💬 Weekly Question: What's the worst creative advice you've ever received?
Weekly questions’ comment sections are left open for one week. This thread is now locked.
This week’s question doesn’t require too much set up: What’s the worst creative advice you’ve ever received?
The rest of us will want to hear about the context in which it was given, why it proved so disastrous, and what, if anything, you learned from it. The reason being that your creative stumble — or, worse, faceplant — might help others avoid similar fates. This is of course why I share so many of my Hollywood cautionary tales with you here at 5AM StoryTalk.
I’ve discussed the worst creative advice I’ve ever received here before. It came from various Hollywood reps and was repeated so much you would’ve thought it was beaten into them on their first day on the job.
Keep writing for them, not you. In success, you can pivot and write what you really want to.
I was to write for the market. My real creative interests were irrelevant. If I was lucky, I’d become successful enough to do something about them.
But the reality is, writing for the market only hurt my career. I had to escape Hollywood, to London, to recover my creative sanity in a lot of ways. If I had a time machine, what I’d most like to find out is what would’ve happened if the gatekeepers had let me be me. I mean, really me. If I’d been encouraged to explore the same questions, themes, and more personal, grounded worlds I was in the UK market. Too bad time travel isn’t real.
Now, your turn to answer — and don’t forget to read and discuss other people’s answers!
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I've never had bad advice along the lines of "Hey, kid, you should be doing THIS!" - It has always been "advice" like "You CANNOT do that. No one wants that." I once pitched a zombie tv drama back in 1995, and the producer reacted like they were personally offended by the idea. He leant across the table, pointing at me, and said "There will NEVER be a television series about zombies." Uh huh. Honestly, nobody is in any kind of position or place of wisdom to say such a thing, so just write what you want.
To dumb it down when writing for kids -- advice that I happily ignored. I strongly believe in not condescending to a younger audience. If the material is challenging, that lifts the reader, but if you aim for a lowest common dominator then you end up boring almost everybody. It's why I appreciated Stan Lee and Roy Thomas; their work stretched my 10-year-old imagination, vocabulary, empathy, and knowledge.