My Socks Are on Fire!
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Hang Yourself
The above is not intended as advice that should be taken by anybody. It is meant to be a pun on RROAPS, which this post is about.
So once again I submitted a play to this year's Raider Red One-Act Play Spectacular (RROAPS). I thought it was much better than my submission last year and actually thought I had a chance to get in. I found out today that I was wrong.
I don't know what these people want. I think that is part of the problem.
My writing style is rather off the cuff. I write two pages of dialog a day. That's it. I don't typically set out with a plot in mind, I just see what happens. This leads to my plays being rather heavy on dialog rather than action, but that's where I find humor.
There is a response session that I can sign up for to learn why my play wasn't selected. I went to this last year and it was a rather painful experience. Having all of the flaws pointed out in your writing certainly isn't something people sign up for regularly. But I want to know why. Why they didn't select mine, what they didn't like. This is the closest thing I can get to figuring out what they do want. So I will be going through the torture again. I'll probably write about the experience later but if it's anything like last year, I'll walk into a room with a bunch of chairs fanned out in front of one single chair. This will be where I sit while each member of the RROAPS committee explains just exactly why my play was a steaming pile of bullshit.
Which reminds me: I'm pretty sure one of the reasons will be the title. It is called Two and a Half Hours of Pretentious Bull$#!+. Yes I actually spelled it with the punctuation like that. I thought it might help with the expected complaints. Yes I know the title could be offensive, it was meant to be. The play is a humorous look at performance art and one aspect of that is that some performance art is offensive just for the sake of it. Also, no it was not actually two and a half hours long, closer to 15 minutes.
I shouldn't get too down about it though because my submission last year was later picked up by my home theatre in Grapevine and produced as part of their Vignettes for Valentine's performance. Just because I was rejected here it doesn't mean it's a bad script or that I'm a bad writer, even if it feels that way.
On the bright side, he didn't get picked either, so Thumbs up for Slurpees.
Also, If you're here from facebook (I recently reposted this address) please check out the column to your right, there is some info for all intrepid readers who may know me.
It's a long lost cause I can never win
So once again I submitted a play to this year's Raider Red One-Act Play Spectacular (RROAPS). I thought it was much better than my submission last year and actually thought I had a chance to get in. I found out today that I was wrong.
I don't know what these people want. I think that is part of the problem.
My writing style is rather off the cuff. I write two pages of dialog a day. That's it. I don't typically set out with a plot in mind, I just see what happens. This leads to my plays being rather heavy on dialog rather than action, but that's where I find humor.
There is a response session that I can sign up for to learn why my play wasn't selected. I went to this last year and it was a rather painful experience. Having all of the flaws pointed out in your writing certainly isn't something people sign up for regularly. But I want to know why. Why they didn't select mine, what they didn't like. This is the closest thing I can get to figuring out what they do want. So I will be going through the torture again. I'll probably write about the experience later but if it's anything like last year, I'll walk into a room with a bunch of chairs fanned out in front of one single chair. This will be where I sit while each member of the RROAPS committee explains just exactly why my play was a steaming pile of bullshit.
Which reminds me: I'm pretty sure one of the reasons will be the title. It is called Two and a Half Hours of Pretentious Bull$#!+. Yes I actually spelled it with the punctuation like that. I thought it might help with the expected complaints. Yes I know the title could be offensive, it was meant to be. The play is a humorous look at performance art and one aspect of that is that some performance art is offensive just for the sake of it. Also, no it was not actually two and a half hours long, closer to 15 minutes.
I shouldn't get too down about it though because my submission last year was later picked up by my home theatre in Grapevine and produced as part of their Vignettes for Valentine's performance. Just because I was rejected here it doesn't mean it's a bad script or that I'm a bad writer, even if it feels that way.
On the bright side, he didn't get picked either, so Thumbs up for Slurpees.
Also, If you're here from facebook (I recently reposted this address) please check out the column to your right, there is some info for all intrepid readers who may know me.
It's a long lost cause I can never win
Labels: playwriting, rejection, RROAPS
Comments:
Maybe you just have author bias. Try learning more about playwrighting before you get too ambitious.
# posted by 
: 11/15/2007 7:57 AM
: 11/15/2007 7:57 AM
I most certainly have author bias. I'm skeptical of "learning about playwrighing" because I belong to the (somewhat pretentious) school of thought that says art isn't something learned. learning how to write a play the "correct" way seems like trying to become the next Picasso by copying his paintings. What can I cay, I'm from a romantic school of thought on this sort of thing.
What I really need is an editor, someone to bounce ideas off of and receive feedback from. This digital method I currently have of either being accepted to RROAPS or not is both slow an ineffective.
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What I really need is an editor, someone to bounce ideas off of and receive feedback from. This digital method I currently have of either being accepted to RROAPS or not is both slow an ineffective.
