Hello, all you good lookin’ screenwriters out there. I’m here to ramble at you about notes. Mainly to you youngsters.
I have about two years worth of professional reading experience on my otherwise laughable resume, I’ve been through a few undergraduate and graduate level writing programs, and I’ve occasionally read scripts for strangers on the internet, some of whom were kind enough to pay me. In other words, I’ve given a note or two. Does this make me the most qualified person in the room to be giving advice on notes? Probably not. But I like to think I’m not completely useless either, and there’s a few thoughts I want to put out there in the screenwriting aether.
Notes are obviously important. They’re how we gauge the quality of our scripts, and it’s always going to be in our best interests to seek them out whenever we can. Equally as important, however, is that they’re often how we as writers dialogue with one another. They can be a source of growth and connection. Or at the very least, they can be a source of reinforcement. A promise that yes, you can, in fact, do this and get better. How we communicate to each other is what makes us a community, and we have to have each other’s backs.
So I’ll be sharing advice with you in the hopes that you take them and use them for good. To remind you that when you’re giving someone notes, you have a tremendous amount of power, even if the stakes are only one more screenplay to throw on the pile. To create a world where one aspect of screenwriting, just one, doesn’t have to be so unrelentingly miserable.
Check back next week/tomorrow when we discuss cruelty.