Beliefs and principles: creative feedback, good process, and transformative cohorts

How do the storytellers at First Person get so good? A lot of scriptwriting, editing, and commitment to good feedback during the 12-week cohort process.

Creating a great story isn’t easy. Good feedback isn’t just reacting to something you hear. And greater-than-the-sum-of-their-people workshops don’t happen just by throwing people in a Whatsapp group. All these things take shared commitment, understanding, and expectations, so here are a few of ours at First Person. When each member of a quarterly storytelling cohort goes all in on these values, magical things happen.

  • Choose to trust

    Being able to give and receive good feedback requires believing that everyone involved wants to do their best by you. Trust happens when everyone participates to make the idea better — not to win arguments, prove a point, get their way, one-up someone else, or reinforce their ego.

  • Risk openness

    We believe you can’t have an amazing story without allowing yourself to be vulnerable. If you don’t dig deep, access the emotions that made you choose this story above all others, then the story will not resonate with the audience in the way you want it to. 

  • Expect to grow

    If you believe you already fully understand your work, if you think it’s beautiful just the way it is, you won’t grow. At Pixar all ideas begin as “ugly babies” — and everyone is there to help the ideas grow up. For a beneficial partnership, everyone has to believe that feedback is important, even necessary, to helping ideas—and people—grow.

 

  • Write hot, edit cold

    Great creative work comes from the heart: it is a pulsing, living thing. But to become its best, we may have to give that work a haircut, a blood transfusion, or even an amputation — and that requires emotional detachment. After we give birth to that initial draft on our own, our “village” can help raise it — sometimes by making cuts. Or put another way, “write close to the heart, but edit at arms’ length.”

  • Be specific

    Vague notes like, “It’s good,” or “I didn’t really like it” don’t push work forward. Pointed notes like, “I didn’t follow the transition from high school to college” or “What was at stake in the scene about your mom?” help. Specificity helps make criticism constructive rather than destructive: carving out details for the creator helps them rebuild, after the initial draft has been taken down. Specific feedback also teaches us how to think about our own pieces more productively.

  • Critique the idea, not the person

    We are not our ideas. We put a lot of ourselves into them if they are any good, yet being able to separate ourselves from our work after doing a draft is crucial to making the work better. If everyone involved has a shared commitment to making the work better, and the shared understanding that dissecting the story is not the same as attacking the storyteller, then everyone can be free to be honest, which is ultimately best for the story.

 

  • Serve a compliment sandwich

    Constructive criticism rooted in affirmation helps us grow as people and creators. Begin by pointing out something positive, then offer critiques, then close with another affirmation. Critiquing right away puts people on the defensive, which then reduces their ability to hear anything that follows. And identifying what works well can serve as a compass for further honing of the story.

  • Ask questions, vs. making judgments

    Telling someone something’s wrong with their creative idea is an almost surefire way to get them arguing with you, but asking questions can be specific yet gentle. Entering a piece from a place of curiosity defuses a lot of initial tension and desire to defend.

  • Embrace progressive revelation

    For both listeners and storytellers, the heart of a story is something that emerges over time, as you peel back layers. Like an onion, for the storyteller, peeling the layers of the story through successive rounds of feedback and editing might make you cry! But that’s how you get to the stuff that is really powerful. Being a part of First Person means committing to peeling back multiple layers of the onion of your story.

  • Transgress, thoughtfully

    In live storytelling and stand-up comedy, material that is too safe leaves an audience yawning. But material that’s too outrageous can come off as tasteless, tone-deaf, or offensive. But when material makes an audience nervous but not horrified — that’s the sweet spot for enlarging minds and hearts. Discovering the “right” amount of transgressive is another valuable cohort function — previewing an audience’s reaction.

 

 Further reading: feedback, creative partnerships, workshops, & more

Want to learn more about creative partnerships, giving and getting productive feedback, and healthy partnerships? We recommend these:

  • Amy Wallace and Ed Catmull, Creativity, Inc. Chapter 5, “honesty and candor,” describes the distinct approach to creative feedback and workshopping that is foundational to Pixar’s continual excellence. That chapter informed a number of our ideas listed here.

  • Jessica Abel, Out on the Wire. Chapter 4, collaboration and teamwork. This graphic novel is about radio and podcasting, but these lessons from team editing and feedback sessions at places like This American Life transfer to live storytellers as well.