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As I said in my last post, there were unfortunately more negatives than positives in the second consultation I had for my script of Dig Down.

A second major negative that the judge focused on was the length of the screenplay. They reiterated several times that the length needed to be trimmed to 90 pages. This differed from what I’d been told in the first consultation, that if the script was good (which they felt it was) that the length wouldn’t matter, and so this became a negative for me on two levels.

The first, and deeper negative for my screenwriting, was that I now had conflicting pieces of advice. My goal for entering these screenplay contests was to get advice on what could be done to improve the quality of the story, and to ideally get it to industry standards. My expectation was that while some of the notes would vary, that there would be a general consensus on the main areas that needed improvement, providing me with a clear target of what needed to be addressed.

This conflicting advice was essentially a worse case scenario. If both judges, or most judges, honed in on the same aspects of the script that they felt needed to be changed, I would feel confident that addressing this would improve the script. But with two judges providing this level of feedback giving me two opposing viewpoints, I was now stuck with a decision – which one do I follow?

The one who was positive about my script said a long length would be okay if the script was good, but was this necessarily right? I could easily fall into a bias of following their direction just because they gave me a favorable score. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I should disregard the other judge, who while they listed more examples of negatives they found with the script, might actually be dispensing better advice because they’re pointing out all the areas where my adaptation was falling short.

In addition to this critical decision being posed to me, there was also the negative about the logistics to trimming down the screenplay. I had agreed that adding extra pages after the first script consultation didn’t feel quite right to me, that over 100 pages felt okay with how much I had packed into the story, but longer than that started to feel like the pacing was off. The judge for this second page believed that 100 pages was too long, and the way they kept reiterating that it needed to be trimmed to 90 pages left me believing anything over that was unacceptable.

This was probably an extreme opinion of this part of the call, but its just to give you context of how much this was stressed.

The problem I had with this was the same I had when I was first looking for an editor for my manuscript of Dig Down. One of the editors that reviewed my work complimented me on my writing, but said I needed to bolster my word count because the length was too small for a novel, which it was. The problem I had with doing that was that essentially doubling the length would devastate the pacing of the story, which is why Dig Down is a novella, essentially around half the word count of a typical book.

This was the flip side of that coin. The judge was asking me to trim close to a third of the screenplay. And while as we were going through it together there were definitely things that could more efficiently tell the story in this medium, and things that could also be cut, I felt that trimming this much of it would make the story as a whole feel rushed. There’d be no chance to sit and breath after tense sequences of Rob fleeing for his life, while at the same time absorbing the complexity of his relationship with Preston that had become so strained over the years.

I feel like too many movies today just rush through a lot of their plot points, just telling the audience how they should be feeling at different points in the story, rather than let them experience these moments and let them reach these feelings themselves. I didn’t really like the idea of my screenplay contributing to this. So while I agreed that there was definitely ways to trim pages from the screenplay, I felt that cutting so much was essentially changing key aspects of the story.

I’ll go over the last main criticism brought up in the consultation, next time.

While there were definitely positives during my script consultation with the Santa Barbara Screenplay Competition, there were also negatives. And there were a lot more of the latter.

I had alluded to the judge’s comment that the title conjured up thoughts that this story was about an archeological dig. Considering there’s no archeology of any kind in the story, it wasn’t especially great to hear that my title could potentially lead to genre confusion.

This was really minor compared to some of the other notes I’d gotten during the meeting. I don’t recall the exact order they came in, but the rest of this post will cover the major ones that were brought up at some point during the consultation over the coming posts, because some of these I’d need to go in depth with.

One was that there were too many flashbacks. I had counted out the number of flashbacks in preparation for the meeting, so I did have an exact amount. This number was in the teens, so its not exactly unfounded, and that means there were more flashbacks in the script than there were in the book. So while I don’t disagree about the number of flashbacks, I can explain why I had so many, and added more for the adaptation.

Anyone who’s read Dig Down knows about the way I structured that story. I’ve said numerous times that I had the idea for eight or nine years before I actually wrote it, and trying to tell the story in chronological order was one of the reasons. It just didn’t work, as it revealed details before they could be their most impactful. In fact, structuring the story the way I did led to shaping Vicky’s character into what it was for the book.

I stand by this decision for the book, but in doing so, there were these long scenes of Rob and Preston just talking on a couch together. I added some flashbacks to break up this scenes that while throwing emotional haymakers were relatively stagnant shots. Doing this also allowed me to add a few more scenes of Axel, someone who is crucial in setting the story in motion, but doesn’t actually appear much in the script. It also allowed me to have a scene with the Senators, a group that I reference in the book, but due to the point of view, weren’t really in it. This quick scene also allowed me to hint at the power dynamics among them, something that was established in one of the short stories I wrote for Dig Down Accessories, and that I thought would be a treat for those that had read it, to see these relationships on the screen, as well as something new for those who hadn’t read the short story, to see the world fleshed out a bit.

The judge had given me some examples to read of scripts that had used flashbacks effectively, but these were all scripts where the entire movie was essentially a flashback–think Saving Private Ryan, and this too wasn’t the right structure for Dig Down. I don’t think their message was that movies that are essentially all flashbacks are the only correct way to use them, but I wish the examples they had given had at least one that was more in line with my script’s structure.

The judge also said that this amount of flashbacks was confusing. I did disagree with that. Everything, Everywhere All at Once had won Best Picture earlier in the year, and not only does that film have a number of cutaways to flashbacks, they’re telling the story through countless different dimensions, and the story can still be followed even with this combination. While I can understand that it can be an extra challenge to follow flashbacks on the page, its something that I think could be followed along with ease visually.

I’ll get into another major criticism next time.

Less than two full months after my first ever consultation for my adaptation of Dig Down, I was sitting down with the judge of another screenplay competition to delve into the analysis of my script. Here were the positives from that meeting:

They were complimentary of this website. This took my by surprise because I hadn’t included this website, or the email address associated with it, in any of my submissions, both to this screenwriting contest, or any of the other ones that I had entered. This told me that the judge I was speaking with had taken the time to research me online, and actually had to seek this website out, as the website with just my name was actually already taken by I believe an Icelandic DJ.

That he said it looked professional was also a pleasant surprise. I didn’t want to just slap something together when I created this, and took my time organizing how I wanted the layout to go. I also had noticed when looking at the websites of other writers that few actually had links to their books and where to buy them, so I had spent time making sure that any book had a link to its Amazon page to facilitate the sale if people were interested in them.

They also said the title was cool. This was more expected than the first compliment and I felt a sense of validation as I had spent time coming up with what felt like the right title, trying to capture a level of the desperation Rob would go through, as well as hint at the depraved events that would take place.

There was only a little bit of a setback when they said they thought the story might have to do with archeology…

The biggest positive for me was that the judge felt it has a real starring role, and could attract actors to want to play the part. This also felt like great validation, because I had shelved writing this story for years because the character of Rob didn’t feel right when I first came up with the concept of the story. I had originally envisioned Rob as a good guy who got in over his head with the wrong people, and that led to some of the heinous things he ended up doing. It wasn’t until I found out who Rob should really be that this story worked, and that the complexity of his character was able to take shape.

Unfortunately…this last positive happened at the end of the meeting. While it was good to end on a positive, and what I felt was the biggest positive of the meeting, this was a ninety minute consultation, and that left a lot of time to review the negatives in the script, which I will get into next time.

The second consultation for my script of Dig Down was set for the Tuesday after Memorial Day. I’d be going into the conversation after having three days to relax, while also being able to find time at my leisure to skim through the script and prepare for the meeting. I also took that Tuesday off, just to remove the distraction of work prior to the meeting, and allow myself a little more time to prep.

If you thought the combination of a) having the luxury of this pace to prepare, b) having already gone through one of these in depth looks at my script, and c) having it be about a story I’d already combed through several times, both by myself when I was writing it, and with my editor when I was bringing it to market, that all of this would put me at ease for this meeting, you’d probably be right with most people.

Unfortunately, I’m not most people.

When I first was scheduled for this consultation, I felt I was in good shape to discuss it. But as the meeting drew nearer, nagging thoughts started to creep in. Yes, I’d had a consultation already, and a very positive one…but that was over two months ago now. I was very familiar with the story, having written it in two mediums, but that had led to a lot of changes during the adaptation, and the revisions based off of that first consultation. I had taken notes during the first meeting, but it wasn’t until a few days before this scheduled second consultation that I had found the notebook I had taken them in. When I opened it, the pages looked warped, the ink and handwriting didn’t feel familiar, giving off a sense that this had happened so long ago.

That was a bit of a surprising feeling. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten plot points from Dig Down. I think I’d have to be separated from it for years before that would start to happen. But it was things that I’d discussed in that consultation, and even thoughts and insights that people who’d read the book had shared with me, that didn’t come back to me until I’d seen these notes. It gave an odd sense that even though I’d been through this before, I somehow wasn’t going to be prepared to discuss something that not only had I created, but that nobody could no more deeply than me.

Even with that, I went through the script alongside the judge’s notes I’d gotten just a few weeks prior. My intention was to take any of the comments they had made, good or bad, and record the number of instances and page numbers they occurred on, so that I would be able to address them if they came up in this conversation. I also made the same recordings of certain elements in the stories so that I could have some additional talking points to bring up during the call, my goal being to leave them with the undeniable feeling I know my story inside and out.

I did this more and more as Memorial Day weekend went on. They operated in California, so this was going to be an afternoon meeting for me, so this prep work became my main focus the morning of the consultation.

As the morning wove down to the afternoon, I would quiz myself on talking about some of my notes without referring to them, but would otherwise just sit and relax. I was following the same pattern for my first consultation, and that had been very positive.

Yet as the final minutes ticked away, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this second consultation wasn’t going to be.

It didn’t take too much to persuade myself that I was on the right track. As helpful as my initial script consultation had been, I only had the showing of one screenplay contest, which I had placed as a finalist, to grasp how well I had implemented revisions. And while it was helpful to know that my screenwriting had gotten an accolade, what was always nagging the back of my mind was the ambiguity of how well I had applied the notes I’d been given.

I was putting this step of my writing process on repeat, now looking to get feedback on the feedback, but at least I would know how I’d actually done.

The Santa Barbara Screenplay Competition was also offering a level of in depth analysis, at a similar level to what I had already experienced with the Page Turner Screenplay Competition. I felt I would actually have a leg up when it came to this consultation, as I’d already been through it before, and that this would allow the conversation to dig even deeper into the elements of the script. If the screenplay had already gone through a level of polish with one industry professional, that had to mean there were fewer weak spots left, right?

And that then the focus could shift to not really weak points in the script, but things that could be enhanced further. Right?

First, I had to get accepted into this consultation. Just like Page Turner, this competition wasn’t offering this level of analysis for free, but unlike Page Turner, there was the mention of limits. Only four of these were done a month. That made sense, if deep analysis was going to be performed, I’d want the reviewer to have the time to read through my script, compile their thoughts, so that I could get the most benefit from their guidance, and cramming as many of these into their schedule didn’t seem conducive to delivering on that value.

I just didn’t remember hearing the other competition mention this kind of cap. Also, if I was the fifth to apply for this type of consultation, what would that mean? Would I be scheduled for the following month? Would I have to reapply when the calendar turned over?

These questions roamed rampant when a week went by and I hadn’t heard back from the contest. They had been responsive when I first applied, first acknowledging my request for the service they offered, and then asking what days worked best for me because they were filling out their schedule. I had given them a couple of options, and had even ranked the days by preference.

After a week had gone by with no communication, I sent a follow up to politely inquire. While they said their schedule was already booked for the current week, they did ask about my availability for the following week. I was still a little concerned about why I hadn’t been part of this week’s scheduling, with the Scriptapalooza experience still fresh in my mind, but I responded with a couple more days along with a ranking of my preferences. My mind was put at ease when they scheduled me for May 30.

It was settled…it would only be a couple of days before I was going down the same road again.

On the one hand, I had reaffirmed Dig Down‘s initial score was on target. On the other hand, I hadn’t set out to do that when I had reentered the Santa Barbara Screenplay Competition. My goal had been to determine if I had applied the round of notes and feedback I’d gotten effectively, and the resubmission was meant to gauge that based on whether I scored higher or lower than the previous time.

A score one point lower, but generally the same, told me nothing, especially when I scored higher in some of the criteria being judged, and lower in others.

I tried to rationalize this to myself. Maybe it was because of the judges for the two separate contests. Yes, the scores were nearly identical, but I could see a whole host of reasons why I hadn’t seen the improvement, or even decline, I’d been looking for. Maybe if the first judge reviewed the updated submission – not that I’d expect or rely on them to remember it – but it was possible, and seeing the notes applied to it, maybe I could’ve scored higher. Maybe the second judge wasn’t a fan of the genre, and so even though it scored well, that could have held it back.

I looked to see who the judges were for both contests, and realized none of these scenarios were possible. As it turned out, it was the same judge.

This sent my mind reeling even more. Again, it wasn’t that the judge didn’t like it, it wasn’t that the revisions didn’t work for them. The script had done about the same when I was expecting that with the revisions I’d made off of the two and a half hour phone consultation would have improved it dramatically, or at least gone in a different direction enough to make it noticeable it didn’t work for audiences.

I wanted to get this judge’s perspective–and not just because he wasn’t scoring the screenplay as high as I would’ve liked. Because to me, this wasn’t an isolated incident, but part of a trend. Even Page Turner had only placed Dig Down as a finalist. And the judge there had wanted to see what I did with the revisions based on the phone call with him.

I felt in some way I’d gotten confirmation that Dig Down still needed some work done, but I didn’t have any direction on what needed to be addressed. Looking for possible solutions, I explored what was available to get comprehensive feedback again.

And the first thing to jump out to me was another consultation. This one over Zoom. And with the head of the Santa Barbara Screenplay Competition himself.