Day 274 (92) - Assignment 8: Twin

In the last assignment of the Second City Internet Writing Course, we were to pick one scene that we had already written, and go back and rewrite it, taking what we have learned and trying to apply it for one last hoorah. I wasn’t quite sure which one I wanted to pick. Do I go with my favorite one, the Twinkie, the one I think is funniest, the Stupidity Disease, or where the characters seemed the most interesting, the Inappropriate one?

In the end, I elected to go with the interesting characters (as suggested by the instructor). You can find the scene here. You’ll notice that the beginning is similar to before (there are some changes, some added lines), and there’s a whole new scene added at the end. After you’ve read the scene, keep reading for the feedback from my instructor, as well as the high level things I learned from the course.

To feedback, and beyond… Well as can be somewhat expected, the last critique was overly positive. I say “expected” not because I thought my scene was amazing (though I do think it had a lot more depth than any of the ones before), it’s just unlikely that the last email you get after a paid 8-week course would be all negative. They’ve certainly got to hype you up so you keep coming back.

Anywho, the feedback was positive, and my instructor highlighted some very specific areas that he liked better. There was more depth to both characters (hey, both characters actually had objectives), and there was a better glimpse of the history between these two people. The instructor also called out two of my favorite lines: “Ain’t no party like a Damon party…” and “fulfilled our dream with the midget.”

Overall, I thought the course was a great experience and I definitely learned a lot. I think one of the most beneficial things was just to be forced to write in a new context at least once a week. As for more specific takeaways, these were the comments from my instructor over the past 8 weeks that I think highlight the points of the course:

• You need to think about exploring strategies that don’t necessarily depend on dialogue, but rather force your characters to make active choices.
• Be sure that your characters are actually listening to each other. The best strategies don’t come out of nowhere, but are a direct response to what has already been presented.
• I want to see less talking and more DOING. I want SHOWING instead of TELLING.
• Focus on character development over comic premise.
• And that’s the inherent question of any scene: Why should we care about your characters?
• An objective shouldn’t be a passive desire - something that a character kinda-sorta-maybe wants - but something that MUST happen TODAY or their world will fall apart.
• Each line of dialogue needs to provide another detail about his story, another clue (intended or not) as to how we’re supposed to feel about him.

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Day 261 (105) - Assignment 7: Monologue

Well in my second to last assignment for the Internet writing course, I didn’t exactly receive high marks from the instructor.

Here’s the link to Assignment 7 - Monologue.

While my instructor found this to be a funny scene from start to finish (and I have to say I think it would make for a funny blackout), he was disappointed in the character of the monologue.  Similar to last week, this character had no depth and didn’t change throughout the scene.  He had one objective, he was able to pursue it using a variety of strategies, but he had no obstacles, there was no conflict.

My instructor was curious: why is he so concerned about Stupidity, does he have a personal connection to Little Timmy, why should we care about this person at all?  All good questions, none of which I really answered.

I think the roadblock that I’ve run into is finding the differences between writing just for laughs, and writing a dramatic scene.  I could understand this character development, and showing his emotions, etc, in a dramatic scene, but I can’t seem to figure out how to do it for a comedic one.  How do you create a meaningful character that you care about, and still make it so you want to laugh at him as well?

Similar to improv, my gut feeling is that I’m in my head way too much.  I’m thinking too hard about how to achieve success on all levels, where if I would just write and see where it goes, I’ll be much better off.  Do you think Tiger Woods thinks about every minsucle aspect of his swing, the exact angle he brings the club back, the velocity he follows through with, the position of every single face muscle?  No.  He practices so much that it’s ingrained in his memory, and he doesn’t have to think about every little detail, he just does it.  I’d imagine that’s how great writers are.

So now we’re down the last assignment.  We have two weeks to complete, so I’m hoping to write a bunch and then edit it down to something funny that has depth.  We’ll see how that goes.

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Day 254 (112) - Assignment 6: Office Games

With the 6th assignment of the Internet writing course came the classic “fish out of water” premise.  The idea being that a character (or host of characters) is in a “clash of context,” meaning someone is in a place that doesn’t fit.  It could be a brain surgeon enrolled in a preschool class, or Hilary Clinton in a women’s restroom…

In the case of my assignment, it was a rabid football fan in the office place.  Check out Assignment 6 - Office Games before continuing on to the critiques.

Unfortunately for this week’s assignment I took the bait and tried too hard to make the scene funny.  While I think it is a humorous scene, my instructor points out that there’s no character development what-so-ever.   The characters are the same at the beginning of the scene as they are at the end, and there wasn’t much reason to care about any of them.

The point of this class is to focus on each character’s objective and their strategies.  And in all good scenes, they must overcome obstacles to achieve these objectives - that’s what makes it compelling.  Chad doesn’t really have a greatly defined objective - bring more football stuff into the work place?  Become the number one sales guy?  What stands in his way?  After the first sale - nothing.  And I never address why he is so adamant about having aspects of football in the office.

The secondary characters aren’t any better.  Who cares about Ray and what he’s doing?  And Marvin goes through the biggest transformation, but even that can be seen a mile away and isn’t anything spectacular.

Hopefully I’ll start to understand that strong objectives and strategies are necessary for successful scenes.   I only have 2 more assignments to show that I’ve actually learned that in this course, so here’s to doing some good writing over the next week.

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Day 251 (115) - Assignment 5: Inappropriate

This past week’s assignment was to write a scene about an “Inappropriate Response” coming from one (or more) characters.  And in a change of pace (or act of laziness?), we were critiqued not by our instructor, but by a fellow student.  I joke about the laziness part because it was actually a great exercise - get a different perspective as well as require us to analyze a scene written by someone else.

Here’s a link to my plainly titled assignment 5 - Inappropriate.

The student critique was focused solely on character objective, as that’s the overall emphasis of the course.  He (or could be a she, but for sake of not having to write / after everything, and since he is a shorter word, we’ll just say “he”) understood the objective of Damon, but not really of Eric.  And to be honest, I’m not sure what my intent was for Eric’s objective, I guess I figured he was more of just a nincompoop rather than somebody with a specific goal.

The critic offered up the possibility that Eric was jealous of Damon and wanted his life, which I think makes for a great premise to the scene, and really would have allowed me to explore a number of different moments between the two (such as Eric waiting for Damon to die, or hitting on Ashley in Damon’s presence).

Overall I think it had a positive start and could’ve really gone somewhere, I just didn’t quite take it there.

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Day 240 (126) - Assignment 4: Stand

In a follow-up exercise to last week’s “simple yet impossible task,” we again had to write about something that should be easy to do, but the character is unable to accomplish.  This time, however, we weren’t allowed to use any dialog whatsoever.

Here’s a link to the assignment, “Stand“, make sure you check it out before going on to the feedback.

Despite my lack of confidence in this week’s assignment, my instructor seemed to enjoy it.  He thought it seemed realistic as to why there was no dialog in the scene, and that’s the toughest part of the challenge (it’s easy to feign dialog, or just not put it in when it realistically would be).

He claims I’m one of the stronger writers in the course (he could say that to everyone), but that’s pretty cool.  It’s also why he says he tries to critique me harder than some of the others to make sure I push myself, which was his recommendation for doing this better next time - really explore more explanations as to why no one is speaking.

I think my biggest struggle with this scene, and the assignments so far, is that I desperately want to make the scenes meaningful, have a full arch, and be funny.  At this point in the game it’s not about that, it’s more about learning the right skills and techniques that can be applied later.  I think that’s why I wasn’t very happy with “Stand”, but as far as the assignment goes, it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

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