This is sound advice when giving notes to any type of artist, but when it comes to creative writing it carries even more weight, because unlike drawing or painting, composing music, making computer animation, or working in almost any other art form, the basic skill set—writing—is something that everyone has. Everyone knows how to put a sentence together (presumably), whether you’re a professional writer or not. And everyone has a certain visceral understanding of storytelling. This perception of common competence—that anyone can be a qualified note giver because everyone knows how to write—makes having a constructive attitude and letting that attitude inform the notes just as significant as the very substance of them.
This is especially important when you’re giving notes to a writer who is somewhat green. If the work clearly has a lot of issues, you’ll need to exercise a little restraint. Please don’t get into all the problems, as much as you would like to. Just find something positive to say about their idea, give them a few things to chew on that will help them take baby steps toward improving it, and leave them with a sense of excitement about the road ahead. Like novices in any other line of work, novice writers need encouragement more than anything else. You just have to allow them to develop and trust their writer genes to do the rest.
Have Some Humility
This is a biggie. It’s so much easier to recognize the flaws in other people’s work than it is to recognize them in our own. As a result, sometimes when you read another writer’s story or script, whether you’re aware of it or not, you suddenly become filled with this false sense of superiority, this lethal dose of misguided power, as if you’re some omnipotent writer-god who has all the answers.
Why does this happen? First of all, you have the advantage of having fresh eyes. You haven’t been trying to tell this story for months and months. Second, because you’re not down there on the ground trying to build the damn thing brick by brick, you also have the benefit of sitting back and looking at it from a five-thousand-foot point of view. No wonder you feel like a god! So here’s your chance to throw a few lightning bolts at the mere mortal who’s made the mistake of asking you for help, right? Do me a favor, don’t be that guy. Always give notes with empathy and humility, and remember, the next time it will be you on the other end of that lightning bolt.
Giving notes with humility also means resisting the temptation to take ownership of the other writer’s story. You need to be careful not to come off sounding like a know-it-all; you can’t give the other writer the impression that you think you can do a better job with their idea than they can. Again, you’re there to help, not rewrite the story. Not that you shouldn’t have strong opinions. Strong opinions are good, but your objective must be to lead the writer in a direction that will yield positive results, not force them to come around to your line of thinking. You can’t help them unless they trust you, and if they feel their story is being hijacked or they’re being jerked around, they will not trust you.
Focus on the Big Idea
The legendary writer/director John Huston once said: “A good screenplay is like a bell. When you ring it, every scene in it reverberates with the theme of the story.” I have always loved this concept, not only because it so eloquently sums up a very universal truth about writing, but because it also applies to note giving so well. The more you can focus your notes on issues that speak directly to a story’s core message, the greater the impact you will have on the writer’s next draft. Not that this is an easy thing to do. Which brings me to another important point:
Giving good notes takes work.
When another writer asks you to read their story and you accept, you now have a responsibility to spend the time and effort it takes to not just read it, but to think deeply about it. You have made a covenant with the writer, so you owe it to them to give your honest and most well-considered opinions. If you don’t think you have the time or the energy to do so, my advice is to be honest and just tell the writer flat out that you can’t read right now. The writer may be a little miffed, but not half as upset as they will be when you finally get around to phoning in your feedback.
Assuming you’ve made the commitment, the best way to start is to read the script or story through more than once, make notes to yourself, and then ask yourself the question: What is this writer trying to say with this work? If the message is unclear, then that’s your first note to the writer. Start by simply engaging the writer in a discussion at this very high level.
Next, I always try to find no more than three things the writer can address that speak directly to the theme of the piece or at least to some major aspect of it—big things that “reverberate,” as John Huston said. Try to make these notes as specific and executable as possible, and again, try not to give more than three of them. In fact, sometimes one razor-sharp thought that cuts right to the heart of the thing is all that’s needed to illuminate a whole new world of possibilities.
For example, in one of my spec television pilots, the first scene involves the main character arriving
