What Makes a Good Mentor?

I’ve been mentoring MFA screenwriting students online for almost eight years now, and I’m still trying to figure out what it is that makes a good mentor. How much critique should I offer without breaking their spirit? What is the fine line between being nice and understanding vs strict and demanding? How deeply can I get involved with their projects so it doesn’t break my own spirit?

It's much easier to work face-to-face with undergraduates. 18–20-year-olds. Three-hour craft lectures once a week. Feature film and screenplay discussions. Lots of homework grading. They’ve never written before, and some hadn’t even known that actors don’t make up their own lines, and that there are writers who put words in the actors’ mouths.

Last semester I surprised them by quoting Keith Jarrett, who said that music doesn’t come from music but life itself – the books we read, the games we play, the photos we take, etc. So now their story assignments involve taking photographs that may help them understand their storyworld better. Most are up to the challenge. Some are only interested in getting a passing grade and eat pizza on a stoop somewhere. But I’m hoping the spirit of the assignments get embedded in their subconscious, so that someday they’ll be able to reach in and avail themselves of what’s there. Perhaps I’m too romantic and too delusional. Freddy, my inner critic,  keeps reminding me to pull my head out of my ass.

Full disclosure: None of the folks captured below are my students. But they easily could be.

My graduate students are older, and most of them have written screenplays before.

These folks tried to get into the program, but didn’t pass the entrance exams.

I have five to six mentees in each class. We work together for 15 weeks. All of us meet for 90 minutes once per week over Zoom, where we discuss the architecture of screenwriting and their assignments. In addition to that, I meet with each student individually for thirty minutes via Zoom or phone. It’s because of those individual meetings that my fellow mentors and I are called “mentors” as opposed to “instructors”. 

Although we’re required to stick to thirty minutes during our one-on-ones, I often go to forty-five, and occasionally up to an hour.  It can be exhausting. Or exhilarating, depending on what I’m working on at the moment, and whom I’m working with. Sometimes, in my dreams, their characters try on my characters’ clothes, and occasionally, my characters take theirs hostage. Once I changed the ending of my own screenplay because my student’s protagonist whispered something in the ear of my antagonist in the middle of Act II. Sometimes I share with my mentees what I’m working on, in the hope that they’ll borrow some of my ideas for their own story. I won’t even mention what Freddy thinks about that.

But it’s not always fun and games. A couple of years ago a student had a meltdown during our one-on-one. He suddenly realized, at the thirty-minute mark, that he lost his passion for screenwriting. Completely. In fact, even the idea of making up stories for the screen made him sick to his stomach.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “It must be my fault”
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “It’s my decision. But I thank you for helping me making it.”
“I see”
“I want to do something practical. Something useful. I want to help people.”

He’d already spent shitloads of his own money for the three semesters in the program, with one semester left before an MFA degree was conferred upon him. He bawled for close to an hour and I had my arm over his shoulder, metaphorically (he was in Hawaii and I in New York City) until he finally calmed down. During that time, I tried cheer him up by quoting a few lines from a  Bob Dylan’s song  “Don’t Fall Apart on Me Tonight”

“I wish that I'd been a doctor
Maybe I'd have saved some life that had been lost
Maybe I'd have done some good in the world
'Stead of burning every bridge I crossed”

I told him I too often wished I were a theoretical linguist or a button accordion player. But those feelings pass because we are where we need to be, influenced by past events and natural laws rather than free will.

“So relax, enjoy the ride, and be kind to yourself.”

He managed to stay in my class for the rest of the semester, but never got his MFA degree.  Later that night, my wife told me it would be a good idea for me to get a Master’s in Social Work.  I’m too old for another degree, alas. Otherwise, I would think about it.

This semester, working with a transfer student, I realized that if I continue to insist that her main character is not ready to be set on the journey to self-knowledge because she, the writer, doesn’t know much about her yet, I may break the spirit of another sensitive, intelligent, and talented individual.

“I just want to get this story of out my system. The way I envisioned it. It makes perfect sense to me,” she says. In the past, I would try to convince her that there’s an objective truth regarding character development set forth by the Greeks a few hundred years before Christ. But this time, I decided to take another approach.

Many years ago, a friend told me that a parent’s real job is to help his children make their own mistakes and in the process prevent them from going off the rails. I finally understood what he meant. Trying to fix the scoliosis of my student’s story by making the experience miserable for her is ultimately not worth it. It’s not a hospital emergency, nor is writing math or accounting – two plus two is almost never four. Things change, story structures change, the way we look at the world changes. Is it possible that Aristotle might have erred?

The renowned writing teacher

Alexandra Sokoloff

said this to me in a recent comment:

“MOST people are not willing to put in the work - but I believe the ones who do will create new iterations with short form like TikTok. That's the way of art, isn't it? Some of my favorite recent shows, like ATLANTA and RESERVATION DOGS, are brilliantly expanding our definitions of structure. So there's good news in new forms, too!”

So, I’ve decided to let my student make the mistakes I think she’s making and help her along the way. When she gets it all out of her system, she may be able to see what I was talking about. And if she doesn’t, then she doesn’t. Maybe she’d be better off for it.

My wife thinks it’s a cop-out on my part. 'You’re trying to avoid the real work by pretending to be wise,' she says. She thinks my job as a mentor is to help my mentees SEE their own mistakes, not to help them MAKE the mistakes. “And it’s certainly not your job to make them feel good or run a popularity contest.” My wife is a tough broad. She is certainly wiser than I am (most wives are), but I’m not sure she’s right in this case.

I would love to hear from instructors, educators, mentors, not necessarily those who write or teach writing. Photographers, musicians, dancers, dog trainers, embalmers. Mentoring is mentoring.

What do you think? And if you don’t have an opinion or care to voice it, let me know that in the comments as well, so I don’t feel like I’m vomiting into the void. Thanks for reading. And for your patience.

Winter knocking.

‘Til next time.

ak