Evaluating your own work and fixing it is REALLY hard. You’ll see things in the work of others that you will have a very hard time seeing in your own work. Your brain will be desperate to convince you that the problems in your work aren’t problems at all. You’ll often come away having no idea whether what you’ve done is good or not.

Why? A whole bunch of reasons but it is all tied into the fact that you are too close to your work. You immerse yourself in it, you give it your all and then you find it harder to see the larger view. And most of all, your brain goes into resistance mode. You might not even be that type of person but your brain will still try to protect you and the work you have done and that can make you blind to things that need fixing.

So what do you do? The first thing is to try to bring in someone else to edit and give notes. But if you can’t do that, if you really have to edit on your own, try to get some distance and then split the process into very separate tasks:

Step 1 – make notes. Do NOT attempt to fix anything. Do not even consider fixing anything. You NEVER have to fix any of this stuff. The only goal is to make notes – what doesn’t work, what needs clarification, tightening, amending. Simple quick notes. The trick here is that if you completely disassociate this from the act of having to fix these things, you’ll be more honest. Your brain will not go into resistance mode quite so much and so it’s like evaluating the work of someone else.

The moment you try to fix something in this stage, your brain will go into lockdown and try to protect you from the hard work of rewrites or re-editing. Don’t do it – you’re only making notes and, when that stage is done, you’re going to let it sit so you don’t have to worry about actually fixing anything. Just make those notes.

Step 2 – Let it settle. Give it some time.

Step 3 – Evaluate the notes and make plans to address them. Again, do NOT go in and do the fixes here. This is a PLANNING stage. Effectively it’s like giving someone suggestions: how about you do it this way instead? Like the first stage, if you get stuck into the work directly your brain will resist and try to save you work by convincing you some things are okay or trying to give you easy yet half-baked solves. You’re just jotting down some plans. You don’t need to consider ever carrying them out.

Step 4 – You’ve got your plans now. You know exactly what you’re doing, right? Hey, the hard work is over. All you have to do now is stick to the plans and do what your past self told you to do. It will take a bit of time but it’s just in the doing now. So work your way through your fixes, follow your plans and implement them as best you can.

Step 5 – Enjoy your good work. You did it.

I find it is still always helpful to get an outside view but being able to have some sense of your own work is a crucial skill. So split it up into tasks and it gives you the best chance of doing a great edit without your brain ruining things by trying to protect you.

Another cycling analogy here (last one I promise!). This one is about momentum. For me, cycling to work is divided into three very clear types of terrain: downhill (easy), flat (neutral) and uphill (hard). After a long day, those uphills can take a lot out of me and I’m not the only one struggling.

But this post is about what people do on the downhills and flats. Every now and again, I’ll see a cyclist on the same route who takes it REALLY slow on those parts. I can understand that – conserving energy for the hills, I guess. But here’s the thing: on my route most of those downhills or flats end in a hill and the faster you take the easy parts the more momentum you build for the hills. Approach a hill slowly and you have to work so much harder to make progress. Whereas if you take advantage of the momentum you can build on the easy or neutral sections, half the work is done for you when you hit that hard section.

Production isn’t cycling but it still has its easy parts, neutral parts and its hard parts. There will be challenges. There will be struggles. So the more you can take advantage of the easy and neutral parts, the better. You can get that momentum going, you can build a bank of great work, make plans for the tougher sections ahead, create any buffers possible and buy you that bit of extra leeway for when things get hard. And they will get hard at times.

Even if you can take it easy… don’t. Keep pedalling.

If you’re doing anything that involves other people, something that will go places and has got a bit of attention, you’re going to get notes. Notes are part of most creative careers and they can come at all stages of those careers. You need to learn how to deal with notes.

You’ve got to be true to your vision though, right? Well, unless that just involves being stubborn because now every set of notes is a battleground and it’s no fun for you or anyone else and, before long, people are just going to call a halt to the whole process. So instead you’ve got to flexible, right? Got to give people what they ask for? Well, unless that means a total detachment from your work and you are now just a middle person passing notes down the line and you have no investment in making something good whatsoever.

There is a third option and it is the best option. It is to take the challenge of the notes and make them work for you. It is to take your skills and your experience and your passion for the project and apply those in a way that can address the notes while creating something you love. You might be asked to cut an element you love and replace it with a new element that is being thrust upon you. So now find ways of making that new element awesome. Make that new element even better than the last one. You might be asked to cut a whole plot point from your story. Use that either as an opportunity to streamline and enhance the rest of it or, if you have the space, now you get to make a whole new scene. That’s a bonus.

Look for the opportunities. Always look to tackle the notes in a helpful way and do so in a way that gets the best from your own strengths and gives you something you’ll love. I have seen some really helpful notes over the years and I have seen the odd stinker but, always, there is an opportunity there to get something great at the end of it no matter what the note is.

Remember: your project can always get better no matter how good you think it is right now.

I have never liked the phrase ‘expect the unexpected’. It’s probably because I have made enough TV shows to know just how dangerous the unexpected can be. The unexpected can cost you a good scene. It can cost you an episode. It can cost you weeks and lots and lots of money. Unexpected frightens me. I don’t like it.

So rather than expecting the unexpected, I prefer to turn the unexpected into the expected and then plan for it. I guess that makes my version of this expression: ‘plan for the expected’. I realise that doesn’t sound anywhere near as fun or mysterious but I can guarantee you that it is better.

Step 1: find out what might be unexpected so it’s now expected. Some of this comes from experience, doing it over and over until you refine your methods. Some of it comes from the experience of others, learning from the stories, the test cases, especially the mistakes. If someone gives you a warning, heed it. A lot of it, however, comes from nothing more than some creative thinking and common sense. Run the process through your head a few times. Where could it possibly go wrong, assuming that something WILL go wrong?

Write it down so you have a list.

Step 2: plan for it. Look at everywhere that problems can happen (if you’ve done it well, that will cover a LOT of areas) and make a plan for each one. For me, what I call a plan really comes down to three things. The first is prevention. Simply having gone through step 1 will drastically reduce your chances of bad things happening because you’ll be aware enough to prevent most of them. The second part is the Plan B – what happens if it does go wrong? Have your backup plan ready to go.

The last part is one of the most important parts: time it. Have in your head some sense of the repercussions. If you’re on episode 4 and just about to put scenes into animation and Godzilla destroys your building, how long will it take to get a new building and get the animators ready to start again? Contingency should be standard in a budget (sometimes it isn’t) but often missed in a schedule. To make matters worse, if you pop in extra weeks into your schedule, guess what will get cut the moment anyone suggests a squeeze? Yep, those extra weeks. How you handle that is up to you but it does need to be handled and you’re better trying to grab more time. It’s easier to have to explain to someone why something is early than explain why it’s late.

So plan for the expected. There must be a more exciting way to say that…

Some time ago, I was having a conversation in which I put forward that we overthink narrative and that the success of YouTube Let’s Play videos offer narrative in a much simpler and wonderfully spontaneous form. A form that those of us in more constructed media are missing (something I have said here before). I questioned the need for anything resembling traditional narrative at all. The very next day, I wrote a post about the need for very traditional and very constructed narrative ideas – how we need to build on the established structures.

You could be reading this and writing all this in your notebook (it’s okay, I know you don’t do that) and be thinking to yourself, well now I don’t know what to believe! Which is fact here? Traditional narrative or not?

Here’s the thing: when you take in every piece of information you get from someone who has made media, had certain successes or failures, has had a long career or whatever appears to make them qualified, you need to think about how that information applies to YOU. To YOUR work.

The one rule I have found over the years is that any time someone says there is a rule, you need to instead write that down as ‘guideline’ or ‘personal piece of advice according to this person’. There really aren’t facts when it comes to this creative stuff. Yes, there are so many things you can learn and should learn but that won’t mean they are always relevant to your work right now. What works for one project in one particular year won’t necessarily work the same for another project in another year. Actually, you can be pretty sure it won’t, hence my rather obvious prediction that the next big successes will come as a surprise to most people.

Many have gone before you. Many have tried different things, done the research, had failures and often understood why. These are things you should learn. There are tools of the trade that we should all have.

But unfortunately this won’t give us a simple set of instructions to follow. So they shouldn’t be taken that way. When your favourite author or creator says something that you remember, don’t file it away as a rule. Because it’s not. Instead, think of it as a tool to be considered. A resource you have that may or may not be applicable in different situations.

The core thing here is that everything you hear and read, the very reason you’re reading this right now, should really be to get you thinking rather than to stop you thinking. To provide an insight that will help you in your own work and, if we’ve done our job, the insight will more likely come from YOU rather than the words you’re reading right now.

For me, my guideline, my personal piece of advice is: be informed. As much as possible, be informed. And then really consider that information. Think about it. Use it. Or don’t use it but make that a decision rather than just something that happened because you didn’t realise you had tools at your disposal. Let every nugget of information prompt more questions. Your work is your own and you will find your own path.

So traditional narrative or not? Well that actually has a very simple answer: maybe…

Notes, eh? They can frustrate. Just when you think you’re done, you get a new note and have to unravel what you’ve done. Maybe even come up with something else entirely. And can you do that in the time you have? Notes can throw spanners in all the works. But there is something to consider here:

Quite some time ago, we were trying to work out a character for a thing I was working on and we submitted some first options to see if we could get a steer. One of those options was approved instantly. No notes. No suggestions. No questions. An approval.

Cause for celebration? No. I wasn’t happy. That character wasn’t completely ready yet. It wasn’t as great as it could be. It was a first draft. And it could be made better but we didn’t get the opportunity. And this is exactly the thing to keep in mind: notes are an opportunity to make something even better.

Even if you don’t like the note, you now are given that chance: make it better. Take that opportunity. There are times in my career I did not agree with notes I was given and there were times we got too many notes with not enough time to carry them out and notes have to be managed on all sides because they can cause a production to grind to a halt… and yet I can’t think of many cases in which something got worse after we had another attempt. Because it wasn’t just about carrying out the notes. It was an opportunity to make things even better.

Notes, revisions, retakes, redrafts – they are all a part of the process. They come with the job. And when you get them, take the opportunity they offer.

Finished not perfect, right? Sure. You have to deliver and you have to deliver on time – that’s crucial. Respect deadlines. Get your work out and do not let your own tweaks and changes and doubts and endless polish hold you back from delivering.

BUT… you can never let this become an excuse to deliver scrappy work. You have to use your time well and make sure that the work you do is of excellent quality. Finished not perfect assumes your work is GOOD. And the danger of putting all focus on getting it out rather than getting it done well is that some can take that as a justification for scrappier and scrappier work.

You have to get your work finished but it has to be finished really well. Never let that slip.

You know what the problem is with solving problems? You get a buzz from it and people praise you for solving the problems and that feels good and makes them think you’re great. So why wouldn’t we want that? Because it requires that you find yourself in a situation filled with problems. Problem solvers need problems. They thrive on problems.

Know what you don’t want in your production or business or life? Yep, it’s problems.

Instead, what is much better is to be one who avoids problems. Removes problems before they happen. Sets things up in a way that there will be no problems. It is a quieter role, not as dramatic, doesn’t always get the glory but it is a much, much better way to be.

Don’t get hooked on problem solving. Don’t buy into the drama of the big solutions to disasters. Be the one who avoids problems altogether and the one who rewards others who do the same.

Writers will understand the need for this straight away. It’s that feeling when you save the final version of your file, put it in an email and click SEND. And then you spot the typo. EVERY. TIME.

It just needed one more check before sending. That typo probably isn’t the worst idea thing in the world but it will haunt you. And it may not be a typo – it could be something bigger. It’s not just for the writers either. A scene. A storyboard. A design. They could all do with one last check before you show them.

So buy that time.

Work it so you can take the time to do that final check before you send. To do this, aiming for your deadline isn’t enough. Given that something will likely slow you up somewhere, you should always be aiming earlier anyway but you’ll definitely need some extra time for that last check. So reset your deadline to accommodate that.

Remember: the deadline and the actual time you need to finish in order to meet that deadline are rarely the same thing.

Build it into estimates you give people. If you think something will take five hours, say it will take five and a half. Or six. If it will take a week, build in an extra half day or even a day. It’s check time and it will pay off. Yes it takes more time but it will mean your work is presented in a better form and you may well find you have more to fix than the equivalent of typos.

Always have that time for one last check. If you didn’t need it, great. But usually you will and you’ll be very glad you allowed for it.

Ah, notes. We all love notes, right? I know the first reaction to notes is usually negative (that’s normal) but it’s important once we get past that to see how they can help and how best to tackle them. Different people give different notes. Some are consistently great and helpful and others might not always seem useful initially. You have to get to know the notes you’re dealing with and the person you are getting them from and so each project often requires a different approach when it comes to notes.

But here’s something that is useful no matter what kind of notes you’re getting: look beyond the notes themselves. Look for the intention behind the notes.

Almost every note has a problem to solve or a question to answer. But sometimes the problem listed in the notes is not actually the real problem. It might be a symptom of something else that has been missed or has become unclear. It might even be about something outside of the work that you’ve made so far – a request that has come in from someone else that is now being applied in the form of a note passed on to you. Sometimes acting on a note immediately as described can actually cause more problems than it solves if you don’t know the intention behind it.

This will be especially relevant if specific suggestions are given. When people give notes, I love when they give suggestions on how to fix things. Firstly, it shows they really want to contribute positively and, secondly, it gives a really great starting point for the fix. But it is just a starting point. The solution offered may not be the fix. And your reaction to it might be “that won’t work” and you might even be right. But look for the intention behind it. What is it trying to solve?

Look beyond the note itself and try to find the intention behind it and you’ll then understand what you need to achieve and, more often than not, the real solution will become clear.

And if you’re reading this and you’re someone who gives notes, here’s a tip: you can help people get to the best fix by making clear why something is a problem or why you’re asking for something. No matter what side of the notes you’re on, knowing the intention always helps.