My friend and I were taking a writing class, and our final assignment was to write the book for a play. I showed him a concept that I’ve been wanting to get done for at least five years, but never got around to writing it, and we decided that this would be our story.
Next thing you know, we were drowning in responsibilities and ended up not being able to sit down and actually write it for most of the semester. We finally reunited last week and wrote the first half in one sitting. We shared the writing duties, and I revised and edited some of his writing under his analysis.
The problem came with the second half. I spent the whole week working on other projects and, although we agreed to get back to it on the day before the deadline, I could not make it. So, he woke up earlier on the last day and finished the script by himself. He spent his whole commute to class doing that.
I planned on doing the same thing, but when I was on my way to class, he told me he had already finished it. I went to read it and… It was bad. Like, really bad. Plot holes, typos, grammatical erros, cliché tropes, unfunny one-liners, unnecessary twists, nonsensical ending, overall, a hard read. I appreciate his effort, but knowing his work as of recently, his writing is just not it. I know that’s subjective, but I actually work as a writer and a proofreader and, let’s just say, I would send this back with SO MANY notes.
That made me nervous for many reasons. To start, I hold my work to a certain standard, and I would not feel comfortable turning in that script with my name on it. Especially because our script would be read aloud in front of the whole class.
If I had the time, I like to believe that I would have talked it over with him and we could have edited it together. But since I was an hour away from class, I decided to revise and edit the whole thing by myself and, in that proccess, I scrapped the whole ending he had written. When I arrived, I told him right away "I changed the ending". He went to read it and whispered to me "so, you threw away everything I wrote?" and right away we proceeded to read my version to the class. We received a lot of praise from both the professor and our classmates, so I felt a bit justified.
Even then, I could obviously understand why he would feel upset. I would, too. I apologized to him after class and he said it was okay, and acted accordingly. We spent the rest of the day together, and although he joked about me "scrapping his ending" to anyone who would listen, we had fun, he was as loving as he always is, and we had a great time. Still, I feel like I fucked him over, even though the academical result was great for both of us. So, AITA?
You did screw him over. Twice. The first time when you couldn’t finish the project together because of your schedule in the last week. The second when you completely rewrote his work.
You’re trying to justify this by saying you got a better grade as a result. That’s irrelevant. You should have gotten a zero because this was a collaborative project and you didn’t collaborate.
You were also very selfish from the offset. Instead of coming up with an idea together you pitched your own project which naturally having been contemplating the story line for half a decade you had a huge advantage in writing.
What would you have done had your story not landed with the teacher?
YTA why didn’t you meet up until the last semester? Then YOU declined to meet up all week and skipped out on the only day you did agree to
To answer your question, both of our schedules were pretty packed, neither side was free to work on it until last week. But I agree that skipping out our meetup was a dick move on my part.
YTA
You definitely fucked him over. YOU chose not to write an ending so he took initiative and did so. Maybe his writing wasn’t great but at least he stepped up! You threw away his work like it was trash. I’m honestly suprised he forgave you. My advice is to reflect on your actions and treat this as a life lesson to treat others how you want to be treated. You can’t change the past but you can try to be better in the future.
OP, you suck. YTA
YTA for doing it at the last minute
You’ll do well in Hollywood.
NAH. Sure, you should have met up when you said you would, and decided in person and in collaboration to throw out his bad work and write something better instead. But the end result likely would have been about the same. Since it seems you work professionally as a writer while your friend presumably does not, it’s not surprising or objectionable that you’d do the bulk of the assignment.
But next time you need to schedule group projects better. They should have priority over your solo projects. If you have to complete a project last-minute during your commute, it should never be a group project.
We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions. As a writer you must know where the phrase “the ends justify the means” comes from. You are using the good grade to justify your asshole actions. As an editor how would you feel about a writer who blew off their assignment for weeks on end?
As a student I would have cared more about the grade than the product, and clearly your partner is not really angry. I guess you lucked out.
YTA
YTA. You failed to show up at the end, you consistently procrastinated throughout the entire project and could have at least called him to discuss and explain why you need to make the changes your did. You disrespected his efforts and could have at least provided some constructive feedback. Group projects suck so it was incumbent on you to make the effort to hold up your end of the bargain instead of allowing him to do all that work then throw it away making his effort a complete waste of time.