Sometimes, The Smackdown Is Necessary
Sometimes, you see things that just infuriate you.
It isn’t a matter of talent. It’s a matter of study. When you see something that is nothing more than a lack of study, it becomes a challenge to ignore it.
Right now, I’m looking squarely at you, writers.
There are too many books, too many resources, too many places where you can go in order to see how scripts are written. When I see dialogue with quotation marks around it, I go crazy. My first reaction is simple: how could you not have done the oh-so-simple research? Look at a single script, and you won’t see any quotation marks. Then you ask the question: why not? That should then take you through a warren of self-learning.
Learning comic scripting, the format of them and the few rules, is simple. It gets a little complicated later on, but the basics are just that: basic. As soon as I see something that is just so blatantly and obviously wrong and that could have been so easily corrected, I simultaneously go out of my mind, and discount that writer as ultimately lazy. Some would say that the writer just needs to learn, and my response to that is that if the writer is on the internet, having taken the time to write the script and then put it up for public consumption, then the writer already had an opportunity to learn.
Sometimes, the smackdown is necessary.
If you plan on writing a story, it doesn’t matter what medium you choose to express yourself in–it isn’t enough to just want to write. You need to study how to write in your chosen medium. You don’t need mastery. That comes with practice. You just need to study.
If you study before you start, then you lessen the chance of being smacked down.
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Category: Columns, The Daily Dose
