What to do when feedback equals disappointment…

First rule of screenwriting: Do not end up like screenwriter Joe Gillis in Billy Wilder’s classic movie Sunset Boulevard. We don’t want to find you face down in the swimming pool of a Beverly Hills mansion. Joe was disappointed with the reaction to his screenplays and it caused him to make a series of bad choices that lead to his demise. Unfortunately, disappointment is part of a screenwriter’s journey, but make sure it does not lead you to make choices out of desperation. It’s only a screenplay and you will write a new one that will offer you another opportunity for success. All screenwriters deal with feedback daily. Learning how to properly manage your reaction to notes, criticism, and rejection will help you keep your sanity. I know you have high expectations after you complete a screenplay. How could you not look forward to receiving positive comments? Only you know the creative high that you felt during writing and now you’re coming off that high as you turn in your latest draft and await feedback with the hopes they love the material as well.

CUT TO: You receive the reader’s comments. Were they not exactly what you had expected? Did you assume the reader would love it as much as you do? Were you disappointed because they didn’t appreciate the work enough — or maybe they did not understand what you tried to achieve? Maybe they felt your execution of the screenplay did not work as expected. Did your hopes of winning or placing in a major screenplay contest become dashed when you received the news your screenplay did not place as high as you expected — or did not place at all? We know that feedback is an important part of the screenwriting process, but don’t get down on yourself if the insecure voices in your head scream about your lack of ability and talent. You may even question the quality of your material. Something you thought was your best writing only a week ago has now become substandard in your mind. Your confidence may vanish if you allow your fear and insecurity to overwhelm you during these doubtful stages. You could even fall into the trap of feeling like a fraud. Do not worry, we have all felt this way at some point and struggle to avoid it even after becoming a professional.

It helps if you do not set yourself up with unreal expectations about your screenplay’s feedback or its outcome of success. Detach from the material and expectation from any outcome. “Act without expectation.” —Lao Tzu. This discipline will help you on the long haul journey of a screenwriter. Detachment from the work can be difficult, but it helps so you’re not crushed every time you receive disappointing feedback or rejection. You don’t need to suffer any disappointments — only triumphs when you complete a project.

We all need a pat on the back or just a “job well done” comment occasionally. Many times, you will not find the validation you seek on the outside but inside yourself. It’s a vulnerable period when you finish your project because you expose yourself and your work to criticism and possibly rejection. Then you discover it’s difficult to find someone else who shares your level of excitement about your script. It’s a feeling of lonely disappointment, as if you’re the only person who champions your cause. Stay strong and trust in your daily disciplines to get you through. 

Writing the screenplay is the first big hurdle and waiting for feedback is another. It’s easy to take notes personally because your script is your baby and you’re exposing your talents to the world. If you can’t handle critical opinions, work on detaching from your script, as it will make the process easier for survival. Notes and changes are standard procedure with any screenplay at every level of the film business because the script is an ever-changing blueprint for a movie. Once the producers, the director, and actors become involved, there will be changes and you should welcome the creative input from your co-collaborators. These fellow artisans will bring the script to an entirely new level of creativity. The problem comes when so many changes drag down the process and possibly ruin the original concept. You become frustrated and feel like throwing in the towel. Stay positive and focus on turning in a script that is closer to what everyone needs to produce the film. Find the passion you had for the first draft and put that energy into shaping the new draft. You’ll not only please yourself but also the producer and other talent your script needs to attract for production.

Along with the successes, I’ve personally dealt with rejection, insecurity, fear, disappointments, and frustration throughout my screenwriting career. I’ve slogged through the hardships and chased validation, but I always managed to remain in love with the craft of filmmaking. I’ve always looked at it from a bigger perspective and focused on using the constructive notes to craft a better screenplay. Trust your talent and ability, take your feedback seriously, but don’t take it to heart. If you find yourself in a bad mental place because you’re disappointed, it’s okay to pause and honestly address your feelings of anxiety and fear— but take a step back, regroup, and then return to work addressing the notes so you can move forward on your journey.

If you’re going to play in the majors, you’re competing with the best. Accept that sometimes your feedback will not be what you expect. Your ego can become bruised, beaten to a pulp, and then you doubt your talent and chances for success. Do not take it personally because feedback, criticism, and rejection are rites of passage necessary for the growth of any beginning screenwriter. If you want to survive over the long haul of a career, you will need to toughen up and build your courage to endure the disappointments Hollywood unleashes upon all screenwriters. As you embrace this process, you will begin to look at constructive feedback as a positive experience that makes your script better and teaches you collaboration as a team player. You will experience many disappointments as you pursue a career, but do not perceive any one as a total failure or major setback. If you keep a positive outlook about any “setbacks” and never stop screenwriting — you will remain in the game.

Keep the faith and keep filling your blank pages on your road to success.

Copyright © 2024 by Mark Sanderson on his blog MY BLANK PAGE. All rights reserved.

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Need help navigating Hollywood’s trenches as you pursue your screenwriting career? Consider my book available on Amazon with 56 FIVE STAR reviews! (click on book cover for link to purchase).

It’s a long haul journey to reach any level of screenwriting success. If your passion drives you to embark on this crazy adventure of a  screenwriting career, you’ll need to prepare for survival in Hollywood’s  trenches. Talent is important, but so is your professionalism and  ability to endure criticism, rejection, and failure over the long haul.  The odds may be stacked against you, but the way to standout in this  very competitive business is to create a solid body of work and build a  reputation as a team player and collaborator. The rest is just luck — a  prepared screenwriter who meets with an opportunity and delivers the  goods. “A Screenwriter’s Journey to Success” (2024 updated edition) will help you prepare for  your own journey with the necessary, tips, tricks and tactics that I’ve  developed over the past twenty years of working in the film industry.  It’s time to start living your dream as a screenwriter in Hollywood.

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“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.”—F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Collaborative effort requires sharing that tiny little space which we reserve for ourselves.  We’ve got to bring it out and share it for a while, even if we put it back afterward.“—Stanley Kramer, director of The Defiant Ones, Inherit the Wind, Judgment at Nuremberg, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

“The wise screen writer is he who wears his second-best suit, artistically speaking, and doesn’t take things too much to heart.  He should have a touch of cynicism, but only a touch. The complete cynic is as useless to Hollywood as he is to himself.  He should do the best he can without straining at it.  He should be scrupulously honest about his work, but he should not expect scrupulous honesty in return.  He won’t get it.  And when he has had enough, he should say goodbye with a smile, because for all he knows he may want to go back.” – Raymond Chandler

“I think of the script as an organization, like an engine. Ideally, everything contributes—nothing is in excess and everything works. I feel as thought I’ve cheated in a script unless everything has a function.” —John Huston, director of The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, Key Largo, The African Queen, The Man Who Would Be King

The specter of similar ideas…

In the coming weeks, I will be posting a series of articles with essays taken from my book “A Screenwriter’s Journey to Success: Tips, tricks and tactics to Survive as a Working Screenwriter in Hollywood” available on Amazon. The following essay is from my book in Chapter 2: “The Screenplay: It lives—or dies by a thousand cuts” on page 62.

In reality, there are only a handful of basic ideas that every story follows. If you believe author Christopher Booker’s The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, he spent thirty years analyzing stories and their psychological meaning and discovered there are only seven basic plots. The late screenwriter Blake Snyder in his fantastic book Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies, takes the idea to another extreme and breaks film stories into ten basic genres: Monster in the House, Golden Fleece, Out of the Bottle, Dude with a Problem, Rites of Passage, Buddy Love, Whydunit, Fool Triumphant, Institutionalized, and Superhero. Your project might be an age-old story of a particular genre and the basic idea may not be new, but it’s how you put your unique spin on it that will garner attention and jump start your career.

If you’re in the screenwriting game long enough, you’ll experience the bitter sting of disappointment when you discover similar stories or ideas competing with yours for a home. I’ve experienced this phenomenon a few times over the years, and it’s a bitter pill to swallow when you learn of a competing story. Years ago, my then writing partner Andrew and I wrote a spec based upon the true story of a man named D.B. Cooper who hijacked a Boeing 727 in the air between Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington, on November 24, 1971. Cooper extorted $200,000 in ransom and parachuted from the plane to an uncertain fate never to be found. We knew of a few movies already produced on the subject of the hijacking, but in our script, Cooper survived and was living quietly in his hometown. 

Our manager at the time sent out the script to dozens of companies and it received a good response, but it didn’t sell. We followed it up with a series of pitch meetings and during the process, we learned that an “A-list” actor had always wanted to play Cooper and had his own script in development. The production company that was our competition requested to read our script and our manager sent it over. They eventually passed. No big surprise, right? 

The harsh reality for us was that the “A-list” actor’s script was already in development. His project was more likely to move into production first before a script from two unknown screenwriters with no attachments of talent. Looking back, if we knew there was a high-profile script with a similar story in development, we would never have wasted two months to write ours. We would have picked a different idea to write as we couldn’t compete on that level.

Similar projects float around Hollywood every year and it’s not because someone steals the idea, it’s because writers gravitate toward good stories. But this still doesn’t change aspirant’s fears of outright theft. If you consider the tens of thousands of writers in Hollywood and beyond, other writers will eventually create similar basic stories and ideas. It’s a harsh reality and never easy having to accept the fact that your months of hard work may end up as only a writing sample. This is why you need to do your homework because information is priceless currency in Hollywood.

If you don’t have an agent or manager who knows what is selling or in development, you’ll need to stay up on the news by reading Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline Hollywood, The Wrap, The Black List, Studio System News, and any publication or website that will give you information on recent script sales and development deals. If you discover that a particular story is already in development, or the script sold and it’s in production, strongly consider writing a different idea. You don’t want to waste your time on a concept that already has another hurdle to jump over even before it’s finished.

This just happened to me again a few weeks ago when I was out pitching a new, one-hour episodic action series idea. I developed the pitch from my feature film idea, and I really wanted to write this project on spec. I read online about the recent sale of TV series to a major network that was my same premise. Sure, my basic idea was not completely original, but I put an updated spin on the genre and made it an ensemble show with action. My pitch was D.O.A. and it was time to move on to the next one.

My only consolation — their idea was adapted from a series of adventure novels and not from an original pitch. The basic story idea existed before I came up with mine, and it took a bit of the sting out of my disappointment. As a screenwriter in it for the long haul, you have to take your lumps and move on to your next script. This is why you will need a stack of screenplays in your arsenal to compete in a crowded marketplace. Looking on the bright side, a pitch was a lot easier to craft than if I actually took months to write and develop the pilot and then learned that a similar idea sold.

Maybe you came up with a similar idea that another writer sold or it was a recently produced film. Realize it’s a numbers game, and you’ll keep playing in the game by generating new ideas, pitches, and scripts. Eventually, your day will come when they buy your script and other writers will grouse, “Hey, that was my idea!”  Of course it was…

Scriptcat out!

Copyright © 2017 by Mark Sanderson from “A Screenwriter’s Journey to Success”. All rights reserved.

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Did you just complete your latest screenplay or finish a new draft? Is it time for in-depth consultation? Check out my services by clicking this LINK to visit my website.

Need help navigating Hollywood’s trenches as you pursue your screenwriting career? Consider my book available on Amazon with 56 FIVE STAR reviews! (click on book cover for link to purchase)

It’s a long haul journey to reach any level of screenwriting success. If your passion drives you to embark on this crazy adventure of a  screenwriting career, you’ll need to prepare for survival in Hollywood’s  trenches. Talent is important, but so is your professionalism and  ability to endure criticism, rejection, and failure over the long haul.  The odds may be stacked against you, but the way to standout in this  very competitive business is to create a solid body of work and build a  reputation as a team player and collaborator. The rest is just luck — a  prepared screenwriter who meets with an opportunity and delivers the  goods. “A Screenwriter’s Journey to Success” will help you prepare for  your own journey with the necessary, tips, tricks and tactics that I’ve  developed over the past twenty years of working in the film industry.  It’s time to start living your dream as a screenwriter in Hollywood.

“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.”—F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I do not over-intellectualize the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.”—Tom Clancy

“An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.”—Charles Dickens

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.  The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.” — Joseph Campbell