I got back a flip response to some feedback I gave someone. It boiled down to "I don't know why you would have that reaction to my script. I don't see that there's a problem where you say there is."
The general rule for feedback is: if someone tells you how to fix something, you aren't obliged to fix it that way. But if they tell you something is broken, you better fix it.
Your obligation is to figure out why your reader feels something is broken. You need to reread your own material through their perspective until you can see the flaw that they have spotted.
This takes emotional effort. Sometimes it takes a bit of time. It's not easy to shift out of your own perspective, from which your screenplay is just dandy.
But learning how to take criticism to heart is really one of the things that separates professionals from the perpetually aspiring.
It's a good idea not to respond to a critique at all until you can see the flaw. Otherwise you're just going to piss off your reader, who will wonder why you asked for feedback if you didn't want it. (For example, I'm kinda pissed off right now.)
When I get comment I disagree with on my own work, what I say is, "I'll take a look at that." And then I do. And, later, I usually realize the comment is right (if not the solution offered), I am wrong, and something is broken in the screenplay after all.
You can ask for a clarification -- "Are you saying that X is a problem, or do you mean that the problem is Y?"
But all feedback comes from somewhere. And that means that all feedback is true. Figuring out how it's true is the job of every good writer.
Showing posts with label feedback. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feedback. Show all posts
Friday, December 30, 2011
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Great Feedback: Not Available in a 24-Pak at Costco
Q. Many writers said in their blogs or guides that is important to get good feedback, so I'm wondering, how to convince people not to "spare" you - meaning, saying what they exactly mean, without being afraid of hurting your feelings. Or, is there a good "read between the lines" technique for all those "it's good, but something is missing - what is missing? - I don't know" comments? And, how you handle these issues? (I mean, even my own brother is being vague with his comments, even though he knows me all his life and knows I'd rather get slammed for not doing something right, than leave it incomplete or not done properly.)The first thing you can do is pursue the feedback. Make it really clear: "This is a rough draft, and I'm going to be rewriting it anyway, so fire away." Or, "Please kick my ass."
Often you have worries about your own material. Ask about them. "Are there too many minor characters -- did you find it hard to track them?" "Did you like the scene in the convenience store or did you feel that the story lost steam there?" "Did you enjoy the way Quentin is so over-the-top, or did he feel too much like a cartoon?" "Did you buy the romance?" "Did you like Sally or was she too much of a pain in the ass?" "Did it feel too long?" "Where did it sag?" Your reader can then reassure you, or go along with your own criticism.
One great way to get honest feedback is to start up a writing group. Everyone in a writing group is there to give and get honest feedback, so they won't have compunctions about busting you for the flaws in your writing. (Just make sure that everyone starts out saying something nice. See the section in CRAFTY SCREENWRITING on writing groups.) If you don't live in a town with a lot of writers, you could form a long-distance one using Skype (or whatever free internet teleconferencing software allows multiparty conference calls).
Bear in mind, not everyone can give you clear feedback. All feedback is useful to a point, but some people analyze their experience reading something, and some people don't. If someone doesn't think about why he likes movies, he may not be able to tell you why he liked or didn't like a script. If someone doesn't read fiction, they may not be able to imagine the movie from the pages you have written.
Also, you have to match the reader to the reading. If someone doesn't like chick flicks, he may not be able to give you good feedback on your chick flick. It may not be in his wheelhouse.
Now, how do you get great feedback? That's harder. Great feedback not only tells you what seems wrong, it tells you what is wrong. Great feedback tells you what is structurally wrong with your story.
Good feedback: "the middle sags." Great feedback: "the middle sags because it's no longer clear what your main character wants."
Good feedback: "I don't care about the main character." Great feedback: "I don't care about the main character because he doesn't really have a goal, so I have no reason to root for him."
You will find great feedback about as often as you find great writing, which is to say, rarely. And you won't necessarily find the two bundled together. Of the people who've given me the best feedback, maybe half are writers; the other half are development executives and producers. These people are treasures. They give you notes that cause you a lot of work; you think, "Crap. How did I miss that?"
How do you find people like that? Same way you find a great agent or a great producer: perseverance and luck. I found Tommy Gushue by asking on my blog for a reader intern. I met Victoria Lucas when we were both development execs working on projects together. I met Virginia Rankin by taking her a bunch of pitches; she had really good notes on all of them. When someone gives you really deep insight into your material, hold onto them!
While you're at it, develop your own feedback skills. When you read someone else's material, think carefully about what works and doesn't work -- and why. Analyze the elements of story: main character, opportunity/problem/goal, obstacles/antagonist/flaws, jeopardy and stakes. If you're critiquing a TV pitch, really try to go under the hood and see how the story engine works. Trying to come up with springboards yourself. Sometimes you need to play with a story in your head to really figure out how it works.
Then some lucky writer can find you.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
The Power of Positive Thinking
I've been giving feedback in various forms for perhaps 20 years. Because I do script evaluations over the Internet, in addition to my work for producers, I'm can run across wildly irregular material. Working with both professionals and aspiring writers has taught me a few things about giving effective feedback.
What do you do when you come across a bad script from a friend or colleague, and you want to be honest without being destructive?
When I do notes, the first draft can occasionally be horribly negative. I go through the script making little "oh, for heaven's sake!" notes to myself. There's nothing wrong with making this kind of note, so long as you don't communicate it to the writer. The notes are helpful because often I can figure out later on (from the ending of the script, or upon reflection) what the writer was trying to do. Often the writer's intentions become clearest where he succeeds least, because it's the most ambitious scenes that show what he was going for.
Then, after reading, I write up the main body of my notes. These are the real notes that I'll eventually send.
I try to always start with a compliment. We had a rule in our writing group back in LA that the entire first round had to be compliments. That helps prevent writer hara-kiri. In the rare cases where I can't find something I like about the craft -- an ear for dialog, or a clever twist -- I compliment the research, or the imagination, or how heartfelt the material is. Everyone has a tendency to jump in with criticism. If you start with something nice to say, the criticism will go down more smoothly.
Then I try to figure out what the movie is. No one writes a script without having a movie in their mind. They may not have got it on the page, but they had a vision in their mind. What was it? What is an even better version of that?
If you can make a really strong case for what the movie should be, then you can skip a good deal of your criticism; it becomes moot. I read a script recently where a lot of the scenes seemed irrelevant. But I could see that there was a potentially powerful relationship that wanted to be placed at the core of the movie; the story of that relationship was the movie the script wanted to be. So rather than saying, "a bunch of your scenes have got nothing to do with anything," I was able to say, "I think the core of the movie is the relationship between Parker and Schwartz, and if you focus on that relationship, you'll have a stronger movie." If the writer then puts the Parker-Schwartz relationship at the center of his storytelling, the irrelevant scenes will simply fall away.
If you can figure out what the movie is, and sell that movie back to the writer, then you can often skip as much as half of your criticisms. Say the movie is full of aimless scenes of dull dialog. But you've discovered a powerful story motor lurking in the background. ("I think that Kiki is really trying to get her ex-boyfriend to take her back.") If the writer brings the story motor into the foreground, that will tend to focus the dialog scenes. They won't be aimless any more. They likely will be less dull, too, since something will be going on in them.
I'd always rather say, "Here's the movie I think you're trying to write" than "the script you wrote sucks because here's why." And the former takes care of a good deal of the latter.
Note that I'm not saying, "I'd rather see a movie about Parker and Schwartz," or "If I were writing this, I'd throw all this stuff out and write about Parker and Schwartz." I'm saying, "It seems to me that the movie you're trying to tell is really about Parker and Schwartz. Their relationship propels the theme you seem to be interested in, and the failure of that relationship is what earns you the finale you wrote." You have to figure out the movie that the writer seems to be trying to write, even if he doesn't know it.
Sometimes, of course, you spot an opportunity for a stronger hook or a more accessible movie, but you can tell it's not what the writer has in mind. Then you have to say, "By the way, I think you're trying to write a dark movie about the futility of men's relationships,but if Schwartz was a girl, this could be a terrific rom-com, with a happier ending of course."
But leave it at that, and then move on to whatever the writer seems to be trying to achieve.
I think the most effective way to approach criticisms is to look at the elements of story. As I keep telling you guys, they are:
a. a character we care about
b. with an opportunity, problem or goal
c. who faces obstacles and/or an antagonist
d. who stands to win something he doesn't have (stakes)
e. and/or stands to lose something precious to him (jeopardy).
When scripts fail, at least 80% of the time they're failing because one of these elements isn't there or doesn't work. And it's amazing how many repercussions that has. A failure at the story level will take the fun out of your action sequences. It will sap the urgency and snap out of your dialog. It will make short scenes seem tedious.
For that matter, bad story elements almost always seem ruin your story structure. You would think you could theoretically craft a perfectly well-structured plot without stakes or jeopardy, or without knowing exactly what the heroine wants, but in practice, the writer senses that's something wrong, and starts throwing extraneous plot at the movie, trying to find what's missing, and sooner or later, the whole plot train derails as it goes searching for its missing elements.
Fix the story elements, and often the plot problems fix themselves, once you rewrite towards the revised story elements.
As you can tell, I think the key to good feedback is to say less rather than more, and to say positive constructive things rather than just pointing out what's not working. A good tennis pro won't fix your grip, your stance and your swing. A good tennis pro will fix your stance, and see if that fixes your grip and your swing.
Sometimes, of course, craft is lacking. The dialog may be bad because the writer just doesn't have an ear for dialog, or because he's not even a native speaker of English. At that point you do have to criticize. But even there, you can phrase a criticism positively rather than negatively. Compare these two remarks:
"All your characters sound the same."
"Try to give each character a distinctive voice."
These are basically the exact same idea. But one hurts. The other doesn't. The key to effective criticism is telling the writer what he could do better. No one likes being told they failed. But few people mind being encouraged to do better, especially if you tell them what the standard is, and how to get there:
"Try to give each character a distinctive voice. Ideally, you should be able to tell who's speaking just from the dialog, without seeing the character name. Look at each line, and see if there's some way you can tweak it so that it reveals something about the character's personality, in addition to communicating what they want to communicate. Tweak it so it sounds not only like something they would say, but something only they would say."
I usually wrap up my notes by giving a cleaned-up version of the page notes I wrote when I first read the script. I think it's helpful for the writer to know how the read went. I don't try to make myself look smarter than I am. If I missed something important, I'll leave in the notes that show my confusion (but with a parenthetical explaning that I got it later). After all, if I missed something important, maybe the writer should hang a lantern on it. Other readers will likely be reading less carefully than I am, after all. I'm getting paid to read, but they're working through the stack of reading that is keeping them from sleep and/or sex with their beloved. It's good for a writer to get a sense of how the read went.
What do you do when you come across a bad script from a friend or colleague, and you want to be honest without being destructive?
When I do notes, the first draft can occasionally be horribly negative. I go through the script making little "oh, for heaven's sake!" notes to myself. There's nothing wrong with making this kind of note, so long as you don't communicate it to the writer. The notes are helpful because often I can figure out later on (from the ending of the script, or upon reflection) what the writer was trying to do. Often the writer's intentions become clearest where he succeeds least, because it's the most ambitious scenes that show what he was going for.
Then, after reading, I write up the main body of my notes. These are the real notes that I'll eventually send.
I try to always start with a compliment. We had a rule in our writing group back in LA that the entire first round had to be compliments. That helps prevent writer hara-kiri. In the rare cases where I can't find something I like about the craft -- an ear for dialog, or a clever twist -- I compliment the research, or the imagination, or how heartfelt the material is. Everyone has a tendency to jump in with criticism. If you start with something nice to say, the criticism will go down more smoothly.
Then I try to figure out what the movie is. No one writes a script without having a movie in their mind. They may not have got it on the page, but they had a vision in their mind. What was it? What is an even better version of that?
If you can make a really strong case for what the movie should be, then you can skip a good deal of your criticism; it becomes moot. I read a script recently where a lot of the scenes seemed irrelevant. But I could see that there was a potentially powerful relationship that wanted to be placed at the core of the movie; the story of that relationship was the movie the script wanted to be. So rather than saying, "a bunch of your scenes have got nothing to do with anything," I was able to say, "I think the core of the movie is the relationship between Parker and Schwartz, and if you focus on that relationship, you'll have a stronger movie." If the writer then puts the Parker-Schwartz relationship at the center of his storytelling, the irrelevant scenes will simply fall away.
If you can figure out what the movie is, and sell that movie back to the writer, then you can often skip as much as half of your criticisms. Say the movie is full of aimless scenes of dull dialog. But you've discovered a powerful story motor lurking in the background. ("I think that Kiki is really trying to get her ex-boyfriend to take her back.") If the writer brings the story motor into the foreground, that will tend to focus the dialog scenes. They won't be aimless any more. They likely will be less dull, too, since something will be going on in them.
I'd always rather say, "Here's the movie I think you're trying to write" than "the script you wrote sucks because here's why." And the former takes care of a good deal of the latter.
Note that I'm not saying, "I'd rather see a movie about Parker and Schwartz," or "If I were writing this, I'd throw all this stuff out and write about Parker and Schwartz." I'm saying, "It seems to me that the movie you're trying to tell is really about Parker and Schwartz. Their relationship propels the theme you seem to be interested in, and the failure of that relationship is what earns you the finale you wrote." You have to figure out the movie that the writer seems to be trying to write, even if he doesn't know it.
Sometimes, of course, you spot an opportunity for a stronger hook or a more accessible movie, but you can tell it's not what the writer has in mind. Then you have to say, "By the way, I think you're trying to write a dark movie about the futility of men's relationships,but if Schwartz was a girl, this could be a terrific rom-com, with a happier ending of course."
But leave it at that, and then move on to whatever the writer seems to be trying to achieve.
I think the most effective way to approach criticisms is to look at the elements of story. As I keep telling you guys, they are:
a. a character we care about
b. with an opportunity, problem or goal
c. who faces obstacles and/or an antagonist
d. who stands to win something he doesn't have (stakes)
e. and/or stands to lose something precious to him (jeopardy).
When scripts fail, at least 80% of the time they're failing because one of these elements isn't there or doesn't work. And it's amazing how many repercussions that has. A failure at the story level will take the fun out of your action sequences. It will sap the urgency and snap out of your dialog. It will make short scenes seem tedious.
For that matter, bad story elements almost always seem ruin your story structure. You would think you could theoretically craft a perfectly well-structured plot without stakes or jeopardy, or without knowing exactly what the heroine wants, but in practice, the writer senses that's something wrong, and starts throwing extraneous plot at the movie, trying to find what's missing, and sooner or later, the whole plot train derails as it goes searching for its missing elements.
Fix the story elements, and often the plot problems fix themselves, once you rewrite towards the revised story elements.
As you can tell, I think the key to good feedback is to say less rather than more, and to say positive constructive things rather than just pointing out what's not working. A good tennis pro won't fix your grip, your stance and your swing. A good tennis pro will fix your stance, and see if that fixes your grip and your swing.
Sometimes, of course, craft is lacking. The dialog may be bad because the writer just doesn't have an ear for dialog, or because he's not even a native speaker of English. At that point you do have to criticize. But even there, you can phrase a criticism positively rather than negatively. Compare these two remarks:
"All your characters sound the same."
"Try to give each character a distinctive voice."
These are basically the exact same idea. But one hurts. The other doesn't. The key to effective criticism is telling the writer what he could do better. No one likes being told they failed. But few people mind being encouraged to do better, especially if you tell them what the standard is, and how to get there:
"Try to give each character a distinctive voice. Ideally, you should be able to tell who's speaking just from the dialog, without seeing the character name. Look at each line, and see if there's some way you can tweak it so that it reveals something about the character's personality, in addition to communicating what they want to communicate. Tweak it so it sounds not only like something they would say, but something only they would say."
I usually wrap up my notes by giving a cleaned-up version of the page notes I wrote when I first read the script. I think it's helpful for the writer to know how the read went. I don't try to make myself look smarter than I am. If I missed something important, I'll leave in the notes that show my confusion (but with a parenthetical explaning that I got it later). After all, if I missed something important, maybe the writer should hang a lantern on it. Other readers will likely be reading less carefully than I am, after all. I'm getting paid to read, but they're working through the stack of reading that is keeping them from sleep and/or sex with their beloved. It's good for a writer to get a sense of how the read went.
One thing I never do is tell writers they're no good. I might say that the script is not there yet, or that the subject seems uncommercial. I might say they have a lot of craft they need to learn. But who's qualified to judge their potential? Maybe they need to write ten more scripts, and then they'll be good. George Lucas's early drafts of THE STAR WARS were horrible. I would hate anyone to read my early stuff. And suppose you're right, and they suck. So what? If they're a writer, they'll keep writing even if they suck. And now they're mad at you.
The final thing I do is sit on the notes for at least 24 hours. Often I come up with a much better way to put something, or a crucial insight, or even a "solution" for the movie, without even really trying to. I do a final pass, upgrading any remaining negative comments that might have slipped through, unpacking remarks that aren't clear, and adding in any new insights.
It's tempting to fire off notes right away, but hold off, just like you'd hold off sending anything you just wrote. You'd think people who are anxiously awaiting your notes would appreciate your speed, but if you turn notes around too fast, they feel you didn't spend enough time on them. And you'll always have more perspective the next day.
Everything I've read has a better version hidden within it. That's the version that's in the writer's head -- maybe only in the back of his mind -- trying to get onto the page. It may not be a movie -- sometimes it's a novel. Or a comic book. But there's always something better that just isn't on the page yet. If you can draw that out and sell it to the writer, then you're giving truly great notes.
Friday, February 13, 2009
How Do I Take Feedback?
Questioning and Aspiring writes:
a. Readers are usually right that there's something wrong. If they find the story predictable, something is definitely wrong. If they don't like the main character, there's something wrong.
The only case where you could safely ignore feedback would be when you obviously asked the wrong person. Lisa might not be the right reader for your STARGATE spin-off. My dad wouldn't be the right reader for your Will Ferrell picture. If you're writing torture porn, I might not be your ideal reader, though as a professional I could probably give you good notes on structure and dialog. So be careful who you're asking for feedback.
b. Readers are often right about what's wrong. If they say "I don't like the main character," the problem might not be likability. If you think your main character is perfectly likable, that comment might mean that you haven't given the main character a compelling opportunity, problem or goal. He might dither too much. He might seem to introverted, or dull. Very few readers are capable of identifying what is structurally wrong with the elements of your story. Most will identify the symptoms rather than the cause. They are right that there is something wrong, but they may be wrong about what is wrong.
c. Readers are usually wrong about how to fix it. Nine out of ten suggestions from civilians will either not work at all, or work, but derail another section of your story, or make it a different story. Sometimes the different story might be a better one, which is why you have to listen to all ideas. But you're not obliged to take them.
d. It is your script. It is your vision. Don't write anything you don't believe in. Try something if you're not sure, but if it doesn't work, go back to your previous draft. If you don't like what you've done, it's unlikely anyone else will.
My advice is NOT to argue. It discourages people from giving you negative feedback in the future. But more importantly, it prevents you from hearing the criticism. What you are allowed to do is ask follow-up questions to clarify the criticism -- "do you not like him, or do you not care about him?" You are allowed to say, "What I was trying to do with that scene is this." And if the criticism seems completely off base, you can cut it short by saying, "Thanks, I'll take a look at that."
"I'll take a look at that" is writer-ese for "I think that's a dumb suggestion. But I might be wrong, and once I get it home and work with it, it might turn out to be a great suggestion. So I'm going to shut up and listen." Fairly often, suggestions I thought were horrible, in the depths of my resistance, turned out to be great, or result in something great once I'd worked on them some.
And you can always come back, even when you're getting paid, and say, "You know, I tried that, and it just didn't work." If you honestly tried it, and it truly didn't work in any way, shape or form, then nine times out of ten you won't have to pursue it further.
Remember, feedback is a gift. Even when you're paying for it, it's a gift. It allows you to see your work through other people's perspective. To get perspective on your own work by yourself requires vast amounts of time. Readers have the advantage of not being in your head and not knowing what you intend, but only what you've done.
And, bear in mind, you are writing your screenplay for other readers who are not your friend. If your friends are beating you up about something, what are the odds that a gatekeeper at a production company or agency is going to have the same problem? Only they won't give you feedback, they'll just ditch your script.
"I'll take a look at that." Practice it in front of a mirror if you have to. And try to listen as carefully, and as whole-heartedly, as possible. And then do what feels right to you.
Q. I'm an aspiring writer moving toward my first spec screenplay (after having already written a spec pilot) for which I've work shopped my very detailed step outline in my Feature Writing class and also handed it out to some friends. My fellow film-aspiring though non-writing friends are the ones with the harshest notes, and they happen to be the friends whose story sense I trust most. I've received great feedback on the large strokes, and the originality and inventiveness of my story but have gotten notes on my execution, logic issues inherent, and/or character/story motivations. I react defensively and usually argue my approach. How do I decide what I should change, whose opinion I should trust, and how do I implement said feedback without feeling like I have lost everything I enjoyed and that it is no longer a work of my authorship, but rather a compilation of problems other people had with what I wrote or others' suggestions that I implemented? It's scary to have worked on research and an outline for the better half of a year to then have readers suggest changes that would invariably alter my entire story and make it unrecognizable. I'm sure you can relate this to getting notes from execs, producers, etc. and because I know this is a large part of the business of being a professional writer-- I want to figure out how to deal with this now. How do I become a writer that accepts, understands, and acknowledges good feedback (versus being defensive) and possibly even a writer who realizes the faults in his scripts before they reach the hands of someone else?My rule of thumb is: readers are usually right that there's something wrong. They're often right about what's wrong. They're usually wrong about how to fix it.
a. Readers are usually right that there's something wrong. If they find the story predictable, something is definitely wrong. If they don't like the main character, there's something wrong.
The only case where you could safely ignore feedback would be when you obviously asked the wrong person. Lisa might not be the right reader for your STARGATE spin-off. My dad wouldn't be the right reader for your Will Ferrell picture. If you're writing torture porn, I might not be your ideal reader, though as a professional I could probably give you good notes on structure and dialog. So be careful who you're asking for feedback.
b. Readers are often right about what's wrong. If they say "I don't like the main character," the problem might not be likability. If you think your main character is perfectly likable, that comment might mean that you haven't given the main character a compelling opportunity, problem or goal. He might dither too much. He might seem to introverted, or dull. Very few readers are capable of identifying what is structurally wrong with the elements of your story. Most will identify the symptoms rather than the cause. They are right that there is something wrong, but they may be wrong about what is wrong.
c. Readers are usually wrong about how to fix it. Nine out of ten suggestions from civilians will either not work at all, or work, but derail another section of your story, or make it a different story. Sometimes the different story might be a better one, which is why you have to listen to all ideas. But you're not obliged to take them.
d. It is your script. It is your vision. Don't write anything you don't believe in. Try something if you're not sure, but if it doesn't work, go back to your previous draft. If you don't like what you've done, it's unlikely anyone else will.
My advice is NOT to argue. It discourages people from giving you negative feedback in the future. But more importantly, it prevents you from hearing the criticism. What you are allowed to do is ask follow-up questions to clarify the criticism -- "do you not like him, or do you not care about him?" You are allowed to say, "What I was trying to do with that scene is this." And if the criticism seems completely off base, you can cut it short by saying, "Thanks, I'll take a look at that."
"I'll take a look at that" is writer-ese for "I think that's a dumb suggestion. But I might be wrong, and once I get it home and work with it, it might turn out to be a great suggestion. So I'm going to shut up and listen." Fairly often, suggestions I thought were horrible, in the depths of my resistance, turned out to be great, or result in something great once I'd worked on them some.
And you can always come back, even when you're getting paid, and say, "You know, I tried that, and it just didn't work." If you honestly tried it, and it truly didn't work in any way, shape or form, then nine times out of ten you won't have to pursue it further.
Remember, feedback is a gift. Even when you're paying for it, it's a gift. It allows you to see your work through other people's perspective. To get perspective on your own work by yourself requires vast amounts of time. Readers have the advantage of not being in your head and not knowing what you intend, but only what you've done.
And, bear in mind, you are writing your screenplay for other readers who are not your friend. If your friends are beating you up about something, what are the odds that a gatekeeper at a production company or agency is going to have the same problem? Only they won't give you feedback, they'll just ditch your script.
"I'll take a look at that." Practice it in front of a mirror if you have to. And try to listen as carefully, and as whole-heartedly, as possible. And then do what feels right to you.
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