Recently read an analysis of one of my early scripts. The review was..not so great. In the spirit of celebrating how far I’ve come, I thought I'd share some of its comments. They’re for a psychological thriller called THE PATRON. #Screenwriting #WritingCommunity #WritersLife

“The dialogue is very predictable all the way through the story. We could pretty much guess what a character would say at each moment along the way. Please try and give us words or moments that will surprise us.”

“We know what scene is coming up next and the storyline never surprises us. In just about every scene we can tell what is going to be said and what is going to happen next. Even how they move their bodies in a scene (Victoria’s body position after she has sex) is predictable.”

“It is difficult to tell who the audience for this script would be. For most of its length it plays like a Lifetime melodrama but then has graphic sex scenes which seem to come from a totally different movie.”

“Women who would watch it for the melodrama would be put off by the S&M nature of the sex scenes and those who would watch it for the sex would find the rest of the story predictable. It becomes too much like FATAL ATTRACTION in Act III.”

“The overall feeling from this script was “so what?””

“Congratulations to the author for turning in a screenplay with almost no spelling, grammar, or punctuation mistakes (a rare feat these days!). There are a couple of missing commas here and there but that is it.”

The happy ending? I made edits, put it on the BL site, got an 8, and got contacted by a producer (first time ever). His words: “Just a note to say how much I liked THE PATRON... Congrats and hope all is well.” (Fun fact: He used to be a VP of Production for Harvey Weinstein.)

Months later I placed in the Nicholl with a different script – and got read requests from Benderspink and Madhouse, even though they had initially ignored my queries.

The lesson? Take feedback seriously, but don't let it cripple your self-worth. Always keep going!