Arts Challenge: Review

The challenge went mostly to plan, it did help that I have written scripts before and read a few screenplays to try and attempt to counter my inability to write any realistic dialogue, though it was only through doing this arts challenge, that I managed to focus it a lot better, than in previous attempts.

Although sifting through many different sites for advice did become quite tedious, as some sites overlapped, some were contradictory to others and some were predominantly giving techniques that were only applicable for novelist. So to over come this I had to alter the search parameters to bring up results that would help with the arts challenge, and then cherry pick from that collection of sites techniques that were relevant.

It was this that took the most time to get right, due to the amount of time it took to source the information, whereas with the other section I had already done the research on these two writers prior, and had read a great deal on both (and a few of their screenplays), this allowed the writing to flow fairly easier compared to the other.

I didn't really have to make any changes to the original plan, other than I looked at a few more techniques (originally I stated that I would look at 2, though I ended up looking at 5) this was because there wasn't much I could write about them, and the other techniques seemed really useful, and so the best course of action to me was to get all them all down.

So, overall I classify it as a success, in regards to researching new techniques, although if I were to do it again I would probably widen my scope and try to get examples of writers from different parts of the world and different industries, to compare, also I'd get more techniques down and try to find out how specific writers create realistic dialogue.

An example of this new found ability to focus my writing and the employment (or attempted employment) of the techniques can be seen below, it's from the opening of film that I'm currently working on.

It hasn't been formatted correctly and it still needs a lot of work doing to it (it is a vague outline so that I can see where it's all going, so that I can build on it later), but the dialogue for it just flowed easily (once I got into it). When I got down to writing it was easier to focus myself and just write and though the dialogue in this extract (due to the context- reanimating a corpse) can't be considered realistic, the rapport between the characters and the nervous energy of the 'Doctor' does seem well developed; it does need a bit of work doing to it but most of it does sound alright when read out-loud (although the 'Clark' character's dialogue does need a bit of work).

I also got another member of the group to review my challenge, her review is shown below: