As people, we all have a hard time giving up on the bad ideas we have, that we just can’t let ourselves believe are really bad. As I had mentioned, one of my current hobbies is screenwriting, or maybe I should say the idea of screenwriting, because I’ve yet to even half-finish a script. But I have my idea, I think it’s fun, and cool, and could be a good movie. So what do I do? I mention it to some friends to get feedback. And I get the same response from all of them, the dull, uninterested, “oh, yeah, that could be cool I guess.” So the natural response, atleast for me, is to tell myself well maybe they just don’t get it, or maybe I just didn’t explain it well enough in my 2 sentence blurb. But ya know what? Maybe it really isn’t that great of an idea.
There’s a quote I came across on another blog (Tommi’s S60 Blog) recently:
“Not enough gets said about the importance of abandoning crap.” — Ira Glass
Oh how depressingly true that is. We all want to believe we’re smart, that our ideas are good, that our jokes are funny, etc. It’s easier to believe that other people just don’t “get it” than to admit maybe just a little, the idea is crap. And so the less-than-half-written script for screenplay idea number one is in the trash (well actually it’s in a random folder sitting on my laptop, but same difference).
I’ve been reading a number of blogs, articles. whatever I can on the technical side of script writing. Now that I discovered the first idea just maybe was crap, I just need to find something else. Or who knows, maybe the best plan is while I don’t have another idea, continue working on the crap, after all, even a bad script could have a few good scenes come out of it that I’ll want to use in something else.
Ryan | 23-Mar-07 at 3:48 pm | Permalink
I think that it’s time to give up on something when you:
a) Realize that something is crap
b) Have learned why the thing is crap, so you don’t make the same mistakes.
If you’re only past part a, you need to keep looking at the idea until you understand what’s wrong with it, what makes it bad. This probably means you keep working on it until you find yourself in a corner unable to improve the idea/script. Then you’ll be able to do some retrospection and say “Here’s where this went wrong.”
And then the trick is to make sure you don’t make those mistakes again. It’s a lot harder in a creative process than it is other things, but it’s gotta be doable.
And nothing is more valuable than constructive criticism, even if it can be hard to take (I know I’m horrible with it). So if there’s a community out there who can review it and give you useful feedback, leverage it.