I recently received a series of Bad Notes on a project.
Not critical notes (though, they were critical in nature) but downright Bad Notes.
I had pitched an idea for a short play geared towards high school students. It went something like this: Prompted by a local urban legend, a group of teens dare one another to spend the night at a cemetery the evening before graduation. Throughout the night rather than being confronted by ghosts, they are forced to confront their fears about moving on and share their inner-most secrets. The play incorporates scary moments but the main focus of fear is on the psychological rather than the supernatural.
The person I was pitching to kept telling me that the play couldn’t exist because ‘If it’s set in a cemetery, something scary needs to happen!’ I explained that the fear would be present, that there would still be scary moments but he refused to listen to my explanation or engage in further conversation, instead insisting that I was wrong and he was right. He was very condescending, going so far as to define ‘theatrical truth’ to me, as though it was a concept I was not aware of and told me to think of a ‘good’ idea.
Luckily I am not a fledgling playwright and rather than allow those ‘notes’ to destroy my soul as they would have a decade ago, I simply walked away from the project.
It was well within his rights to say the play wasn’t of interest to him. I would have preferred it. But it was his insistence that he was just giving me ‘notes’ that frustrated me to the point of writing this substack.
The truth is, we’ll likely encounter more Bad Notes than useful notes during the course of our careers as a creative. But knowing what they are, being prepared for when they come around, and reconstructing them are ways for us to keep our power, to stay in control of our narrative rather than being destroyed by it.
So What Are Bad Notes?
Bad Notes are notes that are not engaged with any form of curiosity, instead concerned with telling a writer how and why what they have written is wrong. They’ll often miss the point of a piece or attempt to rewrite the play in order to fit a well-worn structure or narrative arc rather than allowing space for the play to become what it needs to be. And, as I said and as you probably already know, it’s unfortunately more of a common occurrence than not.
Theater constantly infantilizes playwrights. We’re often disempowered, told to look towards note-givers who hold more power than us. These are folks who might be able to program our plays as a part of a season or a reading series. We’re told not to question them, to play nice and we might be rewarded. The problem is that when notes are given to us, they don’t often try to center the playwrights’ intent. I have rarely been asked about my intent in writing the piece, what I’m trying to say or do with the work.
When I was a more inexperienced playwright, I had a hard time navigating through this system. Because the notes were being given to me with a confidence I did not have, and because I just wanted to make those note-givers happy, I often tried to implement them – and usually ruined pieces of my plays instead of improving them.
Playwrights do need notes from outside eyes. We live inside our pieces for so long, we sometimes have trouble seeing it from the other side. Sometimes something I think is so clear or so obvious is actually not landing at all. Sometimes something I think is boring in the most entertaining part of a scene, or a joke I thought was hilarious lands flat. Just last month, I heard one of my new plays out loud. I thought the ending was going to be unsuccessful and was surprised when it made everyone in the zoom room cry.
As a playwright, I am reliant on the thoughts and observations from those on the outside, looking in. But what I think often gets lost is the fact that the playwright needs to be centered in a feedback session. Nobody knows the play better than the playwright. Even when we have our thoughts and questions and concerns, the play is coming from a piece of ourselves.
‘Write It Like This!’
Man, there’s nothing I hate more than hearing someone say any version of this phrase. And yet it happens all the time. I was leading a feedback session a few months ago and a participant framed his thought that way. His argument was that the play should keep a specific piece of information secret until the very end so that the big reveal would be one of shocking catharsis for an audience. And while yes, holding that information in until a big reveal would accomplish that shocking catharsis, that was not the journey of the play. This playwright had intentionally not kept this piece of information secret because the story she was telling was reliant on our knowing about it.
I redirected the feedback pretty quickly. I affirmed that his suggestion was a dramatically compelling one, but it went against the purpose of the playwrights’ piece. He wasn’t pleased with my assessment and told me as much afterwards. He was adamant that she had written her play incorrectly but never stopped to wonder why the playwright had made that choice. He assumed he knew better than the playwright. And while there were aspects of the play that benefited from a group feedback session, his insistence on her rewriting the play to suit his storytelling assumptions was not one of them.
Bad Notes are often seen through the lens of our dominant cultural and societal narrative. This means a play is often seen through a biased white, cisgender (usually male), heteronormative, neurotypical and non-disabled lens1. This bias is often unconscious and leads folks to hold a theatrical arc up to what has been uplifted as the ‘correct’ way to tell a story rather than leaving room for the possibility of what the play is. I don’t think it’s coincidence in the above example that it was a male audience member misunderstanding the play that this female playwright was creating.
His rubric was outdated for the story she was telling.
This is why art by folks who do not fall into the dominant narrative is so often misunderstood and given Bad Notes by those who are part of the dominant narrative. We are not taught to de-center ourselves and center the playwright. The playwright is often not given power.
But we must center the playwright and empower the playwright in order to allow them to tell the story they want to write.
The Note Behind the Note
Content warning: This section talks about sex and abusive relationships. If this subject matter may be triggering to you, please skip ahead.
I wrote THIS HAPPENED ONCE AT THE ROMANCE DEPOT OFF THE I-87 IN WESTCHESTER2 in 2017. I was still a newer playwright and this was the first play I had written that felt really raw and deeply personal.
It’s a play that is set in a sex shop that subverts expectations of sex – a challenging idea for our sex-obsessed society. In the play, Beth tries to return a vibrator that ‘doesn’t work’ and winds up forming a friendship with Kevin, the shop owner. By the end of the play, we realize that Beth’s discomfort with sex and sexuality is due in part to her current relationship, revealed to be abusive. Beth and Kevin never have sex and never touch except to hug.
I had my first week-long workshop for the play around 2018. After the first read-through, received the following note:
‘I just don’t understand why Beth and Kevin don’t have sex. They like each other too much for me to be able to buy that not happening.’
Honestly? Triggering! Especially because I was attempting to write from my own lived experience and hadn’t yet learned how to put proper emotional boundaries in place for myself3.
The note came from a white, heterosexual and cisgender man who couldn’t fathom a world where a woman and a man would not be able to have sex with one another if they really, really liked each other. Even though that went against the point of the play and my own lived experiences.
In a panic, I told the note to some supportive friends who helped me self-regulate and asked me to think about what The note behind that note might be.
I’ve turned bad and unhelpful notes into new notes by using this method. I keep myself clear-headed by going through the following process:
Acknowledging that there’s an element which is potentially unclear, prompting a person to comment on it.
What element of the play is not clear?
What’s another way to think about their question?
How can I rewrite their note to make it empowering for me?
When I did this process for that note in ROMANCE DEPOT, I came to understand that the abuse narrative and its intersection with sexual disfunction of this character, which was so clear for me, was not on the page. In fact, there were too many competing ideas that all appeared to cancel one another out. I was able to streamline it, to make it clearer what this part of the story was about, taking away any room for the possibility of that question to be asked.
Rewriting feedback so that it becomes empowering to you, allowing you to make necessary changes to your play, is a great way to deal with a Bad Note. And understanding that your play is challenging a dominant narrative? I think that’s a really badass way to tell a story. Stand in the power of that fact. The more narratives that challenge that dominant narrative, the more people who fall outside of it will be seen, the more we deconstruct the myth of ‘normal’.
We’re All Just Human
At the end of the day, feedback is a tricky thing because we’re all just messy, messy humans. We try to navigate our thoughts and translate them into words and sometimes those words come out wrong. We carry around our unconscious biases, we put our raw hearts on display and get them broken, we misspeak, misunderstand, make mistakes. We’ll probably unintentionally give Bad Notes at some point in our lives – I know I have.
If you are a person who gives a Bad Note, take a step back. Reflect. Reconsider. Thank the person who is telling you so you can do better. And then, do better.
If you are giving feedback, always try to put your own expectation and biases to the side. Look at the play with curiosity. Think about what it is attempting to do. Ask the playwright neutral questions and always uplift what is working and share why that’s exciting to you.
If you are a playwright receiving Bad Notes, do whatever you can to protect your power. Try to go into feedback sessions with specific questions prepared so you can help guide the feedback to what will be most valuable to you. You know your play best, no matter what anybody else might claim.
And know what you are writing is a precious thing. Thank you for putting it into the world.
A few offerings:
Pre-orders are available for The Virtuous Fall of the Girls from Our Lady of Sorrows and MERCUTIO LOVES ROMEO LOVES JULIET LOVES! I wrote about their journey to publication in this special Substack. Pre-ordering is so helpful and tells the publishing company that supporting queer plays is a worthwhile investment. These plays are particularly great for university and college seasons so if you are interested in licensing, please consider doing so!
Registration is open for Fall’s section of Novel Writing 101! We’ve only got two spots left so if you’ve been thinking about joining us, don’t hesitate. I’d love to have you.
And I’ve still got a couple of slots available for one-on-one dramaturgy! Again, those are filling quickly so if you’ve been considering it, this is your sign!
As always, thank you so much for reading and supporting The Rejected Writer. I’ll see paid subscribers at the end of the month and everyone for a fresh Rejection Roundup August 1st. Until then, protect your art and your heart.
I’m sure there are other intersections I have not included here and apologize for any I’ve left out.
More on emotional boundaries and how to put them up for yourself another time.
I love this, thank you. The reason I loved my grad program at Brooklyn College was exactly because Mac Wellman never did the fix/notes thing. He would hear the play presented and reflect back at us what he thought we were trying to do. It never crossed his mind to “make it work better” or that it was even broken. The more broken the better. It is a twisted world now where playwrights have become infantilized. They didn’t used to do that. But they didn’t used to produce women playwrights as much. Misogynist connection???
This is such a thoughtful and astute piece; thank you for writing. I work in television and a very common form of bad note is when a problem is identified - we lose pace in the second act - and a solution is offered - why not add a rampaging elephant? It disempowers the writer, and the dynamics of who gives the notes - producers, execs - puts a pressure on the writer not only to take the bad solution but to be grateful for it.
My armchair psychoanalysis of this is that many senior people in TV were once creative and took promotions into non-creative roles. Their diaries are full of HR and budgets and marketing. Which looks dull as hell. So when a script is perceived to be 'in trouble' they seize the chance to be creative and 'fix' the script, flattering their own egos, and ignoring the writer's intention.
Fundamentally this exhibits a lack of trust in the writer's ability to problem solve. And of course it's most damaging with newer writers, who are all too aware of who has seniority.