Shannon K. Valenzuela talks about how to handle constructive notes and nail the rewrite in today’s blog, like your attitude toward feedback and understanding the “note behind the note.” www.stage32.com/blog/how-to-handle-constructive-notes-nail-your-rewrite-...
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My general feeling is that, if a writer's getting a lot of constructive feedback, they're trying to plaster over a lack of craft skills and/or a lack of development with someone else's expertise.
I mean, sure, we can drop the ball from time to time. Someone else can have a genuinely good suggestion that most agree is objectively better. It happens. Bar that, it's just subjective and/or logistical feedback, the former of which we have to take with a pinch of salt and the latter really only applicable when the notes come from someone aiming to produce the script.
There's been a recent trend of paying for coverage and using that to redraft. For the cost of each submission, these writers could buy a book and decide the best way to do things for themselves. Then apply those new skills to every future script.
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I'm for getting feedback, CJ Walley, but I think at some point, a writer should stop getting feedback and be confident in what they wrote.
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Mike Childress, coverage isn't even supposed to be feedback/notes. It's traditionally just a reader's roundup of a script that would be passed upwards to the next decision maker.
There's been an explosion in coverage services aimed at writers over the past few years, especially since WeScreenPlay started offering it cheap.
People think it gives them direction and a ranking, much like they think competitions with notes do, or BL evaluations with scores. It's madness.
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FWIW as of the end of the month, We Screenplay will cease coverage operations -- finally something to celebrate in the new year.
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Mike Childress, networking is a big deal. There was a report on working screenwriters where something like 95% said they owed everything to networking.
What people don't appreciate is there's this whole benefit of the doubt thing. When someone's met you, and they like you, and they like the way you talk about filmmaking, they go into a read giving you the benefit of the doubt. When you have existing credits or come recommended by someone respected, you again have the benefit of the doubt. That plays a huge part in their enjoyment of the script from page one - just the same as you or I would when we watch a movie from a filmmaker we like.
The core issue with anything that demands a cold read is the lack of any benefit of the doubt. Then you've got low quality readers judging on things like formatting/typos and massively impacted by their own subjectivity. Many are going in miserable, and that will likely give them a miserable experience.
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Mike Childress, in all fairness, getting into even just the outer circles of working producers isn't easy. It's an insular world. Nobody wants to make that mistake of acknowledging a writer's existence and gaining a new stalker. There is a lot of crazy.
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What people don't appreciate is there's this whole benefit of the doubt thing. When someone's met you, and they like you, and they like the way you talk about filmmaking, they go into a read giving you the benefit of the doubt. I've never heard networking describing this way. Thanks CJ Walley