Like banging your head against the keyboard

I've been feeling like if I had been doing just that I may have written something better.

I've really been suffering after this huge setback. I've been trying to come up with something better but most of the time I screw my eyes up and pretend like I'm not here. I'm no good, how did I get it so wrong. Of course then I tend to think every idea I get is no good so I can't settle on anything or make any progress.

After the horror of getting such a low mark for something I had poured everything I could into I've been trying to write something else. Something that will get me an acceptable mark in the future.

So one of the problems my tutor had was that my screenplay was set in America. No big shot American producers want to pay a British writer to write about American life. This didn't seem much of a problem when I first pitched a horror western at him. SO Maybe it was just that he doesn't like teen comedies.

So since then I've been working on a number of other treatments. 1 to work on for uni. And others to pitch at an agent we have coming in a few weeks.

The first I'm calling MEN OF WAR. It's my war heist movie. Next up is CRAWLERS. This one is like Critters or James Gunn's Slither. Finally my latest is untitled. It's a slasher movie. British set with the usual cast of nubile young victims. I'm trying to do something a little different from the usual stalk and kill. Add a little bit of a mystery element to it. Just who is the stalker? That kind of thing. Of course I know (the butler did it ha) I'm hoping that I can do this fairly quickly in a way that will intrigue my tutors.

I've been joking that I need a holiday to set it around since Halloween and Friday the 13th are already taken. How about St Georges Day? Of course that then raises the budget as I'd need a cgi dragon. St Paddys day is interesting. The kids could go out underage drinking green Guinness and then a crotchety Irishman could beat them to death with a stick.

I need an event that puts a lot of pressure on my lead early on, like an audition for a talent show. I thought of the idea of setting it around a TV talent show like X factor but then realised how gimmicky and awful that seemed. Of course I be that is exactly the kind of thing a producer would love. Those shows are big right now and the horror genre (particularly the slasher sub genre) is always a surefire way to get a return on your money.

I just can't bring myself to do it.

No maybe a school talent show would do it. Then if I get to a stage where I've met a producer but it's just not quite there for them I can suggest adding the x factor.

Yeah well I may be deluded but I can dream!

Page 13, I'm losing the will to live.

I got my treatment back. The news is not good.

I received a lowly 54. Far less than I expected. Far less than I thought I would ever get. I feel totally destroyed by this.

The main gist of the criticism seems to be that nothing much happens. I mean aside from the fact the tutor didn't like that I was setting it in America. Or that he didn't know what Photon was. Or that it was too long even though we were never given a length to aim for. Nothing of any consequence happened in the story.

Any good news? I apparently have a good grasp of 80s cliches and knowledge of John Hughes films. I mean, is that good? My work was cliched and plagiarised by the late JH?

I mean. OK there was some good news. He liked my last piece. Thought this piece, given how much he liked my last one, would be better. No that's not good news at all, not for this piece.

I worked so hard on it. I thought I had so much going on and had planned so many details. Given all the characters a through line and had good visual keys to show my characters emotions and thoughts. But no, too much focus on details apparently and not enough big things going on. I lost focus of my protagonist.

So reading through the notes he had written on the paper I find one comment, one I've used as the title for this post. It fucking killed me. It was that bad?

So maybe he's right. I was worried that perhaps there didn't seem to be an antagonist so to speak, not one anyway, there were certainly different antagonistic forces, but no villain.

But even if he is dead on the nose that just leaves me questioning how I got it so wrong? What kind of an idiot am I that I couldn't see this? Maybe I shouldn't be doing this at all.

I at least would like to think that it showed that I had put a lot of work in and I had achieved something with the script. I feel like I learned a lot on this one and am a better writer for it. My tutor thinks otherwise. I've gone backwards.

Added to that I didn't get my loan and might not be able to continue with the course and life is just dandy.