The last week has been madness, work wise, so I don't have the focus to write or even really blog. I decided that today as I was driving to Fishkill, NY (my overnight stop) I would think about APoS and how to increase its depth and humanity. Instead, my mind got caught up in an old screenplay I wrote -- Find Ray T. Why? I have no idea...but I was coming up with ways to make it funnier. I think. I don't really know, since my humor is not necessarily the laugh-out-loud kind.
So I made notes on that. And am being goaded into sending it out, again, once I do a rewrite for jokes and such. It's a good script, I know that already; but no one ever wanted my screenplays...except for friends...and even then not really. I'd get the positive feedback and Yeah, let's do this kind of stuff, but nothing more. It took me many years to realize I am not a good screenwriter. I'm too possessive of my work.
This is the script that made me begin wondering if I should shift from writing scripts to books, only. Partly due to an experience I had when I posted it on TriggerStreet. That site was set up by Kevin Spacey and was an interesting concept -- to get your screenplay read and critiqued, you had to read and critique two scripts that were assigned to you. Screenplays with the highest scores got a blue star and consideration for production, if I remember right. It's been more than 15 years.
Well, I did my part and FRT got a good reaction. I achieved a blue star with it. The day after that happened, I got the worst review of my life on anything I have ever done. Blistered the script, line by line. It must have taken the guy hours to do. I lost my blue star. The one positive thing is, it was so over the top in its criticism, I actually couldn't take it seriously, though he did make two points that I felt were good.
So I rewrote the script, uploaded the new version, and got a blue star, again. BAM! The next day I got another vicious review. Not as harsh as the first one but still a negative. This one confused me, so I checked to see what other reviews the guy had done...and they were all pretty much the same. I checked the first guy, and he had hit other scripts just like he'd hit mine. Not one positive critique between them, that I could find. What was more? Neither of them had posted screenplays to be critiqued.
I laughed, now. These were assassination reviews. I mentioned that on the boards and the moderator bawled me out for it. Said I'd made it too easy to identify the culprits, and that my reasoning for this was nonsense. It was pure coincidence this happened. I didn't buy it, but what could I do?
I left the script up and did my bit, as I was supposed to. And got a blue star, again. And BAM! This one took 2 days. This time I went on the boards and spoke about what was happening -- that someone was gaming the setup and had worked out a way to cut down top scripts, probably to help promote a friend's screenplay...and I got bawled out, again, by the moderator.
This time I argued back, but they refused to think that anyone could have worked around their safeguards in order to leave negative reviews and threatened to bar me from the site. I pulled FRT off, instead, and dropped them. I could see where this headed and I wasn't willing to put up with it. Plus by this point I was working on my first book and finding I liked being in control of every aspect of it. Within a few years, I stopped writing screenplays, altogether.
I've thought about shifting the script into a book, but it's not at the top of my list, not at all. So to have it suddenly pop up out of nowhere is a surprise, especially when I'm in the middle of working on book 1 of APoS. But I've learned the hard way, if I ignore a project, everything else gets screwed up. Meaning...when I get home, I'm rewriting FRT.
If I can find the old Final Draft edition I did...
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