Writer’s Block Destroyed Forever
September 27, 2007 by clive
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.
Very good advice. Extremely accurate.
Whenever I’ve had writers block it always turned out to be that I simply did not know where I wanted the story to go. It wasn’t that I couldn’t write, I didn’t know WHAT to write… I had lost my path, so to speak. As you know, sometimes when you write the script will take on a life of its own and you’ll end up in situations you had not planned on, but are faced with. Then, wham, writers block.
To get me over the hump I always take a step back and remember that the blank page is just that, blank, and that anything can happen. I keep reminding myself that… ‘anything can happen.’ And, suddenly, something you had never considered becomes a viable option.
But, like you suggest, THE most important thing to do is to get the first draft down on paper, no matter how bad. The phrase “writing is rewriting” is very, very true and once you embrace it as part of the writing process, you allow yourself to write 10 bad pages, which then allows you to write 10 great pages.
Love the site.
Pete - Sonlight Pictures
Great post. Perfectionism looms over me all the time, and I do find much of your advice helpful to overcome it.
The other habit I have to keep in check is to start a writing session by reworking what’s already on the page. It never helps, and keeps me from finishing the draft.
Mitch - That’s interesting, because you’ve just reminded me of two other things I heard about writers block.
The first is to separate writing and editing into two tasks… lots of writers, myself included, will write a section and then immediately go back and rewrite it. But the problem is, it breaks the flow of words onto the page. So, it’s almost like after rewriting we’ve got to get back into the flow of writing again. This then becomes a pause, which becomes a reason to go make coffee… etc. etc.
The other tip I heard from a friend of mine was to finish writing for the day knowing what sentence you’re going to write next. His thinking was to not write the last sentence of the day, but to save it to start the session the next day. He claimed he cut his staring at the blank page down to practically nothing. Personally it’s never worked for me, but I still think it’s an interesting idea.
That second tip is worth a try, but I doubt it will work for me either.
Wow. Nice blog
Lovely.
Writer’s block is an interesting topic. I don’t really have a definition for it as when I’m not in Final Draft, I’m always refining scenes, adding scenes to different scripts, etc.
Christian - I envy you. I’ve had periods in my life where I couldn’t conceive the idea of writer’s block either and other periods in my life where it hammered me.
You forgot “laziness” as a reason for no words going up on the page. I’ve stopped calling it writer’s block, and now refer to it as “my-stupid-lazy-assiness” in the hopes that I’ll be able to beat myself into writing.
How’s that working? LOL
I know what you mean. Talking of which I must get my lazy ass back to the keyboard!
you are a genius.
I know what you mean, spatula. I’m get into trouble when I start thinking, “The DVR is full. I can’t write until I watch all the shows I’ve recorded.” Talk about bass-ackwards discipline.
Pete,
A quick apology. Your comment accidentally got mixed in with a deluge of spam and it’s taken me a little while to get round to putting it back its right place.
I completely agree, writer’s block is often caused by exactly that, “not knowing where the story goes next.”
This is one of the main reasons I advocate an ultra-rough non-script first draft and also a plotted treatment or beat sheet.
The other thing is, if you’ve done sufficient character development your characters should lead you out of any hiatus in the writing process. The blank page is often a reaction to not having a good enough answer to the question: What would my characters do now?
[...] From 1000dollarfilm.com 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. Read the rest of this article [...]
One of the techniques I’ve used to overcome writer’s block is to just start writing random words on the page as if they were sentences…eventually, your thoughts will start to congeal into real writing and you can delete the tripe that you started with. I always called it “pen vomit”, just whatever unrelated words come out to get the pen moving (or the keys clicking). Cause starting is the hardest part.
Hey, Cole
Good to see you here…
That’s a spendid technique. It’s just a case of getting stuff flowing.
Clive,
Thanks for this. I found your blog through Stu’s messageboard and the five page “Script Checklist” thread/holy war.
The advice about writing a short story/treatment first and then hacking away (if you’ll pardon the expression) until the script takes shape is just what I needed. I’ve had a great idea for an old fashioned serial for youtube, but I’ve had a hard time getting started on a script. (Which is ironic, since I conceived the project as a way to keep writing and experiment with VFX.) Starting with this approach will really help.
I’m also taking a community adult ed class in “The Art of Screenwriting” as a way to break the block.
Thank you again,
L
My pleasure Larry,
Seems I can’t express any kind of view over at Stu’s site without the natives picking up pitch forks and attempting to drive me out of town.