Skits

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.