It was me. I was a substitute teacher, and made it my mission to complete all the work the regular teacher set for me by the end of the day. I was editing a student's writing and I was in ruthless editing mode. Red ink was flowing. Insert that full stop, make that verb agree with that noun, fix that spelling. But as red filled the page, it also filled the face of the kids standing next to me. It was his work and he stood there silently, holding in his growing humiliation and rage. I realised what I was doing and closed the book. Here was a 10 year old kid and a piece of writing he had lovingly put half an hour into creating, and I told him it was worth nothing. I sent him outside for a drink of water before his head exploded like a volcano. That event sobered me. How often, when reading someone's script I've focussed on the inconsequential stuff. Format, grammar, spelling, logic issues, even structure. These things matter, but doesn't creativity, an interesting idea or a unique voice matter even more? Can't those smaller things be worked on later? Or what do they even matter if it an underdeveloped creative idea lies dormant under overdeveloped average-ified writing? From now on, that's what I'm looking for when I review a script. Creativity. And that's what I'll be working on in my own script. What makes my script interesting, weird, unique, different.
Screenwriting : Oh my God!!!!!!!!!!!! Somebody killed Creativity!!!!!!!!!!!!! by Steven Fussell
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When I was first trying to go to college one of the first courses i took was "English Composition". The teacher used to let random people correct our assignments before he would launch into them. He said once that there is no such thing as a paper that doesn't need correcting. Now that may be true; but an attitude like that instead of encouraging young minds to just sit and write; has probably killed more writing careers than it could ever help.
"Here was a 10 year old kid" - I literally started busting out laughing.
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Why? Am I missing something? Hope your screenwriting is not so fuzzy. Terrific post, Stephen! Entertaining and enlightening. As a college writing prof, I prided myself in deluging students' essays with red ink.... I did not realize I may well have not been seeing the forest for the trees in more than a few cases. Hope I didn't de-motivate some would-be writing superstars by unnecessarily showing off my grammar, punctuation and spelling skills.
HALLELUJAH!!!!!!! Do you do coverage?
" Hope your screenwriting is not so fuzzy" - Why do people always have to start shit...
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At the risk of playing devil's advocate, we're none of us 10 years old anymore. You can crush a ten-year-old's spirit by focusing on the formal stuff that he hasn't mastered yet. For us grown-ups, bad grammar, formatting errors, logic flaws, etc., are likely signifiers of something more pernicious. Lack of attention, lack of rigor, maybe even lack of talent or intelligence. I don't disagree with you in principle. In practice, I definitely don't want my work to be noticed for its formatting, spelling, grammar, or wonky logic.
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I agree, Kerry, is there really an excuse for bad spelling and grammar, I can forgive many things when reviewing a script, but not on those two.
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Agreed Kerry & Chanel. A lot of people may have a great story to tell but we may never know if the typos and grammar issues screw it up.
I know teachers who still focus on things like staying within the lines of a notebook piece of paper. Literally, they won't let kids think or write outside of the box. It gives me the willies, it does.
As a long-time instructor of middle-school, high school and college students, whose eBook "The 'I-Hate-To-Write' Writing Guide" is about to be published, I can assure you Pollyannas that younger kids, never mind most older ones, are sadly deficient in grammar, punctuation and spelling. Most can't use a comma correctly, never mind the pivotal semi-colon (E.B. White would turn over in his grave if he saw how students and adults abuse his favorite punctuation mark.) Can you say run-on sentence and comma splice. If you think younger kids are proficient in Language Arts, you are sadly deluded. I used to take the time to bleed red on my students' mistakes, but that required 30 to 45 minutes at least. And most English teachers have at least 30 students in one class, and teach 3 or 4 classes a day. A sure recipe for burn-out. So is it any wonder most writing teachers prefer subjective rather than objective grading of essays. Some bloggers above claim that kids eat up grammar and punctuation instruction; I'd laugh at this hyperbole if it weren't so sad. The great majority of students nowadays think the message is much more important than the mechanics--thanks in part to texting. Believe it!
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ScriptNotes did a great podcast about the 'rules' in their recent episode. I think it's quite relevant for new, and old, writers. http://johnaugust.com/2015/the-rules-or-the-paradox-of-the-outlier
@Lew, I agree with you that students should be taught the fundamentals. Having said that, I would also say that it is possible to do that and encourage students who show signs of a creative spark to write, and write with passion, and let the grammatical issues iron out over time. (yes, I know, run on sentence)