Script Doctor

Currently working on two projects for contacts within the writing industry. Both have similar stories; a writer with an inspirational story to tell (in one case a screenplay, in another a self published novel and difficulty converting it to a screenplay) and both with writers block about how to proceed.

Writing is a solitary business in more ways than one: We are a paranoid breed, believing in the brilliance of our work but almost unwilling to share with the outside world in case someone steals that idea. I’ve met and worked with writers who believed in their work so much they refused to see failings in the script.

Bad move.

Ever wandered through the lofty vaults or silken silence of an impressionist exhibition? Stand close to the picture and tell me what you see, then stand back and tell me again. Have a new pair of eyes look at the same picture from a distance and ask their opinion.

This isn’t a new point, this is merely a well-repeated truth. As a writer you can be “too close” to your own work to see the problems and sometimes it takes a leap of faith to trust someone to read your work and, whether they like it or not, find something they can use in line with the original thoughts and feelings of the author to help, suggest, advise or guide along the road to playing doctor to a script that doesn’t do what the writer originally intended.

Sometimes its run out of life and needs resuscitation. Sometimes it just needs a guiding hand to take off the baggage, a friend to say “give me that…and that…and you certainly don’t need that…there: once unburdened of the excess weight you can go on being ‘you’, and be the story you were meant to be”.

Of course, playing doctor can be dangerous and I can’t lose sight that this is “their” story, not “mine”, so using their background / words to tell the story I want to tell would be wrong for it has to be “their” story.

So with many thanks to both Keri Johnson in America and Nigel Lesmuir-Gordon of my native UK for asking, and answering when I offered.

Because at the end of the day, being a writer isn’t such a lonely place after all….