The varying utility of feedback

[breakinglight11]

When you make art, you have to be constantly aware of the fact that people's reactions to your work are always going to be all over the place, no matter how good, or even how bad, it is. It can make it tough sometimes to realize what's legitimate feedback and what's not, but it's necessary for believing in your piece enough to keep pushing through the long, rejection-filled process that is getting it out to the world.

I got several pieces of feedback on my film scripts this week, the 2016 Bluecat Screenwriting Contest round one for both Adonis and Tailor, and feedback on the first pitch I ever made for Tailor. None of them were that great, and don't seem particularly useful.

As for Bluecat, the Adonis one had positives but nothing that particularly demonstrated a strong understanding of what we were trying to do, and negatives that I'd never heard before and didn't really think were that on-point. The Tailor one didn't seem to like anything about it particularly, and had a critique based on a misunderstanding of what happened in the script. Also, they had very little in common with other criticisms I'd heard-- which tend to suggest to me that they fall under "everybody's going to find something to dislike." Particularly in forms like this, where they've got to say something's off. I am not bothering with posting them here.

The feedback on the Tailor pitch made me laugh. "The author should put the blurb about herself at the bottom, not in the middle of the pitch as it disrupts the story information." I put it where the program SUGGESTS you put it, so whatever, personal taste. "The story itself feels somewhat familiar to other similar concepts, which makes me think it could be a tough sell, especially as a period piece." Okay-- what are these similar ones? I know there have been period mysteries before, but I struggled with thinking of other films that were like it, and the two I settled on, Atonement and Gosford Park, aren't really that close.

So, a pass. With a response like that, can you guess what my scores were?

Delivery - 4
Clarity - 4
Protagonists - 5

Heh. So, on a 1 to 5 scale, a good, a good, and a great. What does that mean? I gave a hell of a pitch for a shitty story? That 5 on the protagonists especially amuses me, since the last Bluecat reader to see the script thought they were "ill-defined."

So, this seems to me a good time to remind myself that you're never going to please everybody. Everybody's going to have their own problem with your piece. And if my pitch is actually good, chances are I just need to luck into the person who's going to feel the story, and then I'll be in. Which is where the persistence comes in. That sucks, but that's the nature of the game I've decided to play. And I want this badly enough to push through.