swerytd
Friday 2nd February 2007 11:23pm [Edited]
Guildford
7,542 posts
I think it's fair enough as long as it doesn't get out of hand.
I think people are mature enough not to abuse, but a polite 'Would anybody mind commenting please?' rather than just 'Bump!' (which is a bit curt and not endearing you to anyone) will go down better.
I don't have time to read/critique every post much as I'd like to and people *are* on here for feedback. Sometimes it's difficult to have the guts to post your own work, and it's quite disheartening when no-one responds. If that happens people will think the forum as difficult to impress as the production companies we're trying to write for! This is especially so for a sitcom script -- you're being let in to see something that someone has worked on for a good portion of time and has an emotional investment in. To show people for them to rip apart is a big thing. At the same time, the writer needs to realise that people need to invest a great deal of time reading it and then providing specific feedback. It's not easy itself and it's not like we get paid for it so it's our own time where we could be writing. I myself do it to get the editing experience and allows me to see my own sitcom's failings/successes in other people's work.
Though impressive in content and you can see how many people have read the thread, 4laughs is in general pretty poor for feedback and this forum is a much better way to go for people to learn how to improve their sketches.
This forum is getting busier every day and the core of people who do give feedback find it hard to keep up.
Don't forget, all of us are writers too, and we can't spend *all* our time helping other people, especially if, like me, I've never had anything published so am only giving out opinions, not necessarily professional advice!
Having said that a lot of the advice we give out tends to be covered in the 'Here Be Pirates'/'Rough Idea' threads that are pinned in 'Critique'. New forum members should really be courteous enough to read through those if they *do* want feedback from other members; SlagA has guided them to it in the 'New Newbies to the Critique Forum - Read' thread. Not that I'm having a go at anyone, just noting that a lot of advice I give out seems to be 'You're overwriting -- cut it down', 'Write a mid-series episode, not the character-building one', 'set up all your plots in the first two scenes'
Just my thoughts
Dan