The Notes Call
On development hell, red pens, creative ego, and being told you can do better.
Apart from writing novel and directing films and series, I write scripts. A ridiculously large proportion of people who find this out turn all misty-eyed with a romantic longing to do the same thing. I fully understand the impulse. Writing screenplays and teleplays probably sounds immeasurably more exciting than figuring out supply chain economics (apologies if I just insulted the thing you love more than life itself) and considerably easier than brain surgery. These folks generally always have an idea for a movie/story/series which they tend to pitch me immediately, often including a detailed subplot featuring their maniacal ex, and often finishing with an excited ‘You couldn’t make it up!’, which conveniently ignores that ‘making it up’ is my literal job description.
Here’s how most people think writing for film and television works: you sit somewhere peaceful and beautiful — a cabin in the hills, a Parisian café, a sun-drenched terrace with a view of some European citadel — and you dash off something brilliant (ideally with a fountain pen). Then you send it straight to an executive at a studio or a streamer who reads it, weeps gently, smiles in all the right places and calls to offer you tens of millions of dollars to make it exactly as you wrote it. In this idealised version, I say something humble, they tell me how unique my voice is, and after the mutual love-fest is over, we go off and make the show.
This has never happened to anyone, ever, including whoever is currently winning all the Emmys. It has certainly never happened to me, and I’ve been doing this long enough that if it were going to happen, the universe has had plenty of opportunity.
What actually happens is this. You write something. It goes to a producer, who doesn’t ever read it, or reads it and doesn’t want it, or (best case scenario) likes it but has thoughts. Then it goes to the wider production company, or mini studio, who have different thoughts. Then we all work on the pitch or the pilot script a lot more. Then the story gets pitched to a streamer or a network, where it’s heard and/or read by development executives, who have a whole new set of ideas, many of which contradict the producer’s thoughts, and some of which you’re fairly sure contradict each other.
Throughout all of this — which can take months, sometimes years — there are Notes Calls.
But first, in case you are not familiar with the industry term ‘development hell’, let me explain what ‘development’ actually means. It doesn’t mean writing. Writing is the part you did, ages before, when you were still (relatively) young and full of promise. Development is the part where everybody else gets involved, and for some weird reason, it lasts eons longer than actually creating characters, scenarios, plot and dialogue from scratch. It’s the process by which a script and/or pitch for a series is read, discussed, questioned, reconsidered, restructured, and thoroughly taken apart like a pocket watch, by people who are confident they can put it back together. By the end, though, several of the parts will be left on the table and nobody will be quite sure if the watch will ever keep time in the same way.
But I digress. Before the Notes Call, I make tea, put a decent tee shirt over my pyjama bottoms, open my document, and sit down with a notebook and pen, embracing a quiet optimism. And why not? I know I wrote this beautiful piece of work, and more than that, I know it’s unimpeachably good, if not the best thing that has ever been written for the screen, and definitely better than ninety per cent of the crowd-pleasing claptrap this very company financed last year. Also, four busy executives have carved an hour out of their day for this call. People don’t block out time in their calendars to destroy you. That’s not how meetings work, at least outside the Oval Office. I join the Zoom, arrange my face into an expression of calm, creative openness, and briefly catch sight of myself next to my profile photo, which was taken eight years and a whole different face ago, but which I keep because, apparently, my latent vanity has no expiry date.
The call always begins warmly. “We loved it,” they say, and I thank them heartily, and for a brief, irrational moment I allow myself to believe this will be the entire exchange — a mutual appreciation of the work, followed by a return to our respective days as emotionally stable adults. They say it again, “We loved it!” and this time there’s a ‘but...’ at the end. This ‘but’ slips out gently, dressed as curiosity.
"What if it was mostly a romance?" Translation: everyone wants yearning since Heated Rivalry, and yes, your show is about a war crimes tribunal but hey, genocidists probably need love more than most people!
“Could the lead be more relatable to our core demographic?” This is code for ‘younger’, which is code for ‘cheaper’, which is code for someone with a TikTok following and an agent who’s not as tough to negotiate with.
This is where my non-existent acting skills get dusted off and dragged, squinting, into the sunlight. ‘Good note!’ I squeak, or if it’s really egregious: ‘That’s so interesting!’
But there is a version of the call that is less salesy and more about considered argument — professional, thoughtful, engaged, precise — where I defend what needs defending, and listen carefully to what is being said. Because sometimes (annoyingly often) most executives and producers are actually brilliant at cutting through the noise that’s holding the work back. Some notes I challenge immediately because they strike at the core of what the work is trying to do. Others, I let pass. Maybe not because I agree at that moment, but because I’m not yet sure whether I’m riled up for the right reasons. Sometimes I’m protecting the work and other times, I’m protecting my first instinct, and it takes a bucketful of experience and maturity to tell the two apart in real time.
And then, if I’m lucky, there are notes that make me feel slightly ill. Not because they’re wrong, but because they’re right, and I knew it all along and never dealt with it. Deep in the subconscious part of my mind, the part that woke me up about this very character at 4 a.m. in a cold sweat, but that I chose to ignore anyway. I knew that character’s inner journey was held together with some smart-ass dialogue, a punchy description of their attitude, and not much else. Or I knew the third act dramatic moment wasn’t quite character-grounded but hey, it was so clever, no-one would care...but someone noticed. And now I’m sitting there with my calm, open Zoom face, nodding thoughtfully, while my internal monologue is primarily the phrase “shit, shit, shit” on a loop.
By the end of it, we have, collectively, a set of notes. Some I have agreed with. A few I have gently resisted. Some I have placed in a folder called “To revisit when less convinced I’m right.” We thank each other. We agree it’s been a useful conversation. I say I’ll take some time to process and come back with thoughts. I hang up.
Hanan is usually on these calls as a producer, mostly listening and taking notes. She heads to the bathroom right after, right when I need her, but I don’t let that stop me. I burst in as she’s still washing her hands.
“Can you believe what they just said?” I begin, not even drawing breath before walking her through the call she just attended, in forensic detail, including the parts where I was particularly clever, persuasive and, most importantly, utterly correct. In this new version of events, already notably embellished from the reality of five minutes ago, I have navigated a series of well-intentioned but misguided notes with intelligence and restraint. I am an artist forced to contend with a bunch of suits, but hey, I dealt with it, and came out the other side with my integrity, and the conviction that art can win, and I am, actually, modestly, a genius. Somewhere in the background of my recounting, a lone violin plays.
Hanan listens, intently, until I stop rambling, and self-congratulating, and actually ask her what she thinks. “I agree with the notes,” she states.
This is a hundred times worse than the actual notes. Yet Hanan nods, smiles, and starts listening to a new three-hour voice note from cousin Muna. Just like that.
If the notes were entirely wrong, we would be comrades-in-arms right now; we would dismiss them, politely but firmly, and carry on. But they are not entirely wrong. They are right in ways that are deeply painful and irritatingly inconvenient, and usually exactly in the places you were hoping might go unnoticed.
‘I’m not seeing it,’ I squeak.
‘I’ll help you,’ she replies. ‘I’ll re-read.’
The red pen comes out and hope withers. Hanan does not circle everything; she circles just enough. The line that doesn’t land. The scene that goes on a page too long. The point where the character does what I need them to do rather than what they would actually do. It is precise, economical and quite devastating.
Sometimes I see it immediately and I’m embarrassed that it took someone else to pinpoint the problem. Other times, I dig in for a short but self-satisfied period of resistance. A phase in which I consider abandoning the project entirely, or at the very least refusing to engage with the notes on principle. But eventually (that is, by the next day) I read the notes again, and they feel different, unsullied by my own old perceptions. Excitement to get back to work starts to set in.
Because the Notes Call exist to make the work better, to get a script or an idea to the level where, yes, it sells; but also that after it’s undergone production - the budget cuts, the different directors, the compromises on locations, cast and schedules – the core of the story is still enough for audiences to care enough to finish the series and talk about it.
And here’s the part that never makes it onto the misty-eyed list of reasons to become a writer: the work was never mine alone, and it was never meant to be. It’s not a novel, it’s a screenplay. By the time it reaches a screen, I sometimes couldn’t tell you which of the good moments were mine and which were dragged out of me by people I was certain were wrong — including Hanan and her terrifying red pen. Somewhere in that gauntlet, if I’m lucky and not too proud, the watch gets put back together. Not identically. A few weird springs and screws are still on the table. But it keeps time now.
So no, it isn’t the fountain pen and the weeping executive and the tens of millions. It’s tea, pyjama bottoms, a face I no longer technically have, and the slow, humbling, occasionally thrilling business of being told — gently, repeatedly, correctly — that I can do better. And then, irritatingly, doing it.
May we all survive the notes, forgive the red pen, and find the version of the work that was waiting underneath,
Shamim