EXTRA CRITICUM

What Do You Most Need From Your Next Script Reader?

You Need Them to Forget They're Reading.

You want the reader of your next new thing to almost forget they're reading a script and embark on an emotional journey with your characters as defined by your structure. Of course it's true. Reading a script in silence will never carry us to the emotional highs and lows of lives in conflict portrayed by actors while we sit cloaked in darkness.

Nevertheless, experience tells us that professional gatekeepers are only going to advocate to their colleagues on behalf of work that moves them.

No one stirs up the courage to knock on the studio head's door for a moment propelled by an intellectual notion. No. We find it in ourselves to suggest to colleagues "this script must be produced"solely as a result of our having been moved.

The Next Best Thing to Being There

For anyone who's ever submitted an original screenplay or stage play to a writing competition or a producing entity you know that the few days just before you hit SEND and the following weeks or months of waiting can be kind of excruciating. There will always be little things you worry about getting just right and elements of your storytelling that you hope will appreciated by the reader(s).

A Thousand Cuts Death by Social Media (06-08-23)

 
What changes when we ignore the impulse to post?

To access all the previously published posts in this weekly series, click the Social Media category in the right hand column. NB: Posts that appear to be fine

 

Last week I shared one striking observation from the first 7 days of 2018 when as an experiment I decided to completely abstain from Facebook. That when the impulse to post to social media is not immediately attended to, the thoughts we just let lie have a way of expanding, collecting connected ideas and developing into stuff of far greater significance and impact.

But as I asked last week: Why should we care?

There are at least two angles from which you might consider the question of posting to social media vs. keeping your thoughts to yourself at the initial moment you first notice them.

1. The Impact on the Thoughts Themselves.
2. The Impact on Your Thinking in General.

Radiolab's 'Right to be Forgotten' Reveals an Avalanche of Disturbing Evidence: Something Fundamental in our Humanity has Started to Come Undone.

The Question for Those of Us Who Might Find this Alarming is: Are We Too Late to Claw Our Way Back to the Core of Who We Are?

 

 

And I have to say, since this episode aired in 2019 we've only drifted further ... Now, in an effort to encourage more of you to listen to this episode which I think is very important to know about, I'm going to leave this post to just this. The link plus a couple somewhat provocative statements. 

 

Perhaps if you listen to this episode you will find a minute to post a comment here either arguing or clarifying my point by pointing to your own observations about all this. And we can start something akin to a sort of dialogue, though not dialogue in the strictest sense of the word because dialogue demand that two or more speakers are fully present for the natural human back and forth to occur. 

Think about text messaging, even email exchanges. Not dialogue. Not by a mile. What do you suppose might be lost in this trade off -- we'll all stop having extended conversations and limit our communication to about a hundred characters hastily typed on a screen. 

 

Dispatches from a Troubled World

The five monologues we'll be presenting for you Monday are a rather eclectic bunch. Now that we're starting each Some1Speaking evening with a song performed by a singer-songwriter of heft, I invariably have some sort of a conversation or email exchange with the songwriter to try and select a song that will complement the collection of characters and struggles on display in the hour of Zoom mini dramas. 

This month as I described the five wonderful (and so richly varied) plays (and they really are short solo plays) to Anke Summerhill, I found myself landing on this:

Dispatches from a Troubled World.  But I don't know if that quite captures it.

A Thousand Cuts Death by Social Media (06-01-23)

Beginning June 1, 2023 (and continuing with a new entry posted here each Thursday) I will be publishing a long and winding essay building an argument (brick by tiny brick) for a global decoupling from social media. It is my conviction that our very survival depends on it. And  this series is my earnest attempt to convince you as well. I want to be absolutely transparent. I have no skin in this game, no business relationships of any kind with any of the platforms. Although this first set of entries begins with Facebook, this is not an argument against Facebook specifically but against every single platform that appeals to our human need for connection and exploits that need without concern for the detritus and misery it leaves in its wake. If you find these arguments persuasive I hope you'll keep coming back for more, feeling free to post your thoughts in the comments and share the posts with your friends. It is not lost on me: the irony of asking for help sharing via the platforms a clarion call for all of humanity to reject these very platforms. But tell me, how else is guy with an idea and no marketing budget to get the word out? In the end, long after you and I have said our last goodbye, I'm sure of this: word of mouth will always be the most powerful way for ideas to spread: when one person looks another in the eye and says: "Trust me." Thanks. - RT

A Thousand Cuts Death by Social Media:
Intro to the Experiment