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writing and rewriting
Jun. 28th, 2007 06:29 pmAm doing reading.
I finished the 'writing inside the box' Crafty TV writing book.
The last half is all about practical management working in a workplace stuff, which is exactly the stuff I haven't found in other how-to-write books, so very useful.
But I was reading through it and being progressively more woeful because the writer's room sounds like it requires all the things I find most difficult. Group work! Out loud! To a deadline! How I supposed to manage that?
And then I realised I've done that. Exactly that. Working in a group to produce a script to a deadline which couldn't be moved.
And I did rather well at it.
And it was actually *harder* because we were in a room with thirty other people working on completely different scripts, and also there was no showrunner or other acknowledged boss which inevitably means everyone's the boss and things go boom quite a bit.
I didn't so much write the script words, but I did a lot of the theoretical underpinning stuff, the asking the right questions and getting a plan mapped out. And then I did designing the backgrounds and the tech stuff, which admittedly involved hitting the forward arrow at appropriate intervals but I did do it right.
So my college course is preparing the specific skills I need to go into television writing as described in that there book.
Except for the parts where I'd have to move to LA or London. Those parts are not so much a college course thing.
the other book I'm reading is 'Textual Intervention', which I've read a few bits of before but not sat down to study. It's by Rob Pope, and it's basically a very academic way to talk about fanfic. Well, he probably doesn't think so, but what he's proposing as ways of analysing and transforming texts is what we already do. Only his specialised vocabulary and fandom's doesn't exactly overlap.
I'm finding I'm familiar with a lot of it, and the names he calls up to back it up, and there are books he points at that I also own although I've more skimmed than studied them but they were 'further reading' not assigned reading so that's how you manage that.
I have this vague hope to finish all the Intro Lit 1 further reading in the holidays.
I'm fairly sure it's physically impossible. And also I'd have to either buy a lot more books or go up the UEA library. Since the UEA library is also on my list of things to do that could work out.
Have noticed one minor problem - the copy of the book I'm currently reading doesn't have my name in it, and I thought I wrote my name in the books I took to college, which I definitely did with this one. Er, possible oops? *shrugs* If I got someone else's I just hope they consider it a fair swap. I'll write my name in now so I know for sure next time.
College books are much less boring than the kind of being on holiday with no books in it.
And also, I seem to Know Stuff, which is a pretty good thing after a whole year of university course.
Win!
I finished the 'writing inside the box' Crafty TV writing book.
The last half is all about practical management working in a workplace stuff, which is exactly the stuff I haven't found in other how-to-write books, so very useful.
But I was reading through it and being progressively more woeful because the writer's room sounds like it requires all the things I find most difficult. Group work! Out loud! To a deadline! How I supposed to manage that?
And then I realised I've done that. Exactly that. Working in a group to produce a script to a deadline which couldn't be moved.
And I did rather well at it.
And it was actually *harder* because we were in a room with thirty other people working on completely different scripts, and also there was no showrunner or other acknowledged boss which inevitably means everyone's the boss and things go boom quite a bit.
I didn't so much write the script words, but I did a lot of the theoretical underpinning stuff, the asking the right questions and getting a plan mapped out. And then I did designing the backgrounds and the tech stuff, which admittedly involved hitting the forward arrow at appropriate intervals but I did do it right.
So my college course is preparing the specific skills I need to go into television writing as described in that there book.
Except for the parts where I'd have to move to LA or London. Those parts are not so much a college course thing.
the other book I'm reading is 'Textual Intervention', which I've read a few bits of before but not sat down to study. It's by Rob Pope, and it's basically a very academic way to talk about fanfic. Well, he probably doesn't think so, but what he's proposing as ways of analysing and transforming texts is what we already do. Only his specialised vocabulary and fandom's doesn't exactly overlap.
I'm finding I'm familiar with a lot of it, and the names he calls up to back it up, and there are books he points at that I also own although I've more skimmed than studied them but they were 'further reading' not assigned reading so that's how you manage that.
I have this vague hope to finish all the Intro Lit 1 further reading in the holidays.
I'm fairly sure it's physically impossible. And also I'd have to either buy a lot more books or go up the UEA library. Since the UEA library is also on my list of things to do that could work out.
Have noticed one minor problem - the copy of the book I'm currently reading doesn't have my name in it, and I thought I wrote my name in the books I took to college, which I definitely did with this one. Er, possible oops? *shrugs* If I got someone else's I just hope they consider it a fair swap. I'll write my name in now so I know for sure next time.
College books are much less boring than the kind of being on holiday with no books in it.
And also, I seem to Know Stuff, which is a pretty good thing after a whole year of university course.
Win!