(Bill...I think this is in the correct thread...)


Rookie Sports athletes have them.
Newcomers in Music have them.
Writers have them.

What are they?

The "Sophomore Jinx"
IE. Does your second piece of work compare to your first successful piece.

When I first started writing my first script, I had all these fantastic ideas in my head. It took a couple of years on and off to write the first draft, but I was so excited about the script when I wrote it (at this time, it was purely a hobby). There were about three or four scenes that I built the script around, scenes that blew me away. I then re-wrote it countless times while I studied the formating rules of screenplays. I'm very happy with the final result...

NOW...

Since that first script, I've wrote one first draft of another script and I'm currently working through a second script. That will probably keep me going for the remainder of the year. The only thing is that I don't have that feverish, gung-ho pace of the first script. I'm more reserved, more critical in my writing. I'm basically hard to please. I don't seem to have those couple of scenes that seem to blow me away (or maybe I do, but I'm used to developing them now...). The excitement factor doesn't seem to be there for these last two scripts...that doesn't mean that they are any less important or good as the first one, I'm just more reserved now.

Does anyone else have this? Is it because I've developed my writing skills and my expectations have risen along with it?

The two scripts, the second of which is half complete are good (I think)...even on a 1st draft basis. So I don't think I've hit the "Sophomore Jinx".

What did YOU feel like when you completed your second piece of work? Did it live up to your first?

MacDuff

To me, my second/third/fourth all were better than my first ... but it pained me to say that nobody else thought so. Last summer, I worked the entire summer, even on my vacation, on a feature script that was inspired by a short my friend wrote. That fall, everyone I knew read it and really, really liked the story. I was going to try and make the movie that year but my "co-writer" the one who wrote the short, called plagerism on me and that idea went down the tube. That year I wrote two shorts and had one of my friends read them (she had also read my first) but she said nothing could live up to my first.

I always had that problem, though. On projects, if I think one is REALLY good work, everybody else will just say "eh, it was okay." If I hate the project, others will like it. If I think something is just "okay" others will love it.

My advice is to never think your work is great. Think it's good or alright, but never great. Your just begging for trouble there.

^-Something Roald Dahl said.

I wrote an sci-fi script back in 2000 based on a short story I came up with. It was, at least I thought, pretty damn good. In fact, it should still be on my computer. I should put it on the site.

Anyway, I showed it to a bunch of people. My friends, my family, pretty much everyone.  All of them looked at it and went, "Eh". Devastating. Most of them said it was too much like the Matrix.