Notes

I try to give positive, constructive notes. Insight is rare and crucial, of course, but simply how you phrase a note can make it easier for the writer to absorb it. Here are three things you can do to make your notes go down more smoothly:

1. Make every note positive.

By positive, I don't mean tell people things are good when they're not. I mean phrase the note in a positive way.

Every negative note can be phrased positively, using a few more words.

"I have no idea who this character is." -> "I'd like to see this character defined more clearly."

"This is confusing." -> "Can you clarify what is going on here?"

"This is a gaping plothole." -> "Can you come up with a more convincing way to get here?"

"I don't believe this twist." -> "I'd like you to work a bit harder at earning this plot point."

2. Note how some of these notes are phrased personally. "I feel..." "I'd like..." It helps to avoid the Voice of God in notes. They won't be any less authoritative. Anything you say will have exactly the same amount of authority whether you claim it's the facts or your opinion. But if you state it personally, it acknowledges that you could be wrong. And you could be.

3. Note how some of these notes are phrased as a question. "This is confusing" provokes the reaction, "No, it's not! You're just an idiot! Screw you! I'm going to throw myself out the window now." "Can you clarify this" provokes the reaction, "Yeah, sure, sorry 'bout that. I'll get right on it."

Obviously it's important to be clear, and smart, in your notes. But when you have a choice between phrasing a note as "this is bad" and "I'd like to see this improved," the latter is almost certainly going to allow your note-taker to focus more on your note, and less on that peculiar combination of anger, guilt, humiliation and nausea that is every writer's instinctive reaction to criticism.

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.

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.

"I Will Not Read Your F***ing Script"

A History of Violence screenwriter Josh Olson will not read your f***ing script.

Cheep Script Notes

Tommy Gushue has been working for me since December reading and doing notes on all my new material. He's the guy who reads my stuff before producers do. I've found his notes to be dead on. The kind of notes where you go, Oh, damn, he's right.

He just got into the CFC, so to raise dough, he's offering the same service to you at the following ridiculously low prices for the next month: $50 for half-hour scripts, $75 for hours, and $120 for features. You can PayPal him and email a script.

That's a hell of a lot cheaper than what I charge!

Email him before he gets too busy getting paid to write.

TV Notes?

Q. I'm looking for notes on my TV specs. Whom do you recommend?

To kick the question up a notch: What about hiring a TV writer to work as a paid mentor? I'm in LA and have two or three decent contacts I'm not calling until I have something I know is strong.

Or is that asking guys to train you to do their jobs?

We train people to do our jobs every day. They're called "free lancers" and "staff writers." Everybody working in the biz has been trained by people who knew more than they did. It's understood that you train the next generation. Why do you think I write this blog?

Depending on your trust fund, you probably could hire a TV writer to give you notes and feedback on an ongoing basis. Here in Canada people often come on as story consultants; the network pays for them. I'm lucky enough to have DMc himself giving me notes on my pay cable series, and I've done it for other writers. You're looking at numbers in the four figures there, though. If you don't have a portrait of James Madison burning a hole in your pocket, consider offering yourself to a TV writer you admire as an irregular intern running errands and doing research, for which you accumulate favors which you can cash in for advice and the occasional read.

As far as just notes go, I may be able to hook you up with a couple people whose notes I respect. The thing is that TV notes go substantially beyond movie notes. It's easier to say how to fix a movie. As TV is harder to write well than the movies, critiquing a framework in which to tell a hundred stories is a quantum beyond critiquing one story. So be prepared for a workout.

How to Give Notes

McGrath reposts his fine essay on how to give notes. The key: rather than telling the writer what to do, challenge his or her assumptions. Why did they do it that way? What were they trying to achieve? Is that what you, the buyer, wanted to achieve?

The best division of labor is for the buyer to decide what he wants the result to look like, and to ask the writer to figure out how to get there.

In the US Army, the commanding officer decides what he wants: take that hill, relieve that battalion, stop that enemy assault. He leaves it to the guy or gal leading the troops to decide how to take the hill, how to relieve the battalion, how to stop the enemy. They are going to have to do it, after all. They will spend ten times as long pondering the how as the CO has available. They are closer to the material: the soldiers, the terrain, the equipment.

Micromanaging from the top can lead to spectacular failures. The Spanish Armada failed because King Philip of Spain, a landlubber, insisted that his admiral follow his orders precisely -- orders written several months before the battle. The Iraq invasion of 2003 turned into a debacle because the Secretary of Defense, who had never been in combat, was micromanaging troop deployments.

The best notes say: "we want a wham-bang opening," for example; not, "when Nick gets to the bridge there should be snipers and they should be shooting tracer bullets at him." The best notes come from being a great audience member who understands his own reactions: "I want to be pulled into the story viscerally before I even understand what's going on."

The most challenging notes are those which don't make clear what exactly the note-giver is looking for. The more prescriptive the note is, the harder it is to parse. Why does he want snipers? Is the opening not scary enough? Does he want the opening to take longer? Did the note-giver see a movie with cool snipers and he wants something like that? Are we appealilng to the Halo crowd?

It takes a lot of restraint to avoid giving writers unnecessarily specific notes. Everyone in this industry wants to be creative. The writers are having all the fun. Execs want to share that fun. But execs: you will look like a genius if you simply make clear what results you want, and let the writer get there by his own path. The results will be much fresher, and more coherent, too.

Writers: you need to address notes, but you don't always have to take them. Don't be afraid to ask, "what are you looking for, here, exactly, because I may have another way to do this."

Obviously when you're writing for a director or an animator or a real creative producer -- a Zanuck, a Spielberg, someone who is truly taking part in the creation of the project -- then the situation changes. If Spielberg wants snipers, give him snipers. On BON COP BAD COP, the director had entire action sequences he had mapped out in his head; my job was to happily write them down and marvel at how fun they were. But even in this case, don't be afraid to ask what your creative collaborator really wants when he asks for certain details. You may be able to come up with something better, and most creative people are open to a better solution most of the time.

It Could Be Worse

Via Neil (Can anyone tell me what Brit show this is from? Stephen?)

Incidentally, if you are getting idiotic notes like this, it's possible you are dealing with an idiot. It is also possible that your story idea is not that compelling, either the way you pitched it, or intrinsically. All feedback is true for that viewer, even if their proposed solution is idiotic. And what the agent is saying is, "You're not grabbing me. Grab me."

Like This, Only The Opposite

Poor Kay is suffering down south. Apparently it's not fun to be a broadcast TV writer in LA at the moment, even if you're running (or were running) THE BIONIC WOMAN.

What she's experiencing, directly and vicariously? Picture the exact opposite. That's the meeting I had with my network. The notes were along the lines of, "yeah, we love it. Only here's some places you could go deeper. Oh, and this character is really interesting, we want to know more about her. When can we read the next script? And the one after that?"

I think I'm in love.

Predictable

I just took a look a script I wrote maybe five years ago. At the time, people weren't too excited about it. They said it was, among other things, "predictable." And, rereading it, it does feel a tad predictable.

But you know, most romantic comedies are more or less predictable, if you try to guess where they're going. Does the phrase "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl" ring a bell?

In this case, I don't think "predictable" is the problem. What it is, is a symptom.

What is really going on is that the bones of the structure are showing. We aren't invested enough in the characters; the scenes aren't fleshed out enough. So, alienated, we stand back and observe the structure. We have time to think about how predictable it is because we're not involved in what's going on in the scenes.

The solution isn't to make it less predictable. I script's structure is not bad. The solution is to flesh out the scenes, so that we don't care if the structure is familiar, and we don't have the time or inclination to second-guess the outcome.

Readers will tell you what's wrong with your script, but you have to interpret it. Most people spot symptoms and miss the underlying causes. And if you attempt to fix the symptoms, you'll just bollix up your script further.

As for this script, my problem is -- I just don't care about the characters enough to save them from this terrible script. There's probably a good story to be salvaged in there. But is it worth going in after them? I don't know.

Who Addresses Notes, part two

Q. But what about the studio? The network pays the license fee, but the studio fronts the production costs, right? So doesn't the studio do a lot of hand-holding on both ends? giving notes, rejecting notes, and acting as a buffer between the showrunner and the network when it comes to network notes... any thoughts?

Ah, well. That.

American networks have enough clout that they unlikely to tolerate their notes being mediated by the studio. They're going to want to talk to the showrunner. However, the studio will have its own notes, because they have to make up their budget deficit by overseas sales. Overseas audiences may want more action and less talk. (Action is universal. Talk translates poorly.) They may want less sex (except in France, but they have their own shows). They may be more sensitive to how Muslims are treated. Or Asians. Or Asian Muslims. And, anyway, it's their deficit dollars, so that buys them the right to have their concerns addressed.

The showrunner has to reconcile all the notes. Sometimes they contradict. On Galidor, if I remember correctly, FoxKids wanted "more action." YTV wanted "less violence." Different countries and different audience demographics. Imagine what fun we had (the showrunner, Tom Chehak, and his staff) delivering more action and less violence. We wound up with a lot of guys in costume jumping around and missing each other.

As always, "addressing concerns" is not the same as "doing as told." Sometimes it's more important to make the execs feel they're being listened to, than to actually do what they think they want. Sometimes you have to do what they're asking. A showrunner has to be a bit of politician to know which battles to pick with the people paying the bills.

Who Addresses Notes?

Q. When notes come back from a network re a TV epiode... who addresses them?

The showrunner is responsible for all creative aspects of the show. So he or she is responsible for the notes. He may give the notes to the writer of the episode to execute, and then he'll do a pass to make sure what the writer did fits his vision and the network's needs.

The whole concept of the writer being in charge of the show is mysterious to people up here in the North. coming from years in LA, I am always amazed when I have to explain it. Simply put, someone has to be in command of the ship. In a movie, it's the director, but it hasn't always been. In the studio days, it was the producer, and sometimes you'd have three or four directors during the course of a movie, with the producer replacing the directors like Lincoln replaced generals, until he gets the results he's looking for.

In TV, it makes sense to have multiple directors (and multiple assistant directors). Rather than have one director shoot everything, you can have one director shooting while another director preps the next episode, and a third director edits the episode he shot last week. It means each director can approach the problems of each episodic script with a level head and plenty of time and enough sleep.

But if you have multiple directors, then none of them can keep track of the whole story you're telling over the course of the season. So who's in charge? In Canada that is often a non-writing producer.

In the US, it's always a writer. Why? Because TV is a huge beast that needs to be fed a fresh script every week or it lumbers into a hole and dies. And that script needs to be shootable. Which means that the writers have to work closely with the production crew to make the most of their creative talents while giving them challenges they can handle. Between the Production White draft and the last Double Blue draft, the script will need changes to accommodate the crew. We didn't get that arena we promised; where else can the hero's girlfriend be gunned down? We're expecting a major storm next week; can we move 40% of the exteriors inside? Hey, we can get a tractor prototype that walks on four legs! For free! It's really cool. Can we put it in an episode?

It just makes sense for the person consulting with the department heads to be the person who's evaluating whether or not the changes they're suggesting in the shoot are what's best for the story. Why separate those two jobs? Sometimes the story will not accommodate all interiors, or a four-legged tractor, and sometimes the story really wants to be shot outside during a storm. Department heads are not keeping the story in the forefront of their mind. They are (a) trying to make really cool costumes/sets/special effects/whatever, and (b) make their lives easier. Sometimes the coolest costume is not right for the character; sometimes the story requires an ugly set slapped together on the fly rather than the cool set they've made blueprints for. You can have a producer in the middle, mediating between the story department and the departments, but it's simpler to just put the top writer (often the creator of the show) in charge.

That doesn't mean there's no room for the creative producer in the mix. A good showrunner consults with everyone, and listens to them, especially when they can fire him. Only a fool ignores the people who are bringing the money he's spending. We're not talking about final say, either. The network has final say. (Ultimately the audience has final say.) But someone's got to have first say, and it seems to work better when that someone is a writer.

Canada seems to be transitioning from the producer-driven system to the American writer-driven system, but it's a difficult cultural change. Producers aren't used to trusting writers to run their shows because they haven't seen that system working; and, not that many writers have experience in production. Catch-22. But the best shows are writer run -- e.g. Corner Gas and Slings and Arrows -- and I think that speaks for itself.

Of course, I would say that. Wouldn't I?