Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Watch Twitter, potentially the greatest writers' room, workshop a concept

The last 24 hours in my twitter feed have been a lot of fun. It started when on a lark I posted a quick pitch that I spitballed earlier in the day to another writer:

"Premise: a retiring Olympian has the greatest sex of his life while at the Olypmic Village. He never gets the name of the other athelete, and doesn't see her before the end of the Games

To find her, he ditches retirement and is determined to compete 4 years later, past his prime."


Sometimes I toss out these quick pitches and they get little reaction. This one seemed to hit a chord with some people. One frequent reaction was to immediately start poking at the premise:















Granted, my pitch was less than 280 characters, so it's not like I was delivering a full treatment. I don't blame people for their first reaction being, "Here's why that hook doesn't work." But here's what I found impressive as the tone in my mentions turned from nitpicking to supportive...















And some others liked the potential the story had to subvert familiar tropes:







But best of all were the people who looked at the plot holes in the premise and decided to work the problem. It's easy to poke holes, but it takes more effort and creativity to solve them. This is how you give good notes. Look for story problems and plot holes as opportunities for creativity, not roadblocks to stop you from moving forward.







A couple people suggested the same complications...









And then there were the sillier riffs.





And then a twist on the concept, changing the genre.



All in all, I got a big kick out of this "virtual writers room." Sometimes the hive mind can solve problems that one person can't. Seeing how this one idea was workshopped might offer an example of how to receive and contribute to improving both your own ideas and the ideas of others.

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