I've been so busy with all my projects, I've kind of let the screenplay I'm supposed to be writing with my friend GT slide to the back burner. I wrote the outline a few weeks back, but neither of us were entirely happy with it. On Tuesday night, GT and I were talking, and we had a breakthrough.
Our main character needs to be a woman.
As soon as I made that shift in my head, it made perfect sense. Her entire backstory came in a rush. GT and I got very excited about it. Making her female adds so many layers to the character, and several of the key scenes will be that much more interesting and complex. It's amazing we didn't think of that earlier because it's so obvious.
Now I need to find time to flesh out this idea more. I want to write the opening scenes, set the tone and pace in a certain way, only to have that totally subverted a few scenes later. This film, if it ever gets made, will screw with your mind from start to finish, believe me!
At KO's blog, you wrote:
ReplyDelete"Sounds like a bad case of sour grapes to me! Someone needs to learn to accept rejection gracefully. But on the other hand, I needed a laugh this afternoon...."
My reply:
"I applaud him. Bravo. Why should he follow "the rules" of correctness when the profession has changed and is in some ways provoking this?
Think Twittergate and SlushPile Hell... and you expect the query senders to meet a different set of standards? Why should he accept rejection gracefully when blogs ridicule the queries that are being rejected?
His reply and behavior is just a logical extension of the breakdown of the unwritten code of conduct that at one time existed within the profession between the query sender and the receiver of the rejection."
I've been rejected by KO and have to say that her rejection letter is one of the nicest and least upsetting I've received to date.
ReplyDeleteRejection is a really big part of being a writer, and if you can't handle it, you need to stop putting yourself out there. A lot of writers are quite happy writing for themselves, and that's great. But if you want your work out in the world, being read by others, you have to learn to accept rejection gracefully. Because 95% of the time, they're gonna say no.
I don't agree with ridiculing rejected queries, but it is definitely helpful to have some examples of what they don't want to see. Otherwise how could we refine our own into something they do want to see?