Creativity: How Do You Know If Your Work Is Good or Bad?

I’m following up on yesterday’s post, picking out what I see as the most useful bits from a talk by filmmaker Mark Duplass as SXSW in 2015.

I like to process other people’s ‘steps to success’ ideas. What I do is mull over how these ideas sit with me, who I am and where I am at this point.

One thing – he’s talking mostly to people a lot younger than I am (but maybe that’s just my paranoia). Also, I’ve already been through a lot of this myself, shooting a feature for almost nothing and being absolutely self-indulgent. Getting it into a good festival.

My story diverged from his at that point, which is interesting isn’t it?

Why am I different?

Why did I go in a different direction? Was it the random chances of life that steer us this way and that? And that includes the random chances which led to me being created the way I am, making the type of decisions I generally make.

Mark does still think in terms of good and bad judgements, it seems, which I have tried to teach myself not to do.

You see, good and bad are 100% subjective. And there is no logical argument against that statement.

So then, why are we so sure we know when something is bad and something is good?

Well, it’s a highly complex subject, which would take more than a blog post to cover. But, as a creative (and a human), I recommend you have a long think about it.

How do you decide and define what is good and bad? Because really there is no objective rule book on art, or life.

So how do I, as a writer and a director, make any decisions? If there’s no good or bad, then everything should be acceptable.

That’s true. And actually everything is acceptable.

The good thing is, thinking about why you judge things (including yourself) as “good” or “bad” leads you to contemplate what you want to achieve.

Look, every single film, song, book or painting is hated by at least one person. No matter how hard you work, you will never avoid someone thinking your work sucks (unless you don’t show it to anyone, which just means you think it sucks).

So that’s how I work now. It’s not about whether something is good or bad. It’s about: does this work for what I am trying to achieve.

Take acting, for example. What if your production requires the actors to overact. Or some scenes within your play or film require the actor to overact at that point. Well, I don’t know.

But it’s possible, isn’t it? Maybe you want that. Then someone will watch it and think, “This sucks – the actors are overacting.” And then others will think, “I love the way she has the actors exaggerate their performance. Masterful.”

See – it’s completely subjective.

So what happens to the idea that overacting = bad?

It’s meaningless, because it always depends on what you’re trying to achieve. You are the creator here. What do you think?

I used to go through my scripts, applying the rules of what is good and bad. Often, simply because I just read somewhere, you’re not supposed to do that. So I would go through a draft, making sure that was deleted from my work.

But then something horrible would happen.

Reading the script back, it had lost something and I didn’t know why – hey, it’s supposed to be better now.

And I would be lost and confused. Often I would drop the script and start something new.

By trying to make my script “good”, I had actually destroyed it.

Yes, judgements will destroy your work.

Decisions, on the other hand, will help it grow. But make decisions based on a knowledge of what you are trying to achieve. Not on some arbitrary rules you read in a book.

How can a book, which is trying to teach thousands or millions of writers how to write, possible have any insight into what you are personally trying to achieve with your work? That book doesn’t have a clue. That book would have to be a trillion pages long to cover all the possibilities. And it still wouldn’t be long enough.

And you would never have time to read it. Well, you would be 1000 pages in and you would realise you’d forgotten everything you read at the beginning and have to start again.

Which is exactly what happens to your scripts and films when you apply the “good” and “bad” rule book to them.

Here’s an uncomfortable truth for you – art and creativity is 100% subjective.

I know there are YouTube videos and self-help books which claim to contain the secrets to artistic glory and success. And sometime they’re useful and interesting. So just take some tips and move on.

Remember, you are the only one who truly knows what you are trying to achieve and how to achieve it.

That’s why it’s so scary.

That’s why we reach out to these gurus and their 13.7 Tips to Become a Genius blog posts.

We don’t want to be alone, in a darkened room, with infinite possibilities. We want some assurance we’re going in the “right” direction. We want someone to be like teacher; to give us a gold star and a big red tick – you made this film correctly! Well done!

It makes us feel more secure. Unfortunately, it also fucks up your art.

But it’s ok. Just let go of those judgements.

Trust yourself.

You got this.

I know, I hear you. What if you’re crazy and you have no idea what you’re doing? People will laugh and mock and tell you you’re an amateur.

Don’t worry, they’re going to do that anyway.

At least one person will. And the more successful you are, the more people there’ll be queuing up to tell you how much you suck.

But there will also be people who absolutely love what you’re doing. Because you’re an artist with vision. Because they can see you have the courage to do something a bit different. Because you didn’t slavishly follow the rule book everyone else is destroying their work with.

And that’s inspiring.

You found the thing in you which makes you special. And what makes you special is what makes your work special.

There’s no book or tutorial on Earth that can teach you what that is. It’s up to you to find it. And you won’t find it if you bury it under a pile of rule books.

Yeah, I know because I was watching this talk by a guy called Mark Duplass and he talks about exactly that. Oh shit, I was supposed to be writing about that and I got caught in a whirlwind of coffee-induced rambling.

I wasn’t supposed to write this this morning. But it all just started exploding in my mind, so I decided to write it all down before the moment was lost.

I was supposed to write about Mark’s talk and I didn’t. This post was supposed to be about the cavalry not showing up.

Sometimes you just have to let go of what you thought you were supposed to do. You never know, something amazing might happen.

(I know some of you think this sucks. But you will feel better if you understand it’s only your opinion)

You can still watch Mark’s talk here.

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