How to Give Feedback That Gets You the Edit You Want

Reviewing an edit is a skill, and almost nobody is taught it. Clients are asked to respond to a cut with no framework for doing so, and the result is often a set of notes that are sincere, accurate about the feeling, and close to unusable as instructions.

The characteristic version is a paragraph saying the piece does not feel quite right, or that it should have more energy. Both may be true. Neither tells an editor what to change, so the next version is a guess, and a guess costs a round.

Timestamps do most of the work

The single change that speeds up revisions more than anything else is attaching notes to moments. Not because editors need to be told where to look, but because the act of finding the timestamp forces the vague feeling to resolve into a specific cause.

Very often the general note about energy turns out to be one slow section at forty seconds. Once it is located it is a ten-minute fix. Described as a whole-piece problem it invites a re-edit that was never needed.

Describe the problem, not the solution

There is a natural instinct to give notes as instructions. Cut that shot, add music there. Those are fine when you are sure, but they hide the underlying issue, and the underlying issue is what an editor can actually solve well.

Saying you lose interest around the halfway mark is more useful than saying to cut thirty seconds. The first identifies a real problem and leaves the solution to the person with the timeline open, who may find a better answer than the one you had in mind. The second might fix it, or might remove the wrong thirty seconds.

Consolidate, and separate the must-haves

Notes arriving in a trickle across a day cause more damage than any single unclear note, because each one interrupts work already underway. One consolidated set, from everyone who gets a say, collected before it is sent, is worth several rounds.

It also helps enormously to mark which notes are requirements and which are preferences. An editor treating every note as mandatory will sacrifice something that mattered in order to satisfy something that did not. Saying which is which is not being difficult. It is the most useful thing in the document.