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I'm a great believer in constructive criticism and feedback. The key word is constructive. It's easy to dump on somebody's work. It's hard to tell someone what's wrong with their script and how to fix it.
The more people you give your new screenplay to for their "opinion" or "thoughts" the more confused (and depressed) you'll get. The object is to weed out the bullshit.
What's bullshit? As soon as somebody starts telling you how they would do it you know they're more intent on having you write their movie than helping you rewrite yours.
And be wary of people who say nice things. It's even easier to tell you they loved your script and toss off a few nice comments. That's about as sincere as someone suggesting that you have lunch soon.
If you're honest about your work, you pretty much know what's wrong with it and you're so exhausted from completing the first draft that you don't have the energy to fix what you know needs fixing. So you hope someone you trust will tell you what's not working, then you can go back to the script and fix it.
When we all finish a draft or at least the draft we want to show people, we want everyone to say it's great and ready for production. But it doesn't work like that. There's always something that can be improved. And the further along you are into the project (say 3 or 4 drafts) the stuff that needs fixing or tweaking is harder to nail down.
So when somebody says that there's a weak transition on page 48 and that the last page is unsatisfying, then they offer you a couple of ideas on how to fix it...listen.
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