Maybe I need some flaming arrows?

I don't like revision. In high school and even college my first drafts were always strong enough for top grades so I never had to go back and revisit my writing, take what was there and re-arrange it, re-invigorate it, make it stronger. Other than punctuation, spelling, and grammatical errors I absolutely HATE re-working a piece I've written.

It wasn't until the upper levels of screenwriting class that revisions and re-structuring were demanded of me. It felt like failure. All my education to that point seemed to indicate to me that my "first drafts" were pretty flippin' stellar and if I had to go back to something, go back and CHANGE what I'd written, well that meant I had done a lousy job. It was UN-WORTHY. A wasted effort.

Now cosciously I know this to be a false assertion. I understand that drafts and edits and things of that nature are designed to nourish and strengthen a piece of creative work. I mean Jesus, as an actor\director I fully expect to rehearse and rehearse and rehears and try ALL kinds of different approaches to the material before finding the best way to perform it. As an actor\director I relish this organic process and HATE when people stick with the first and easiest instinct they had because there is almost always a better choice waiting to be discovered and nurtures and developed into greatness.

But as a writer? Stop the presses! It feels like a slap in the face, a punch to the gut a steel-toed boot to the groin if anyone ever suggests edits and revision.

I managed to do it for screenwriting though and believe for the most part that it produced an improved product. Often I felt like I had a unique vision and they wanted to conform it to a more comfortable hollywood format but I get it, and for the most part they understood where I was coming from. Except my last screenwriting teacher. What a cliched asshole. I mean absolutely. He wanted all my characters to be these stereotypical puppets and the plotline to be closer to Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves or something. He just would not see the story for what it was, dismissed all the work my previous professors and I had put into the efforet and basiaclly decided that in screenwriting 4 (the penultimate level of screenwriting) that I had to start from scratch.

It was one of the more frustrating experiences of my life, and maybe it was compounded by the fact that he wasn't a very adept online professor. He struggled with the medium and to tell the truth? I don't think he liked to read much. I would so these revisions and he would give the SAME comments back- Um Hello? I ALREADY fixed that issue. I started highlighting my revisions so he could more quickly scan thorugh the work and pinpoint the changes, but this only made him more surly and confused. And ultimately he decided I needed to start from scratch.

*sigh*.

I was so heartbroken and frustrated and utterly lost that Aaron took it upon himself to follow the teacher's instructions and write a very BLOCKBUSTER sort of historical adventure epic. The story got pared down to its barest essentials (a thing a history nut like me is really almost incapable of doing, motivations no longer made much sense but he made up for it with over-archetyping the characters. The King was no longer weak and ineffectual but scheming and well, a bit of a rapist-- very dislikeable, just how the professor seemed to want it. The Bishop was now more subservient to the king, which was more comfortable for professor McTritepants, but really not very interesting or deep. The queen's sex appeal was amplified and her general bent oscillated between "oh poor me" and "I'm going to seduce my way to the top!"-- what had once had the potential of being one of the most compelling female characters ever written was reduced to almost every hollywood female construct in the book. She went from a role for Cate Blanchette to one for Angelina Jolie or worse- scarlett johanssen or something atrocious like that. And Henry- the Duke of Normandy? One of history's most compelling creatures? Well, imagine Chris O'Donnell plays him now; all earnestness and heroics and wounded pride and puppy love.

Aaron really did a great job with it. It was very tongue-in-cheek and so reminiscent of real hollywood stuff that I gaped when I read it. The part with the flaming arrows and the buckets of lamp-oil? Inspired. Just what my film needed. special effects and a big band of an ending. It actually would have been kind of exciting if I weren't so sick over what a monster my story had turned into.

It was a parting F-U to the professor who never believed in my vision or trusted that this story really had something compelling and quality about it.

I won't lie. He didn't go as crazy mad over it as we had anticipated. I think he sensed from the complete about-face that I may, just may, have been flipping him the bird and mocking everything he stood for. It got a B, I think. Maybe a B-. And some stern words about following directions and being open to change and all that.

I thought for a long time about lodging a formal complaint since he really was an abysmal teacher. I wasn't the only one whose story he totally eviscerated, and not the only one who found him obtuse and arrogant and block-headed. We were a small class of about 5 and all of us struggled to understand what he wanted from us, made every effort to make the edits and revise where he instructed, and all 5 of us came up frustrated, confused and generally disheartened by the whole ordeal.

But C'est la vie. I never filed the complaint. He's probably making some other poor soul miserable this semester. I wonder if their story will end up with flaming arrows and killer taglines.

Wow this post got a hell of alot longer than I wanted it to be.

I have re-writes on my mind because of the fairy tale. I'm almost afraid to re-write it because I despise revision so much. But it feels supremely wasteful to just shelve all that effort.

Plus? I don't actually remember the whole plot outline and details about where the various quests would take our heroes so continuing on seems a bit ill-advised unless I can find all that junk tucked in a box in an attic or basement somewhere- and do I want this bad enough to did up a corpse that might never be anything but decayed and disfunctional??

Stay tuned.