NOTES ON NOTES: "DOCTOR ORPHANS" or "KNOW YOUR LAYER"

NOTES ON NOTES

Periodic musings on the how executives and creatives can work better together by Eric Trueheart.

This installment: "DOCTOR ORPHANS" or "KNOW YOU LAYER!"

A long time back, a writers group friend of mine taught me a great tip for giving feedback. I’d credit her as the source, but she told me up front she got it from someone else, and that person’s name is now lost in the murky mists of writers group history.* (Writers Group History, incidentally, may be the least interesting branch of history currently studied, and certainly not one that will land you a job after graduate school.)

The rule basically goes like this: Most feedback can be broken down into three layers, and it’s important to know which layer you’re talking from.

LAYER 1 - Identifying a problem. e.g. “The main character seems unlikable.”

LAYER 2 - Identifying why you think that problem exists. e.g. “In the opening scene, the main character punches-out a dog, then pees on its adorable, unconscious body.”

LAYER 3 - Offering a solution to the problem. e.g. “Could we make the main character a doctor who treats orphans to make him more likable?”  

This solution presented as an example only. It is, in fact, a terrible solution. But I’ve named this kind of note the “Doctor Orphans” note. It's a note that at best asks the writer to do something that seems out of nowhere for no reason they can fathom, and at worst blows the script up completely in a case where just a little surgery might solve the problem.

The problem with a "Doctor Orphans" note is that it jumps straight to layer three without first laying the foundation with layers one and two. It’s like jumping straight to telling everyone you’re taking a two-week vacation to Buffalo, NY without first telling them that you’ve got a rich uncle there there, and you need money really bad. They’re going to be baffled, and possibly think you’re crazy.

If you’re a writer, you’ve probably gotten a “Doctor Orphans” note more than once, and if you’re an executive, you may have unknowingly given one. It’s not your fault. Nobody tells you these things can blow up a script. But rather than just dropping “Can we make him a doctor?” like a note-bomb over Berlin, you might want to try positioning your feedback like this:

“We’re worried the lead is coming across as unlikable. We’re thinking this is because of the dog-punch-n-pee moment in the opening scene. Would changing him to a doctor help make the audience more empathetic?”

The writer may not agree, but at least she understands where you’re coming from, and can start to diagnose the problem. The problem could be caused by something else entirely. Maybe it’s because after the dog scene the lead screams obscenities at a nun on crutches. Or maybe it’s because he calls his children a “brainless slug-monkeys” in every scene thereafter.  

On the other hand, maybe that scene does make your lead unlikable, but you can't pull it without collapsing the story.  Maybe the project is a gritty cop drama about a detective whose tortured by visions of the doberman pinschers who ate his children, and that canine-clobber moment is essential. In that case, you may indeed need to come up with something to balance out the dog beat, but it obviously can't be changing the main character to Doctor Orphans, and it would be disastrous to try it.

The point is, identifying the problem isn’t the same as identifying the solution, and you won’t find a mutually-agreeable a solution unless everyone knows the layers.

Believe it or not, it often makes sense in your notes to stop at layer two or even at layer one. Sometimes just giving the note, “We’re worried the detective is coming off as not-so-much ‘gritty’ as ‘a huge dick.’ Can we talk about that?” can work wonders. In the conversation that follows, you can go deeper into why, and probably come up with a better answer than that doctor thing. As I've said in the past, communication is key.

So if I can leave you with one message, it’s simply this: Know Your Layers!

And if I can leave you with two messages, the second is something about never punching-out dogs. I haven't figured out the finer points of it yet, but I promise it’ll be screenwriting gold when I do.

*Since writing this piece, my writers group friend Allison Keissling has told me it's a variation of something she got from screenwriting genius Corey Mandell. His classes are fantastic, and you could do yourself a huge favor by tracking him down at http://coreymandell.net/ and signing for one up immediately.