BlueCat feedback on Tailor at Loring's End screenplay!

As with the Adonis script, I submitted my Tailor at Loring's End screenplay to the BlueCat Screenwriting Contest at well. I was nervous at first that the feedback on this one was taking so much longer to arrive, but I finally got it the other day. I am pleased to say that it was quite positive as well! Though this is the first screenplay I ever wrote, the story idea was a solid one, and I have revised it many times. It made it to the Quarter Finals of the Big Break contest last year, so I had some confidence in it.

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The core of the story, the themes, and the supporting cast are what this reader responded to most strongly, which I'm very happy to hear. They picked up on the purpose of the team drawing together to fix things in the end, as well as how the flashbacks were designed to parallel and compare with the modern-day story. I knew all that, the plot, themes, and setting were the parts I was most confident in, but it pleases me to hear that a reader responded to them.

The negatives were not extremely negative, but they were a bit perplexing to me.

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I'm of several minds about this. On one hand, I'm a bit skeptical of the criticism that Tom and Alice are not strongly defined enough, as three of my professors saw this script and none of them found the leads to be too thin. In fact, rather hilariously, Barry Brodsky, the teacher I wrote it with initially, gave me the exact opposite feedback-- he found Tom and Alice compelling, but thought my supporting cast like Della and Crier to be lacking in dimension. An unfortunate feature of making art is that there is no uniform standard by which to grade it, so it's common to get educated opinions formed from two entirely different impressions. On the other hand, defining characters for people who are not in my head has been a problem in another thing I've been working on recently, enough that I'm inclined to worry it's actually a problem.

Because I want to progress in the contest, it probably doesn't make sense not to make the attempt to edit and resubmit to improve my standing, even though I'm not entirely sure I agree with the critique. And I'm not sure how to go about making it clearer. I don't think just sticking in answers to a lot of those questions is the way. "Where's Tom's father?" He's dead, he's not important to this story. (Also I notice you don't mind that Alice's mother's not dealt with, probably because I dealt with her father to your satisfaction. Moms being important is weird, dads being important is normal, amirite? :-P) "Does Alice go to school?" She just got out of school, I'm pretty sure that's mentioned in a line and not that important anymore.

Bleh. I'm probably just being defensive. I am prone to that. I just wish I could more clearly envision way to fix that problem (if it really exists). I find "define this character more" to be particularly hard note to address, for whatever reason. Maybe it's because they seem plenty clear to me, and I don't know why others can't see it. But it's worth making the attempt. The other note, about Kenneth's motivations/knowledge being made a little clear, is a fine one; concrete and easy to take, so no problem addressing that there.

As I said, I'm mostly happy with this feedback, and if it's this positive it's probably got as a good a shot as any in the contest.

God willing, Tom, Diana, Alice, and Aidan will take this contest by storm! ;-)