Macro Notes

My writers group includes people who have way more industry connections than I do, which is pretty awesome for me. I try to give back by giving great notes. Also, I brought a lamp.

One of the members of our group constantly keeps us focused on "Macro Notes" and we have all sort of adapted that phrase on our own, and it's such a useful strategy I want to share it here.

When you first finish a script, you want notes that will tell you how to fix it. You want clear, easy to follow instructions. Fix this, then this, then this and bang! You have a brilliant new script.

Only most of the time, that doesn't fix the script.

Know what's way harder? Page one rewrites. Guess which one you probably need?

When we go into meetings with a new script, the first thing we do is look at the big picture. Macro notes. Tone, characters, plot. If we start to head into scene breakdowns one of us will whip the conversation back on track. Tone, characters, plot. If those three things don't gel then it doesn't matter how many permutations of a scene you try, they won't work. So you start with Macro notes, because any specific notes will be irrelevant until you've fixed the big stuff.

This group is made up of people who know what they're doing. Most of us have been writing for ages, but even the one member of our group who hasn't written so many screenplays has still been in the industry for a long time and knows her business. Yet every single one of us has had to do a page one rewrite on our script after the first meeting. One member of our group ended up scrapping everything but the concept. The title, the tone, the characters - all of it changed.

When I start writing something I have a clear idea of what I want the opening scene to be and it's tough to let it go. You get used to thinking of a scene a certain way. But when you get macro notes, you can't hang on to that shit. You have to take a look at the plot, tone, and characters and let the rest go to serve those three elements.

That's why often when I do notes for a new writer I don't finish the script. Right away I see Macro problems, and once you see those nothing else matters. The truth is, once you've taken care of that, notes are easy. In our group that seems to be happening around draft 3. That's when you get those specific notes - things you can actually do right away, little fixes that make your work stronger, rewrites that take hours instead of weeks.

But first, you have got to let yourself go Macro.