Who Owns the Art

When you write a script, it ceases to belong to you as soon as you hand it over to the director and actors. This is fact, and it's a fact that is very, very clear. The only things you control are the words the actors say. To some small extent you control the commas as well. You tell an actor, this is where I want you to pause, by putting in a comma. But even that can be taken away. The director and actors own the script in rehearsal, and the actors own it in performance.

This is a very good thing. It doesn't feel like it at first. You write a script, you give it to people to read out loud, and when they do, you think, this doesn't sound like it sounds in my head, so therefore it's wrong. But you in fact are wrong. You don't get to see it until the performance. Then you say, oh my God, so THAT'S what that can mean. THAT's what I was writing about, this is how it is. 

And then when the actors perform it they hand it over to the audience. The audience feels and thinks, and maybe it's not what the actors wanted them to feel and think. Or maybe it's not what the director wanted them to feel and think, and then it's at three steps removed from what the writer thought they should think. 

And this is good too. It's all come full circle. You thought something up and shared it and got some other people to put stuff in it, and then they shared it, and other people saw it and heard it and connected it to their own experiences and filtered it and hopefully, enjoyed it, learned from it, grew from it. 

The same transfer of ownership happens when you write a short story, poem, essay or novel. You only own it when it's in your hot little hands. As soon as someone else reads it, it belongs to them. It's not as easy to see as the script to actor to audience transfer, but it's the same thing. The reader reads your words and fills in the gaps with their imagination, which is colored by their experience. 

Which is why it pisses me off when writers who get critiqued adamantly defend their work and tell the readers why they are wrong. The readers are never wrong. You may not like it, but you have to accept it. You do not get to dictate how a reader SHOULD receive your work. You can only write and let the reader read. If you don't like what they got from it, you can go back to the work and try again. THAT'S IT.