Feedback Part 3:  A New Approach To Feedback

By Jacob Krueger

As I discussed in part 1 and part 2 of this series, writing is a highly intuitive process.  When notes take us away from our organic connection to our scripts, they tend to do more harm than good, no matter how helpful they may seem. Whether you are a professional writer, or just picking up the pen for the first time, you’re going to have to deal with notes all the time.  From producers, from actors, from directors, from other writers, from family, from friends, and even from yourself. And guess what.  You’re going to need them.

A New Approach To Feedback

If you’ve taken a class with me, you know that to succeed as a writer, you must learn not only how to give feedback, but also how to receive it. Writers need to develop a filter between themselves and “good advice”, allowing the helpful stuff in, and filtering out the brilliant ideas that aren’t going to help you, before they can sway you one way or another.

The First Step

Whether you’re giving notes to another writer, or revising a draft of your own writing, the first step of this process is letting go of your desperate desire to immediately “fix” the screenplay, and instead to focus on communicating your experience, without judgment or advice. Knowing how to give and receive feedback is not only vital to discovering your voice as a writer.  It’s also an invaluable tool in communicating with yourself as you evaluate your own writing.

 In the next article, I’ll be discussing the elements of truly helpful feedback, and the questions you can ask yourself to help you discover them.