The Critique forum allows BCG's aspiring writers to post their work and receive feedback, advice and if you're thick skinned enough overall critique from other forum members, who themselves have different levels of experience. There are absolute beginners to drunken professionals, all feedback & advice given is valid as they are your potential audience.
Community
One of the most important aspects of this forum (and any forum) is community. It will only continue to exist is if you contribute. Adding your own script is only one half of your contribution. If you want to receive more feedback and create more contacts, you have to return the favour. Leave feedback for others. This is vital to this particular forums existence and growth.
Forum Etiquette
Unlike the overall forums Rules/Terms of Use, which are mandatory, forum etiquette is not. But as described in the paragraph above, this forum relies on members contributions for it to exist. If you receive feedback from someone kind enough to take time out of their lives to offer it, please return the favour. If we all did this, the forum would flourish.
There's being honest and then there's being cruel. No one needs to be told their work is sh*t. If a producer later on decides to tell them that, then that is up to them. But here on this forum, and at this level, it is simply not necessary. Yes, they will need to grow thick skinned to survive in this business but aggressively demeaning a new user after they have bravely posted their first attempt at a script isn't really going to help anybody, it will only give this community a bad name and make you look like a dick.
Posting and formatting
Seeing as you are looking for people to take time out of their lives to read your script, it's only fair that you make sure what you present to them is easy to read. I will offer an example of neat formatting in a post below for you to use as a template. It is not necessary for you to use it, but it will at least guide you towards posting something more eligible for others to easily process.
When posting sitcoms, it is advised you post a few scenes at a time (10 pages seems to be the standard) and then offer anyone who is interested the chance to read the rest. Posting a 24 min sitcom script with 50 pages is the quickest way for you to NOT receive replies.
Multiple threads
This can be linked back to forum etiquette. You do not present yourself well if you post 10 sketches at the same time in multiple threads. We admire your enthusiasm and work ethic but if you want to increase your overall feedback, try to spread your postings out. Flooding the board with your threads will give the impression you're only interested in quantity and not quality and will deter people from reading your stuff. If you've had the time to write 10 sketches, maybe you should go back and look at your first sketch an redraft that 10 times instead? Writing is rewriting. But this isn't to discourage you from posting, just think about it next time you want to submit more than one piece in one day.
Any other suggestions? Please send me a PM.
Below is a basic template for people to familiarize themselves with a preferred forum formatting. Please quote the post and copy and paste if you wish.
Hope this helps.
