The Power of Feedback by Clive Howard
31 May 2017 · 2 min read
An exciting aspect of Create50 was the opportunity to get feedback from other writers. As a writer, I know well the value of feedback. That said, it can be very difficult to hear.
Despite several years of experience, I can still have a negative response to other people’s thoughts on my work – akin to someone criticising your child.
However, I have learned that feedback almost always makes the work better.
I believe that there are two important considerations with respect to feedback.
The first is that people can fear offending and so do not always give you their honest thoughts. Other writers tend to be more honest which is why Create50 is so great. I gave the first draft of my The Singularity 50 entry – “The Agency of Ellis” – to someone I know well for review.
Their initial comments were positive but I could tell there was something that they were holding back. With encouragement, they were more critical. As a result, I re-wrote the story – keeping the same characters, locations and the story’s soul – but the new version was significantly different. It was also much, much better.
The second is that there is often a degree of interpretation involved. Reviewers do not always mean exactly what they say. Sometimes one must read between the lines or delve deeper into their thoughts – being careful not to seem like you’re arguing the point. Reviewers can provide solutions rather than articulate the underlying issue – a little careful questioning can unearth the true problem. One must often balance different feedback that can sometimes seem contradictory.
I also find that reviewing other people’s work improves my own. By reading others one can learn and then apply those learnings to your own work. It helps to hone a critical eye which one can then use on your own work.
For these reasons, in addition to the fantastic opportunity to get work published, I found taking part in Singularity50 a great learning experience.
Clive Howard
LinkedIn: uk.linkedin.com/in/clivehoward
Twitter: @clivehoward
Written by
Chris JonesPassionate about all things film, I have spent my life watching movies, making movies and helping others make their movies too. Most recently I have been directing Splinter Unit on 'Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning', parts 1 and 2 for Paramount. I also executive-produced 'The Enfield Poltergeist' for Apple TV+. Deeper into my past, my early major projects include action thriller 'The Runner', serial killer thriller 'White Angel' and paranormal horror 'Urban Ghost Story'. I co-created and authored The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook series, published by Bloomsbury. There are now eight books in the series. More recently I have run a series of London-based festivals, kicking off with the London Screenwriters Festival which attracts over 1,000 professional screenwriters from around the globe annually. I also set up and run TEDxEaling, an annual TEDx conference on storytelling and human communication. In 2009, I made the multi-award-winning and Oscar-shortlisted 'Gone Fishing', the whole process being heavily documented on my blog. In 2014 I completed my fourth feature film, the crowd-created 50 Kisses which entered the Guinness Book Of Records for most screenwriters on a feature film. Following this success, I founded Create50 to continue the idea of crowd-created projects. Twisted50, our first book, was published on Halloween 2016 and immediately toppled Stephen King from the top spot on Amazon. Five books have followed in the Twisted50 series and we are working on the sixth now. During the summer of 2016 I trained to become a master Firewalk instructor and now regularly take people across the hot coals for charity. Late 2017 I directed the short film 'Seeing Him' which collected a ton of awards too. Over the following years I continued to make award-winning shorts, such as Meet The Nativity and Never Too Late. In the summer of 2022 I premiered Impact 50, the second feature-length movie from Create50. This time I directed the segment at the start of the film, with Olivia Williams as the President, and written by Joe Eszterhas. In the summer of 2022, I also joined the Mission: Impossible 7 and 8 productions as Splinter Unit director. At Halloween 2023, the Apple TV+ show that I co-executive-produced, 'The Enfield Poltergeist', premiered. I run regular filmmaking workshops for filmmakers both online and in person. Some people ask how I began making films? Like most filmmakers of my generation, it was with a Super 8mm camera, summertime and school friends, usually after watching a behind-the-scenes TV programme on a Hollywood movie like Star Wars. My first film was a zombie horror called Necronomicon, heavily influenced by John Carpenter's The Fog. And I was hooked for life. Contact me at Ealing Film Studios, Ealing Green, London, W5 5EP, UK
