This means with every note you receive, you need to ask yourself:
Can I use this idea to make my story better and does it support my core message?
If the answer to this question is yes, then your mission is clear. You have to find a way to incorporate this note into your next draft. If the answer is no, well, hasta la vista, baby.
Obviously this is another one of those things that’s a hell of a lot easier to write in a book than it is to actually do. Believe me, it will never be that cut-and-dry. Never. But that’s why God gave you the writer gene. It’s your job to separate the cream from the rest of the crop and then figure out what to do with it.
Once you understand how the success of each draft, and each work as a whole, hinges on this delicate dance between note giver and note receiver, not only will the quality of your stories improve, but you’re ability to crank out those drafts with increasing proficiency will improve as well.
SURVIVAL GUIDE SUMMARY
8. The Art of Receiving Notes
Things to Remember:
•Keep an open mind.
•Your story will never stop being told and is in a constant state of change.
•There is nothing precious about your story but its core message.
•Shape the notes you receive by asking follow-up questions and getting more specifics out of your note givers. Mine for gold.
•Always value your note givers’ opinions.
•Ignore the notes you don’t think are useable. Don’t waste time arguing about them.
•Choose your note givers wisely, according to their strengths and taste in material.
Questions to Ask Yourself:
•Which notes apply to the core message of your story and which apply to specific details?
•Which notes support your core message? Which ones don’t?
•What follow-up questions can you ask that will help shape the notes into usable ideas?
•Are any of the notes from multiple note givers the same? Chances are those notes are valid.
•Are there any notes that felt right but that your note giver couldn’t quite articulate? What was their intuition trying to tell you? What was the note beneath their note?
•How invested in your success is your note giver?
9. The Art of Executing Notes
I grew up on Long Island about an hour east of New York City, so when I first graduated from college and decided I wanted to pursue a career in the entertainment business, the most logical thing to do was hop on the Long Island Railroad and trek into the Big Apple to see what opportunities I could drum up. In those days I was also very interested in being an actor as well as a writer, so I began taking classes at The Lee Strasberg Creative Center downtown. Funny enough, it wasn’t too long after I started studying there that one of the teachers became interested in a play I’d written. This teacher was a working actor himself, and there happened to be a good role for him in the piece, so it was a perfect storm. He got himself a showcase and at the ripe old age of twenty-two I had my first production!
Now, it’s important for you to understand the context of this story. This was actually before I had gone off to film school, so I was even wetter behind the ears than I was when I arrived in Los Angeles a year or so later. In fact, this was only the second time I had even attempted to write a script of any kind. Therein lies the beauty of the writer gene. I had no earthly idea what the hell I was doing, and yet, just as I had done with my “Triplets” masterpiece when I was just a tyke, somehow I made it work. The problem, I soon discovered, was:
The writer gene can only take you so far.
I’ll never forget the conversation I had with the director one night toward the end of the run. He was a very cantankerous guy with a few personal issues, so no conversation with him could ever have been mistaken as pleasant. This one, however, was like getting doused with a bucket of ice water, as he proceeded to go on about a thirty-minute tirade, berating me for how I had failed miserably as a writer because I hadn’t adequately reworked the play during the rehearsal period. What made this moment so ironic and so incredibly confusing to me was the constant roar of laughter and applause that could be heard coming from the house the entire time he went on his rant. Not to mention the fact that pretty much everything else about the experience had been fantastic. In a ridiculously short amount of time, I had gotten someone to produce my play. A month or two later there were actors coming in, saying my words in auditions. Then we were in rehearsals. And then the audiences loved it. Well, enough of them at least for me to feel a significant sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.
Yet that cranky freakin’ director was 100% right. It could have been better. A lot better. In fact, to be honest, while the theme and structure of the play were strong, it was a pretty raw piece of work in many ways, written by a very raw writer. If I were to reread it now, God forbid, I’m sure that I would absolutely shudder at the characters’ lack of depth and the stiffness of some of the dialogue, which even then I secretly had some discomfort about.
So why didn’t I just rewrite it during rehearsals like any normal playwright would? The short and simple answer is: I didn’t know how. I was so green that I didn’t even know when the director was giving me a note, much less how to execute
