. And I have serious doubts as to whether the daughter could have carried out some of her acts of sabotage. Blood samples, for example, are rarely left out of the supervision of the responsible people in areas where non-employees have access to them, certainly not long enough to not notice someone uncapping and contaminating a sample. The same problem with contaminating the IV drip. (Though I guess medical type quibbles are supposed to be overlooked.)
While, like others here, I very much enjoyed the in-jokes, aren’t they rather a waste of precious script space when looked at in terms of a script to be broadcast? I mean, those jokes are only funny to a small set of people in comarison to an anticipated audience in the millions. If time-wise you can only fit in, oh, seven jokes, but three of them won’t be funny to the vast majority of your audience, well, you’ve cut the humor quotient of your script in half.
I found Pochacco’s list nitpicky and excessive. Some of his points were valid, and some were not, but taken as a totality, it was over the top and smacked of someone who could not be pleased by an amateur effort regardless and was just piling up the negs. I think he could have offered criticisms that were valid and constructive, but when you write out a list that long, and that subjective, it does come off as ripping to shreds. Dio has taken it in good grace, good for him. It just seems mean-spirited to me.
It’s not. Why is it such a big deal to Pochacco that he needs to write a 26 point criticism, which he now says is only 1/4 of what he wanted to say? Doesn’t that seem like the guy who is taking it too seriously? Who is setting himself up as an expert who will show the newb ALL his mistakes (even those which are not, objectively, mistakes)? Do you think would help Diogenes to have read a 100 point explanation of what he did wrong in that script?
A lot of this thread has devolved into “your opinion is wrong, mine is right, therefore you are an idiot with no worth as a human being.” When the conversation gets to that point, I’m not sure it’s worth continuing. I don’t think we agree on the standard to which Diogenes should be held, and without that, there will never be agreement. We also don’t agree on who is an expert or why, how much time he should have had, etc. Because people don’t WANT to agree. Everyone’s got their agenda and most of them are sticking to it. Ah well.
A1) No. This is the architecture problem I was referring to Part of the reason this happened is because the acts are not broken up properly for a 42 minute show and the script doesn’t conform to a standard procedural format as far as story development goes. It may seem like it does, at first glance, but it doesn’t. This is evident to a trained eye but more importantly to a trained ear.
A2) This is why I qualified the script as an excellent spoof, but not an actual screenplay. While this is witty to us, it has no place in the House universe. If I had a fellow screenwriter read this script, not only would he have major issues with characterizations but he would wonder what the characters were going on about and why the audience wasn’t sharing the “in-jokes”.
I thought of printing it out and bringing it to my next MN Scribes get together. I can put it to the test, if you guys want. We have some oscar nominees among us. Would that make you guys happy? I mean, we have TV writers, comedy writers, we have oscar-nominated screenwriters, screenwriters who TEACH screenwriting…
Oh, bullshit. I know you know video games, so this is a transparently stupid attempt to handwave away Pochacco’s experience. Just because the dialogue he reviews is written for a game instead of a television show doesn’t make his comments about this script’s wordiness any less relevant. A script is a script. Games have been using cutscenes with live dialogue for years, from the old Wing Commander and Jedi Knight games to the Red Alert series (and all of those used live action cutscenes, no less) to Half-Life 2. You still need people to read this dialogue out, and if it doesn’t read naturally as dialogue it’s going to be just as obvious in a game’s narrative cutscene as on TV.
ETA: I proofread transcripts for a living, and while my experience isn’t as relevant as Pochacco’s or Elenfair’s, I can say two things: you’d be amazed at how differently the spoken word reads on paper compared to something that was written without intending to be spoken, and the point-by-point feedback he gave Diogenes is no more difficult or more insulting than the feedback I provide my transcriptionists. It literally is as simple as opening up a text file and jotting down stuff that’s wrong as you come across it. Once you finish reading, you have a list of stuff that needs to change.
I will apologize to Pochacco for assuming his motivations in writing that list were mean-spirited or intended to degrade. If Dio were seriously going to send that script out and try to sell it, then I’m sure a point-by-point critique would be very valuable. Since he’s clearly not going to do that, nor was that ever his intention, you maybe can see why such a list might seem excessive, and designed to make a point rather than to enlighten.
This is where my one real area of expertise does come in-- I have to grade student writing, and when I want to encourage someone who made a valiant effort at something, I try very hard not to pile on too many nitpicky criticisms. No matter how constructively I intend them, seeing all those errors enumerated can be demoralizing and painful to someone trying to learn something new, who busted his ass on it.
I realize that some people feel Dio was arrogant and egotistical, and are trying to puncture that by pointing out that his script was just not up to snuff. If so, let’s acknowledge that’s the purpose of the crit and not pretend it’s trying to educate or help him. If you do intend to be helpful, realize that a 26 point list looks less like an education and more like a smack-down. That’s just my perspective on it. I’m not best buddies with Dio, so this is not coming from any personal issues that I have with him or any of you (though I inescapably feel that storyteller is an asshole and I doubt that will change).;
And honestly, I don’t expect you to agree with every single point, or even any of it. Many years ago I was in a writers’ workshop and one of our rules was that ultimately your work is your own. You’re completely free to decide that any critique you receive is utter bullshit.