Writer’s Block Destroyed Forever

The biggest barrier between most screen writers and a great screen play is NOT writing. I know for me it’s the single most destructive force in my career and my experience of other writers is that they often struggle with the same issues. Sometimes it feels like the hardest thing in the world is to get the words on the page.

However, the truth is, I know better, because before I got into independent film making I was a radio copywriter and HAD to turn out radio spots all day everyday. So, I know it is possible to turn out the words when you really, really have to.

Writer’s block is generally caused by three internal forces and can be overcome fairly easily, once you know what the problems are.

By far the biggest cause of writer’s block is perfectionism.

Most writers I know want the draft of the screenplay they are working on right now to be perfect. This is a totally acceptable attitude to take to a third or fourth draft, but an absolute killer to a first draft. One of the reasons people sit staring at a blank page for hour after hour, is because they’re trying to perfect every line of dialogue and every description of action, when in fact what you want to be doing with a first draft of a script is getting the shape of the story down.

One of the ways of beating first draft writer’s block is to skip writing a first draft. Instead of writing your first draft in script form, you gut out your story the way you’d write a short story or as an extended treatment. The second you step away from writing something you think other people are going to read, the pressure comes off and you can concentrate on shaping your drama and fleshing out your characters. That way, when you move onto the actual script (which you now think of as your second draft) you can afford to concentrate on details and the construction of each scene.

It’s this breaking the writing process into manageable sized pieces, which leads us to the second cause of writer’s block, overload. This can happen on any draft, but is again a much bigger problem in first drafts. Basically, overload happens when the mind is trying to juggle too many problems at the same time.

When you think about it, as a writer you’re not just doing one thing at anyone time, you’re usually trying to deal with a multitude of interrelated problems. So, at the same time you’re trying to find the perfect line of dialogue for your protagonist, you’re also trying to figure out how this line impacts on your plot and how it ties in with the character’s development. On top of that, with screen writing you’ve also got all of the technical issues to deal with. That’s a huge amount of stuff to be dealing with and often the sheer weight of complexity stops the writing process cold.

The solution to this problem is preparation. Or rather just like dealing with perfectionism, it’s about breaking down the writing task into manageable sized lumps. By far the hardest and slowest way to write a script is to attempt to structure your plot, develop your characters, write good dialogue and shape your scenes all at at the same time in your head whilst sitting in front of a blank piece of paper. In my experience that almost always leads to writer’s block.

One of the reasons I break the writing process down into character development using my character development spreadsheets and a working treatment document that I use to gut out my plot, is because overload used to crucify me as a writer.

What this means is when I sit down to write the actual script, I can concentrate on the actual writing of each individual scene. By decreasing the number of things I need to think about, the writing flows more easily.

The last major cause of writers block is ignorance about the writing process. I don’t know of any writer who can sit down at the word processor and just have the words flow. It takes time to get the first couple of lines out. In general I’ve discovered for me that it takes about half an hour of not achieving very much before the words start to flow.

The temptation in that half hour is step away from the keyboard, to make coffee, to find a magazine with a “relevant” article, to check my emails, to surf the net looking for stuff about writing or film making, to rearrange my DVD collection into a more complicated filing system (Alphabetically by surname of screenwriter for instance!)

It is this urge to step away from the keyboard too soon and indulge in avoidance behavior that is the most common cause of writer’s block, it’s the form that causes the most damage and it’s the one which will take a six week screenplay writing process and turn it into two years of frustration.

There is only one solution to this particular form of block and that’s to put your hands on the keyboard and write. But, you have to apply two rules… the first is: I will not leave this seat for anything until I’ve written two pages… the second rule is: those two pages don’t have to be good.

By giving yourself permission to write cak and at the same time insisting that you won’t leave the keyboard until you’ve got down two pages, what happen is the words start to go down. And, this is the magical part of it, once they start flowing you’ll automatically start to write as well as you’re able. You won’t write badly, if you give yourself permission to. Weird, huh. But trust me, it does work.

My general experience of this is that once you’ve got half a page in, rather than sweating out two pages, you’ll probably knock out between six and ten. Because, once the writing starts to flow, things move fairly quickly.

The trick with writer’s block therefore is to identify what it is that’s causing the block: is it perfectionism, is it lack of preparation which is causing an overload or is it just that you’re stepping away from the keyboard too soon?

Once you know what the problem is all you have to do is change the way you approach writing. By understanding why you’re staring at a blank page unable to do anything, you can change that and move forward with your writing career.

The Demand For Scripts Is Out There

Lots of people have ideas for films. In fact, tell anyone you’re a screen writer and they’ll be only too happy to tell you about THEIR fantastic idea. It’s also true that more people than ever are writing screenplays. Skim the net and you’ll find a massive number of writers and film makers all trying to make it; uploading their scripts; subscribing to script selling services and sharing their own takes on how to write a great script.

Yet, when I talk to producers, script editors and agents I still hear the same thing I’ve been hearing for the past eleven years: there is still a massive shortage of good scripts.

So, despite the fact that there are more scripts in circulation than ever before and more people trying to make films than ever before, there is still a baseline shortage of high quality scripts for producers to make films from.

There’s also another factor in play: more and more writers are taking their script to the market, sure that they’ve got that killer idea, but with absolutely no idea about what the industry is looking for or the skills involved in writing a script. I have it on very good authority from a Hollywood producer friend of mine that 98% of the screenplays being submitted at present are UNREADABLE!

Not just un-makable, or even in need of some work, they fail to meet even the baseline requirements of competence.

For anyone thinking about getting into screen writing, this is all great news.

It’s great news, because it means 98% of the competition is hopeless. It means that a well executed script, with a strong idea can still propel you into the industry faster than the proverbial bullet.

However, it also means you have to make sure that your script falls into that magic 2%.

I’ve some experience of dealing with wannabee screen writers and there are a lot of reasons why they tend to fall into the 98% as opposed to the 2%.

Of these reason, there are two factors that crop up time and time again:

1) The vast majority of screen writers have no experience what so ever of seeing their script efforts turned into actual films and therefore don’t develop the ability to see what works and what doesn’t.

This tends to show up both in the way they describe action (or in many cases don’t describe action at all) and it also shows up in poorly written dialogue.

It doesn’t matter where in the world you live, or how disconnected you are from the industry, there isn’t anyone who couldn’t pull together a read through of their script if they put a little effort in. All you need to do is find a local drama school or amateur drama group and put a notice up asking for volunteers.

The first time I did this, I’d been writing professionally for radio for about ten years and I was pretty confident in my writing abilities. However, I wasn’t at all prepared for just how badly my dialogue sucked at that point. Early in my screen writing career, I had a tendency to overly complicate my dialogue; it was too wordy; it all sounded like me speaking (no character differentiation) and, all the lines that looked clever on the page sounded crass when spoken by real people.

Painful as it is to listen to how bad your dialogue is, it’s got to be done.

These days I’ve made enough films to be able to look at a page of dialogue and see where it works and where it sucks — and, guess what, so do most of the script readers out there.

Saying that, even though I now don’t need read throughs for my scripts, I still do them. Even though dialogue is one of the things I do well, one of the reasons for that is I subject my writing to the bear pit that is the read through.

Perhaps even better than a read through, is getting your script into the hands of a director who actually makes your film.

I can’t recommend too highly the idea that wannabee screen writers should find local wannabee film makers and then should give away a couple of scripts (either shorts or features) in the hope that the script will become a finished film.

One of the reasons I’m such an advocate of $1000 film making is exactly to give screen writers this chance to make their mistakes on micro budget projects.

The truth is I learned more about screen writing making my last two feature films, despite their lack of commercial success, than I did anywhere else.

The other factor that ensures most screen writers stay in the 98% is this:

2) It’s not possible to write a decent movie in a single draft, if your only experience of the industry is sitting on the couch watching movies

A script should only go out to pitch when it’s ready.

I can’t tell you when it is ready, without reading it (which I won’t)… but, I can guarantee it’s isn’t ready on your first draft.

I can also guarantee it isn’t ready if you don’t know the difference between an INTERCUT and a FLASHBACK… or if you don’t know why we almost never use the expression “we see” … or, if your screen play is 136 pages long, 94% of which is dialogue.

There is a certain level of industry knowledge you HAVE to acquire if you want your script to achieve a baseline of competence. There is also no shortage of places you can get that information for free. At the very least download a few screenplays written by Charlie Kaufman or Shane Black or someone who writes the kind of movies you like to watch.

Just one point of caution though… a lot of the uploaded scripts are shooting scripts, not reading scripts … er, and if you don’t know the difference between the two, then that also means your script isn’t ready.

Primer - Perfect Micro-Budget Film Making

So, for a long time now we’ve been banging on here about how it’s possible to make great, successful films on micro budgets. And, I think it’s fair to say a lot of indie film makers have been incredibly sceptical about the whole idea.

Then this week I find out about Shane Carruth, an engineer turned film maker, who tore apart Sundance in 2004 with his film Primer, a movie he wrote, directed and acted in; all produced on film for $7000.

Watch the trailer, this is a great film. Then read the story of its production.

Not only is this a good movie, the thing I love about this story is how Shane approached making this movie. From everything I’ve read about this movie, he seems to have applied exactly the approach we’ve been advocating here on $1000 movie:

He found a subject he was passionate about.

He sat down and taught himself how to write screenplays by studying technique and by reading other peoples scripts.

He then figured out how to make the movie he wanted to make for the money he could afford to spend; putting a priority on getting the performances he wanted through extensive rehearsals.

And finally, he decided that he could only achieve the film he wanted on film and found a way to achieve that on the budget he had.

I can’t say enough good things about either him as a film maker or the film.

However, this isn’t a flawless film. And, I think there is an important point here. Sure, from a technical POV there are things that could have been done better and not all the performances are good as perhaps they could have been if the director had had more wiggle room in his budget and a more experienced cast. But, with all that said, it really shows how much latitude there are in those areas, if you get your story telling right.

But, that’s just my take… rent it, or better yet buy to for yourself and come to your own opinion.

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