Re-reading your own work

[Paul Dudbridge]

I just re-read my own script for new film A Lifetime Alone.

Having not looked at it for a few months aka great advice from Stephen King, to really distance yourself from the work and start to read it as someone else would. You find yourself forgetting plot points and lines and really having an objective view. I always knew that a few scenes needed work and I can identify a little easier now why and what needs to be done.

It was also the best reading I've had. The last one those months ago was slow, uneven and needed so much work. It's just funny what a little time can do for you. Also, that just with viewings of your own work, your current frame of mind and attitude can make so much difference. Nothing had changed between readings but I guess I had. I realised with all the fiddling and tweaks out the way I had written the story I wanted to tell at the pace and style I wanted to tell it at too.

So, there's the tip for today, leave your work alone, whether a script, film or song whatever. Give it time to breathe and then get back to it months later. Good and bad points will be painfully and pleasingly obvious.

D

[•°o.O emily O.o°•]

Ah Stephen King...he is so wise. Although I think bouncing your ideas off someone else is invaluable, you're right that it helps if you leave your own stuff a while so it's fresh when you read it. Looking forward to hearing more about this new project then...
em

[Will]

I do the same thing... It's always helpful to get some distance between writing something and revising it. It gives you a bit of objectivity, as much as you can get with your own stuff anyway. A couple of weeks in a drawer does wonders for a script/story/whatnot. I'm editing a couple of stories at the moment so I can submit them to magazines, and while I was happy with them last time I read them, I'm still finding things I want to change, and I've read 'em a million times.

So... what you said.

[mariamgaballa]

I often find that when I leave my writing and then come back to it, my style has changed, so the piece develops another voice as I alter it and it gains a new dimension. But sometimes it is difficult to reconcile the way I wrote a year ago, or even a few months ago, to the way I write at the moment.