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Written by Jeffery Stevenson
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Wednesday, 12 April 2006 |
A Woeful Tale of a Captain and a Grunt
Captain: Cease and desist, soldiers! What do you think you're doing?
Grunt: Uhhh... we're digging trenches, sir.
Captain: No, no, no. You're doing it all wrong.
Grunt: But sir, there ain't too many other ways to dig a trench.
Captain: You're living in the past here. These kind of trenches should have gone the way of the dinosaur after World War Two. We're a new army now. We need fresh trenches. We need bold trenches. Something that screams 21st century.
Grunt: ...
Captain: We need U-shaped trenches!
Grunt: Sir, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard.
Captain: You're not very fond of those stripes, are you?
Grunt: Brilliant, sir. U-shaped trenches. We'll get right on it, sir.
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To most writers starting out, writing is freedom. It's the freedom to create worlds the way you want to, to have people act the way you want them to, and to let events fully express your deepest thoughts, feelings, and views. No limitations. No boundaries. No stopping you from doing whatever you please in your stories.
And often, these writers will fall in love with writing. They want to write and write and write. And then it hits them, "What if writing was my job? I'd make a living with something I love to do." But there's an aspect most of these writers don't consider or just don't think it out as much as they should. To make a living with your writing, you will need to either sell your own writing to someone or sell your services to someone. Most often, either of those two options will lead to a new twist in your writing process.
Following orders.
You could easily see notes for your novel from publishers/editors, notes for your screenplay from studios/directors/producers/story editors, or notes for your comic scripts from your publishers/editors/artists with a lot more weight in the industry than you. You'll read through these notes and edits and feel them tear away at you inside. You'll see walls going up to restrict your imagination. You'll see shackles slapped onto your muse. You'll cry out...
"It's stifling my creativity."
Wrong. How can your creativity be stifled when you've just encountered new situations and options that require a more creative solution than your original thoughts and ideas?
"I can't work with these limitations."
Wrong. How can television writers produce stories week after week with such limitations as format, continuity, censors, studio directives, product placement, and the like? How could Shakespeare and other playwrights work under the strict confinement of a stage?
"I'd have this done already if I could just do it my way."
Wrong. Done means the job's complete. If someone in your project's greenlight gauntlet doesn't feel the work is up to muster, the job's not done.
Of course, you can always stand your ground. You're an artist, and this is your creative vision. You'll show them. You'll hold out and make them see your vision through. After all, they're buying YOUR creative accomplishment and YOUR great writing. They'll see the light.
Unless you're a big name, they'll see what other novels they have in the pipeline to put their energies into, or they'll take their movie rights and hire another screenwriter to come in and rewrite the story to their specs without any concern about keeping any aspect of your creative vision intact. They'll remember what it was like trying to work with you to build up your product to something they thought would sell really well, and I doubt it will be a fond memory.
Will it matter if they were completely and utterly wrong with their notes, edits, or suggestions? Nope. All they'll see is someone who doesn't handle direction well. "But if I just give in to their demands, won't that make me a sell out?" Maybe. You'll at least be paid, and if you give your best effort to work with them, you have a chance (often a small chance, but a chance nonetheless) to keep most of your creative vision alive.
So, how do you keep some of your creative vision alive? Communicate. Discuss the notes with the people involved. Ask them what they're seeing or what other things in the story might have led up to making the suggestions for edits. Don't just write them off. Give those notes a serious look, and see where it takes the story. A suggested change could make the story stronger, or there could be a hidden gem within a note waiting to be freed. Or a large number of the notes could lead back to a specific moment in the story that spawned those issues. Then you have one critical juncture to fix that could clear up all those problems and strengthen the story as a whole.
If it's a major change, map it into your story and see what kind of impact it has on the rest of the story. Plot it out and identify where parts of the story will need to change. Write up an analysis of how the changes would ripple through the story, and let your "bosses" know. Other scenes might need to be changed or cut to accommodate the new change, and you never know when one of those scenes might be someone's favorite. Once they truly know the extent of the change, it's easier to work out a compromise or even brainstorm a better solution that fixes the problem the editor sees while keeping those favorite scenes intact.
Just apply that passion, hard work, and creativity that got you to that point in the first place, and you should be able to work something out. Something that can make both sides happy. You might not get exactly what you want, and there will be times they just won't budge on decisions. But you should be able to work with anything they give you and make it solid. You're a writer.
When you throw in all this analyzing, negotiating, and working around situations, it sounds like a lot of hassle, doesn't it? In fact, you could say it sounds like a lot of work. And isn't that what you wanted in the first place... work. Work you get paid for. Work you can also be prepared for.
To prepare for these kinds of scenarios, practice working on them with a fellow writer/editor or a friend. Give them one of your stories and ask them to make the most ludicrous suggestion for changing some part of the story that they can think of. When you read through it, don't think, "This will never work." Instead, think, "I can make this work." Analyze the change by stepping through your story and tracking the change's ripple effect throughout. Plot out the new course detailing what needs to change or be cut in your story. Talk it through with your friend. Then, get another crazy suggestion for the story and repeat the process.
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Following orders can be difficult sometimes. Especially when you know deep down that you'll be making a big mistake when you carry out those orders. And sometimes you'll be right... it doesn't mean the person giving the orders sees exactly what you're seeing, and it doesn't mean the consequences for standing against those orders outright will change. Just humor them and give the idea a shot. Show them the true extent of their change. Along the way, you'll be able to reinforce relationships, you'll keep your "job", and you might even stumble across an even better solution.
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Jeffery Stevenson is one of the Scryptic Studios co-founders and is the writer for Jim Valentino's upcoming Image Comics title, Task Force 1. Jeff once tried fasting to "purify" his system. He successfully completed his fasting and celebrated with a triple bacon cheeseburger. To see what this kind of insanity inspired, check out his weekly Norse mythology webcomic and his movie monster reality-spoofing one, too. And be sure to check his member page here at Scryptic for more details. |
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