You Are Responsible for the Quality of Notes You Receive
or, how to avoid an eternal writerly adolescence
My two biggest TV writing influences are David Milch and Vince McMahon. I love finding poetry in the profane, and the profane in the poetic, and etc.
Now, the Vince McMahon as key screenwriting influence reference is a bit cheeky. I don’t exactly go trawling through interviews with the batshit impresario of pro wrestling to help me clarify my act breaks. But there’s a purity to pro wrestling storytelling that I can’t help but admire: here’s the face, here’s the heel, here’s why they’ve got beef, and here are the stakes. Now this guy is winning. Now the other guy turns the tables. And now we find a resolution and/or an outside element comes in to disrupt the conflict and set the stage for the next match. Storytelling 101, distilled to its essence, plus muscles.
But the David Milch as key influence couldn’t be more serious. In fact, when I’m working on a script, my wife won’t let me watch DEADWOOD because I always end up writing my own special half-ass approximation of the great man’s bold fucking style. I also find myself seeking out his pronouncements, hoping for a peek under the cosmic storytelling hood. He has a couple of lectures on youtube under the heading of “The Idea of the Writer” that I find myself running in the background at times while watering plants and such. It’s just Milch holding court and shooting the shit while ambling his way into fairly profound insights quite regularly.
At one point, he says something that — upon hearing — marked a total turning point in my career. Here is his quote:
“Our idea of those who legislate the order in our lives is wounded and distorted. When I talk to writers who are more or less within the walls of the city and they piss and moan about: I take notes from morons all day long and I have to do it because they’re my bosses. What I hear is: I’m home. I get to do my work and I get to resent the organising force in my life. The only downside with that is: and I’m writing shit! Well if that’s the case that is a form…that’s a form of despair. If you have to say that you’re writing shit for whatever reason, you’ve lost the possibility that the bridge to the world of our art offered as a way back from our woundedness.”
There’s a lot going on in that quote. It’s a quiet little testimony about the role of art in our lives (a bridge back to the world from our woundedness). But the thing that jumped out to me the first time I heard this was this bit: writers may piss and moan about the notes they get, but what they’re really saying is, “I’m home.”
And here’s the practical takeaway for me: after hearing Milch say this, I made a conscious decision to no longer complain about notes from a producer, or an executive, or an actor, or a director, or what have you. I no longer roll my eyes privately. I no longer make fun of a bad note, not even in my head. I no longer jump onto twitter to add my contribution to screenwriter threads about the worst or dumbest notes they’ve ever received.
Now, I still disagree with notes all the time. And I very often decide not to follow a note if I think it’ll lessen the quality of the script. And when that’s the case, I always make sure to explain exactly why.
But I no longer complain about it. Why? Because I don’t particularly want to turn the notes process into something where — as the writer — I’m now some eye-rolling adolescent and where those giving the notes are the out-of-touch parents who won’t let me drive the car or go to the junior high dance or some shit. That is, I refuse to consent to a self-infantilizing dynamic.
I’ve been in writer’s rooms where the network or studio or producers give notes over the phone. And the writers immediately start rolling their eyes and making smartass remarks and so on. And some times, the notes are bizarre or self-contradictory or just plain bad.
But amid all the eye-rolling and silent chuckling, the question we as writers seem to be conveniently avoiding is this — if these execs and producers continually seem to misunderstand the point of our story, then whose fault is that? The execs and producers juggling multiple projects each day? Or us, the appointed guardians and ambassadors of this particular story?
I call my substack Practical Screenwriting because I believe screenwriters are best served by developing whatever pragmatic methods most effectively help them achieve their goals. It’s not Idealized Screenwriting, or even Honest Screenwriting.
So that’s why I personally believe this: if I get bad notes, it’s my fault. Getting bad notes means I haven’t done an adequate job explaining my goals in telling this story. At some point, I’ve dropped the ball and either misled my partners, or led them into ignorance.
Is this always the actual case? No. Sometimes, you just simply get bad notes. Sometimes you might even get notes given in bad faith, designed to undercut your confidence or relative autonomy because you find yourself in the middle of some organizational power struggle. Or, sometimes you have to deal with someone who just doesn’t get it.
If any of the above is the case, there’s not really much you can do about it, other than figure out how to bob-and-weave the best you can. But if you decide to take ownership of the bad notes you’re getting anyway, at least you’re now affirming yourself as the primary mover-and-shaker of the creative partnership instead of the passive victim of more adult forces.
That’s what I do. Now this self-definition as the project’s primary creative force might very well be a total bullshit fairy tale residing inside my brain, but I find it to be practically useful bullshit fairy tale. It keeps me from adolescent resentment. It keeps me from a victim mentality. It keeps me from passivity.
Most importantly, from the moment I first pitch a project, it also gives me something to actively do. Every conversation I have concerning this project is an opportunity for me to articulate my goals for the project and to teach my partners how to give me the sorts of notes that’ll help me create my best work.
If you consistently do this and you still get shitty notes, well, sometimes shit sucks. But I’ve found that if I try to guide my partners in a polite and professional but confidently direct manner towards more productive notes, they usually respond in a positive way. And then everybody wins.
What does helping guide my partners look like? Sometimes, it’s pretty indirect — but hopefully not passive-aggressive. First of all, from the pitching process onwards, I’ll err on the side of oversharing in terms of my own tonal reference points.
When putting together the visuals for a recent TV show pitch, I tried to not only use images that fit my show and that would appeal to potential buyers, but that also presented films and TV shows that I planned on returning to again and again for inspiration. Here’s some scattered images from the pitch process for a show I recently sold:
The above are some slides that accompanied my zoom pitch for the show. These images did their part in helping sell the show. But now that I’m developing and writing the pilot, the movies and TV shows referenced have become a kind of internal shorthand for elements of my script: ERIN BROCKOVICH for the attitude and behavior of the protagonist, PARASITE for the tonal mixtures and surprising developments, WINTER’S BONE for the uncomfortable class realities, SUCCESSION for the boardroom intrigue, etc.
Now, I don’t expect the network, studio, or even my producing partners to remember these specific images. But these images did become the starting points for how I talked about my goals for the show, and I find myself returning to them to help explain my ambitions and creative decisions.
At each stage, I try to present references to let everyone know how I’m thinking about the script, even before I write it. After my deal closed on writing the pilot, I shared the following watch list with my producing partners, letting them know that these would be films I’d be rewatching while working on the pilot:
Small towns & connected lives:
THE LAST PICTURE SHOW
NASHVILLE
LONE STAR
WINTER'S BONE
SMILECorruption, ambition, & powerful interests:
MICHAEL CLAYTON
THE INSIDER
ERIN BROCKOVICH
9 TO 5
THE SOCIAL NETWORK
DARK WATERS
THE VERDICT
Class and labor and family and dreams:
PARASITE
BISBEE '17
HARLAN COUNTY, USA
KILLER OF SHEEP
NOMADLAND
BLUE COLLAR
MATEWAN
AMERICAN HONEY
THE FLORIDA PROJECT
I shared this list with all sincerity: this was a list of films I’d made for myself before I even thought about sharing it. But I also wanted to prep my partners for the kind of script I wanted to be writing: a character-heavy drama with shades of 1970s American blue collar filmmaking told with some contemporary left field tonal surprises. If these reference points did throw up red flags, I figured it was better for me to know before I started writing than after the first draft was finished.
I also constantly refer to two contemporary TV shows as models for us: OZARK and YELLOWSTONE. Our show is set in a different kind of world — modern day West Virginia — but if we do it right (and get to make it), it should tap into a similar “flyover” audience as these shows. To do so, we need to capture our world with specificity, focus on the family and relationship dramas that our conflicts generate, and not ignore realities of class, culture, and geography that might not be second nature to people in LA or NYC.
For me, all of these references form a sort of constellation, marking out the territory in which I want to be working in.
I often also share whatever Spotify playlist I’ve put together for a project. I tend to put a lot of music cues in my scripts. Partially because I’m a music freak with an excess of confidence in his good taste. But also partially because those music cues (and the corresponding playlist) can go a long ways to communicating the otherwise inexpressible tone of the story:
This all probably seems like small, inconsequential stuff. And maybe it is. But I find that these little parcels add up to express a sense of what I want the project to feel like. If I don’t overtly set the parameters of the sandbox I’m playing in, how can I expect my partners to read my mind? The least I can do is let them know what targets I’m aiming at, and what feel I’m trying to get across.
For this particular TV project in development, class is the key to the whole story. And lots of that is due to my own particular background and life trajectory and my too-rare experience of coming from one lower economic class and taking a leap or two into a higher one.
Therefore, my background was also a part of my pitch on the project. Here are the opening images from my pitch:
Leaning into my class background in the pitch hopefully got across that I might bring a certain amount of authenticity to the story. In pitching my show, I tried to present myself as uniquely positioned to tell this particular story. Likewise, in developing the story now, I constantly find myself communicating anecdotes and details and opinions derived from my class background.
First, to reiterate that class itself is my primary focus point, thematically and dramatically. And second, to also reiterate that a story set in this world of class and culture is going to have features that may strike LA and NYC based creatives from a more privileged background as odd — but these apparent oddities will be the very things that give our show specificity and hopefully authenticity. My background gives me some rhetorical leverage. But it’s also a door through which I can drag in a bunch of details and little stories that bit by bit express the texture and aims of the show.
Okay, so those are some starting points for how I try to help guide my partners to give me more helpful notes. I’d say that the ingredients of my scripts are usually some mixture of:
Whatever property I’m adapting and/or whatever research I’ve done about the world of the story
Whatever creative inspirations and/or genre elements I’m bringing to the story
Whatever personal baggage and/or experiences and/or insights I’m bringing to the story
The peculiarities of my imagination, my tastes, my storytelling principles, etc.
Hopefully, ingredient number one — the intellectual property and/or research — will already be a common reference point between yourself and your creative partners.
For ingredients two through four, however, at the start of things: this is unknown territory. I happen to think it’s up to the writer to open up communications in such a way that everyone involved understands what each of the parties is bringing to the project. That way, hopefully the entire team can strike upon shared inspirations, insights, inclinations, etc and all get together to make the same movie and TV show. Other creative drivers of the project can play this communications-center role — a director, a producer, a star. But as much as possible, I like it to be me.
As the creative center of my projects, I feel that part of my job in the entire process is to communicate my creative inspirations, personal baggage, genre inclinations, storytelling principles, etc in such a way that when each draft of my script arrives, my readers already understand what I’m aiming for.
Unsaid in this: what I’m aiming at always evolves as my creative partners bring their own inspirations, baggage, etc to the project. So ideally, when they read the script, it’s not just achieving what I’m aiming for, but also eventually reflects what we’re all aiming for together, in a helpful, generative co-influence. That’s the ideal place for us all to be at while giving and receiving notes. But it takes a lot of active communication to get there.
So far, I’m mostly talking about indirect communication. But sometimes, cultivating an optimal notes situation involves more direct communication.
For instance: if I have multiple parties giving me notes, these days I directly request ahead of time that those parties get together to discuss their thoughts before giving the notes to me.
I’ve had a lucky, lucky career thus far. So I’ve mostly had only very productive, healthy notes experiences. But there’s been a couple of times where the notes process did seem to really derail things. And both times, it was because there were notes coming from multiple different parties who not only didn’t agree on what direction the script should go, but didn’t even seem aware of what the others notes-givers were saying.
In a situation like that, it’s almost impossible to be responsive to notes because someone is always going to take offense. But if the notes-givers all talk ahead of time and come to some kind of consensus — however uneasy — and then if they are also present during the notes call and discussion, then at least everyone has the same information. And are something close to being on the same page. And then, you can actually respond in a fruitful manner.
So for me, that’s a precondition for notes to actually work and be productive. Because in my experience, notes actually do really help me improve the script.
Good for me. But what do I do if I think a note won’t work, or if I think it will send the script in the wrong direction, or if I simply disagree with it? In those cases, I try to communicate clearly and politely my thinking about that particular note, while also at times contexualizing my response in terms of larger concerns.
If the notes discussion is going on over the phone or in person and I’m unsure about a note, I’ll usually say something along the lines of “Let me think about that” or “Let me see if that’ll work.” And then I’ll do exactly that. I’ll think it through. And even if I’m skeptical, I’ll often try it out anyway, because sometimes it opens up new opportunities and I find nice surprises along the way. So even if I don’t end up directly addressing or following the expressed note, I might come up with a creative solution that addresses the worry behind the note.
If I find that the note simply doesn’t work, I’ll then communicate that either through a follow-up email, or I’ll address it when sending the next version of the script. Going through past emails, here’s some recent excerpts about how I’ve gone about doing exactly that.
Both of these excerpts are from the outline stage of a pilot. Producer notes responding to a second outline draft.
When I agree with a note, I usually just say “agreed” and let my next draft reflect that. Easy. Sometimes I say why I agree, but I usually just say “got it.”
But sometimes it’s more complex. In this case, there was a note about changing a character dynamic because the producers were unsure why a family member in the outline needed to be told certain information about the family. The most base reason was: I needed this family member to be told this info because I needed the audience to know it. But that doesn’t address the real concern expressed by producers that the exposition would come across falsely, as mere exposition. A viable concern. Here is my attempt to explain why I wanted to keep the family dynamic the same:
“On first glance, the [male antagonist] notes feel right. I can dial down these lines and moments to allow for a little more ambiguity.
I suppose I don't agree w/ the [female supporting character] suggestion. The main reason I introduced this character in the pilot was to add more financial pressures on an already taxed household. I still think this is dramatically important. And as the network's note was to bring out that new financial pressure a bit more in the new draft, I worry it'd feel strange to send them a draft where we now have [female supporting character] just being a part of the household all along, thus actually lowering the new financial pressures in the pilot.
I truly think any bumps about what [female supporting character] does or doesn't know at this point are super super minor and can be worked out when I actually go to script. To structurally change this family dynamic now would be kind of majorly changing things for the sake of avoiding something really quite minor (a couple of lines, really) that can be finessed in execution. There are a thousand ways to tweak and/or justify [female supporting character]'s degree of inside knowledge about the workings of the household. [Female supporting character] could've grown up with her paternal grandparents in Michigan and just moved to West Virginia a year ago when they died. Lots of options there.”
That’s a pretty wordy response, but it addressed their concerns well-enough that we kept the family dynamic. And then when the second outline was network/studio approved and I was sent to script, I made sure to write the scenes in such a way that we understand that this female supporting character — a 14 year old foul-mouthed cousin — had just hitchhiked to the lead character’s house and it was the first time they’d seen each other since the foul-mouthed cousin was a baby. So then it felt natural for her to ask questions and for us to get key pieces of backstory that way. The producer concerns were addressed, but in a way that wouldn’t lessen other story elements.
In response to the same outline draft, there was also a note expressing concern that our lead character — a 30-32 year old white waitress in West Virginia — would compare another character to Dom DeLuise, since it struck the producers as unlikely she would know who he is. Here, my response uses my background as the explanatory ground:
"Emotionally, there's a whole lot of me in [the lead female character], which means Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood movies and old school country music from the ‘70s are for her — like they were for me — just about the only available means of forging a bond with a father who alternates between emotional cruelty, unavailability, and immaturity. Because of that, I'm gonna have a lot of quote-unquote white trash cultural reference points and touchstones throughout the show that are important to me and/or signal to my small town blue collar cohorts (of any race) that this is coming from someone who knows and still loves that small town cultural world. A lot of these reference points will probably seem anachronistic compared to what's usually on TV dramas. As much as I can get away with, I'm actually going to be leaning into that. That's going to be part of what will make the show feel like itself and not like any other show, I hope. It's also a big part of what keeps me emotionally connected to the character. So, these weird references are gonna be something I'll probably seem inordinately emotionally invested in — but I guess I have my reasons, and we all have our own little hills to die on. Weirdly enough, the late great Dom Deluise is among those hills for me.”
That’s about as aggressive/defensive as I get, I think. At least at my best. And it’s not just that I wanted to defend the Dom Deluise line — tho I really like that line — but that it felt important at this point to really clarify why I’m so attached to these sorts of references, why I think our lead character likewise is attached, and why it’s going to be a recurring defining element of the show.
There’s of course a likelihood that this project — however much I love it — ends at the pilot script stage. But if it doesn’t, what I’m trying to do in my explanatory responses to notes this early in the process is to not just address current concerns, but to also contextualize my explanations in terms of my larger goals. That way, when I drop in references to “Mr. Perfect” Curt Hennig, Toby Keith, and Ray Stevens’ novelty country hit “Mississippi Squirrel Revival” in a future episode, my partners will know where I’m coming from, and why I keep dropping this weird shit into the scripts.
I try to constantly remind myself that it's my job to help my partners give me the notes I need: notes that'll help me improve the script on the next pass and that will amplify the enthusiasm of all my partners on the project.
Of course, I don't always succeed at this. If my creative partners read this substack, they might be rolling their eyes at my hubris and self-deception right this moment. And I also realize that as a middle-aged straight white dude ten years into his career, I might enjoy more leniency in terms of how I respond to notes than do writers who don’t enjoy my particular collection of privileges.
That said, it seems to work for me. My partners seem to appreciate my thoughtfulness and occasionally-excessive thoroughness in responding to their concerns. I think I’m generally seen as pretty collaborative and open-minded, so when I do make a Dom Deluise-type stand, hopefully it comes across as something real and not just a writer being precious and unwilling to adjust.
I think of every stage of the pitching and developing and writing and revising process as an opportunity to teach my partners what my vision for the project is. But it’s also an opportunity to get their feedback and thoughts, and to incorporate those thoughts organically as much as I can. The goal is not to turn the notes process into some situation where the writer is the eye-rolling adolescent and where those giving the notes are the out-of-touch parents. Nor is it to become a hyper-precious poet-auteur who resides beyond all criticism, or some petty tyrant who dominates his or her lesser-thans. Nor is it to be a spineless empty receptacle for whatever stray notes happen to come into view. Rather, the goal for me as the writer is to do whatever I can to direct the notes process so it can become a productive ever-unfolding conversation between partners about what the project — at its best — can be.
If done right by all parties, the notes process won't just make for a better script. It'll also get everyone more excited about the project. This doesn't always happen. But it can happen. And in my experience, it often does happen. But never when I'm being passive or resentful.
Thanks for the post. This reminds me of something I read somewhere. "When receiving notes, think about the note behind the note. What's really the point? What they're trying to say here?" As you said in your previous post. Sometimes "make it fast-paced here" it's because they were boring and you should add deeper instead of following the note. The fact is that the producer (or whoever) felt a problem there, and you should focus what is what the note is trying to fix, even if it's worded poorly or it's a really bad idea.