Playwrights hunger for good feedback. 

Proper feedback nourishes playwrights. We need it like essential nutrients to develop our skills and articulate our artistic visions.

But the format of feedback itself seldom gets any attention. This neglect can leave playwrights with input akin to quick junk food snacks instead of hearty, valuable, tasty meals of information.

At Northwest Theatre Workshop, we care about this aspect of the playwriting process so much we’ve been collecting feedback about feedback for eight years. We’ve actively solicited comments and criticisms and engaged in robust conversations with playwrights in workshops and rehearsals. We’ve chewed on feedback they’ve found most useful—and what they couldn’t swallow—and adjusted our practices to improve our developmental process.

The discoveries became key ingredients in how we provide feedback in our Playwright2Playwright workshops, and in this blog. This article is the first in a series  about feedback, covering how to begin, how to vary perspectives, how to frame critical feedback, and how to combine these practices to elevate the playwright’s work.

Although these practices would be useful for any form of dramatic writing, they have been developed primarily in workshops focused on traditional plays. The examples come from NWTW’s popular, professionally-led Writing the Script workshops and the new, community-led Playwright2Playwright (P2P) workshops.

Common Criticisms of Feedback

Playwright criticisms about feedback are surprisingly consistent.

Similar observations arise whether the playwright is participating in a table workshop with other playwrights (such as Writing the Script or Playwright2Playwright), engaging in a workshop with actors and a director (such as our New Works Workshop), or gathering notes from actors or a creative team during rehearsals and production meetings.

What Playwrights Seek from Feedback

Most playwrights report that receiving feedback on drafts at different stages of the work is essential to finding their way through the process and completing a finished, rehearsal-ready script.

When asked what they are trying to achieve by requesting  feedback, the three most common stated goals were to “get out of the void,” receive an objective evaluation of the work, and gather information on how they might improve their writing.

What playwrights need from feedback tends to vary according to how they approach their work and where they are in the process.

There are an infinite number of approaches to writing. But a common process, whether writing an essay, novel, screenplay or play, is often broken down into three general stages:

Stage One: a pre-writing phase where ideas are generated either by writing a first draft, or creating various kinds of outlines, concept, story or theme maps and other tools helpful in organizing ideas.

Stage Two: a drafting phase that focuses on trying to find the connections between ideas and how plot, character, and themes might build and interconnect to create unity and a rich and engaging script.

Stage Three: a redrafting phase where the writer is focused on revising drafts to better  communicate the concepts and ideas in the script, and the interconnections between the elements  and dramatization of the story.

For the first stage, writers report that they are usually looking for feedback that helps them more clearly see the ideas they are generating, what might be worth more exploration and what is not, and which ideas seem to be naturally connecting to a larger narrative.

In the second and third stages, writers report that they are often looking for feedback to help them see where they are succeeding at connecting and communicating their ideas and where they are not, what’s on the page that’s important or useful that they may not have consciously caught themselves, and what on the page is essential and what should be cut.

The most common criticisms we’ve received tend to fall into four categories:

1. Vague: Statements such as “the scene doesn’t work,” or “the character isn’t believable.” Playwrights find specific and goal-driven feedback more useful. For example: “You’ve set up this character as someone who is very confident. Why would she defer to others in this scene?”

2. Sugarcoated: Non-critical and complimentary, often called “selectively edited” feedback. “It’s so funny. Not really the kind of humor I like, but I think other people might like it.” A statement with more honesty and detail proved more valuable to the playwright: “I can see that the character’s lines about the house on pages 8 and 9 are jokes, but they seem inconsistent with the character and unrelated to the situation that’s been set up. Why does the character start making jokes about the house? How do the jokes or the character telling the jokes serve the scene or the play’s comic premise?”

3. Opinionated: Statements such as, “The character isn’t likable,” “the story isn’t interesting,” “it’s not a good premise.”

4. Unsolicited: Suggestions on how to “fix” the play or how to write it differently, often beginning with statements like, “What would work better …” or “The way I’d write it…” or “It might be good to avoid….”  Once a certain level of trust is established, it is common for playwrights to solicit suggestions on specific issues. But unsolicited suggestions and fixes rarely address the playwright’s needs and, as a result, are not useful even when the suggestion or comment is considered “good.”

Although the common issues became apparent rather quickly, we found ourselves a bit amiss when trying to address them.  We needed a better understanding of what playwrights are seeking when asking for feedback and a clearer definition of the participants’ role and goal when giving feedback.