My New Year's Screenwriting resolution...

Artman009

Artman009

Active member
Starting January 1st, 2008, I'm making a personal goal to write 5 script pages a day, no matter what.

5 pages. No more, no less.

Now, you might be thinking, "5 pages? That's nothing." Maybe some others are thinking, "Jesus, 5 pages?! That'd be murder."

Well, for me at least, 5 pages isn't that a big deal. Often times when I sit down to write and when I'm armed with an idea (notice I didn't even say 'good' idea), 5 pages usually comes pretty easily. Now, having said that, I will admit that that doesn't happened everyday. It's once a week, if I am lucky.

Everyone into creative writing I'm sure has experienced a day or two where it seems as if writing is almost effortless. The words flow naturally from the finger tips and onto the page while on other days (most days), it seems like constructing a complete sentence is entirely impossible no matter how much the effort. That's how writing is for me sometimes--sometimes it's very hot while most days it's cold.

Robert Rodriguez once said in an interview that Quentin Tarantino gave him some good advice on how to keep the writing momentum up so he wouldn't lose interest in the script he was writing. His advice to him was to always leave the script with a scene or a line of dialogue unfinished so that when you return to work on it the next day or whenever, you'll always have something to pick back up on. I thought the advice was interesting and I started doing it awhile back to I find it worked rather well.

So I think that if I only write 5 pages a day and stop the moment I reach page 6, no matter if it's in the middle of sentence (never a thought), I can always leave a lifeline for myself the next day when I start back up.

Imagine: if I stuck to my goal throughout all of next year, that would mean I'd have a lot of writing done come next New Years. At a rate of 5 pages a day, it would take me 18 days to complete an average, 90 page script. Then if you consider there are 365 days in a year, I'd end up with roughly 19-20 separate 90 page scripts written come 2009.

19-20 scripts!

Now, obviously, that's a super rough estate. That's assuming I would never miss a day, not even once, and that I wouldn't be doing any re-writing whatsoever on any of the previous days work. Plus, each one of those 19 or 20 scripts will be a literal first draft and more than likely unreadable to anyone but myself. But despite those soft figures, the whole idea excites me. Even if I finish next year with only 5 new scripts, that'd be great and would more than make up for the year of inactivity that was 2007.

Now, a few contingency plans: obviously, if I miss a day for whatever reason, I'd make it up the next day by writing an additional 5 pages, and if I ever get bored with the script I'm working on, I have, like most other screenwriters I assume, at least a dozen or so unfinished or barely started scripts floating around on my computer I could always open and pick up where I left off.

And if things got ultra desperate, I have a list of over 20 untouched movie ideas just written down as simple log-lines that I can start from scratch.

So, what do you guys think? Interesting goal or complete foolish idea?

Let me know,
-- Art
 
foolish idea, IMO. #1 you won't know what you're writing about, half the time you'll be writing just to write, and you're not going to have a strong direction in them. You'll start looking at those 5 pages as a chore instead of an opportunity for expression and then eventually you'll fall off the bus.

if you want to write X number of scripts per year, set that as your goal. I generally set about 4 per year and at the end of the year, i've either met it or beat it and I'm happy. But I won't write when I have nothing to say, that way I'm not getting upset at myself for not writing on a certain day. when the time is write, I can do 50 pages in a sitting, or I can do 0 for a couple of weeks.

I wrote a feature where I got writer's block in the middle and didn't write anything for a month until I was in a hotel in LA, on the 2nd day of a music video shoot. And spending all day setting up lights, shooting, adjusting settings, suddenly a couple of lines came to me, the lines that I was waiting for. I pulled out my powerbook and spent the night writing, came back home and finished it.

I know Rod Serling was a big proponent of "write no matter what," but I most definitely am not. I'm more a proponent of Benjamin Franklin's old saying, "It's better to keep one's mouth shut and let others think one is a fool, than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt." In other words, if you don't have anything to say, you shouldn't say anything.

But that's just my opinion.
 
"Quantitative development becomes qualitative change."

Or maybe not?

Jean-Claude Carrière said that:

"The best way to write is to not write".

This means research, research, research, research, write scene reports, scene reports, scene reports, scene reports and story outline, bios, etc.

Then write a treatment and test it with friends - test, test, test, test, test and correct. A 5-10 minutes friend-pitch. Pitch your friends to death. :)

Then first draft.

Then rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.

Then, finally - sell your masterpiece for peanuts, but get to be nominated for Oscar.

After that - write a pile of $hit, but sell it for 3 mln. [because your last one got a nomination].

Get a house by the sea, watch the sunset, make little humans, get inspired.

Then forget writing for a decade. Or two.

Then, when they've grown up - start all over again.

Write another masterpiece... about the little things and the meaning of life.

Noone gives a shi*. Not enough exploding secret powerplants ignited by future-plasma-cyborgs with a dumb sense of humor.

Again - sell your artsy-little-things-masterpiece for peanuts, cause you've been outa business for a while.

It wins an Oscar.

But you're already dead - cancer.

They present the statuette to your cremated dust.

Should've quitted smoking.

You died, but you are reborn, as expected...

... now you are Paris Hilton.

And, finally, you are in business.


P.S. I sincerely don't know why I wrote that post in this way.

P.P.S. Character biographies ROCK! They're super-important.

P.P.P.S. I'm going for a smoke. :)
 
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Hi Artman,

Well, as Socrates said, "Know thyself!" Spielberg coached the youthful Lucas to forget your approach to scriptwriting, insisting he initially lock him in a room away from distractions and not come out until the draft was completed (warts and all, continuity and re-writes come after you have a grasp on the scope). So obviously there's many ways to skin the proverbial cat. Of course, many use your incremental approach - many would find their most creative/least distracting chunk of the day (first of morning, last of evening) and chuck out some pages.

Bottom line, do whatever works for you. And if it's not working, don't be afraid to go to Plan B...

Good luck, Michael
 
Hi,

Go for it. I wrote for the papers when I was younger and there were still wolves in the hills. It was more like 8 pages a day. Of course, it was crap.

But it was good crap. ;-)

The more you write the better at writing you'll be, whether the better writer you'll be is something else. But writing better is a start at being a better writer.

I think it was Hemingway who did the same thing - leaving something unfinished to begin with the next day.

Good luck.
 
Something just went wrong with my previous post :).

Anyway...

Isn't Lucas actually older than Spielberg?

"Know thyself!" - the biggest\toughest adventure.

"There are many ways" - agree!
 
It was a bit pessimistic view of a writer's journey in life.

But actually I'm not a pessimist, and I think that the thing we can always rely on is the enjoyment of the work itself.

Regardless of whether we get an Oscar in the end or not.

It's a very strange and inexplainable thing - writing.

Cause, when you first get an idea, it's just in your head.

You think "It's OK, I got it in my head".

But it's actually not OK, cause:

1. You can forget it :) - entirely or important details of it. You have to write it down.

2. When you start writing, it becomes different. When you try to express your ideas in a text, it just changes. You're trying to find the best words or combination of words, or the right sentence and you often feel that the meaning is slipping away, something's missing, the text that you produce is not what "you have in your head".

It doesn't matter what you're writing - script, article, prose, poetry [poetry is the trickiest f*cker]. It keeps slipping away. But, nevertheless, you have to write it down in some form, cause otherwise you lose it.

3. Furthermore, when you have it written down and you leave it for a day or two, it changes again.

You read through what you've written, and it's different. And, more importantly, what is "in your head" changes.

The mind evolves into the text, then the text changes the mind, and the (changed) mind evolves into the new text, which changes the mind again, and so on...

This is something inexplicable and very interesting.

But we definitely have to keep writing, no matter how much pages per day.

Smart people say that the first version of everything you write should be absolutely chaotic and spontaneous.

No rules, no 3 act sh*t, no Syd Field, no style, no nothing. [I believe that Syd Field himself also says that].

When you get the idea for something, it's best to just sit and give birth to it.... the whole of it.

No rules, no auto-censorship, no preoccupations, just sit and sh*t on the paper. Be a wild Indian :).

Then forget the sh*t for a while.

Read it again after several days [or weeks] and just then comes Syd Field and all the other methodical guys.

My 1 c. :)
 
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karapetkov said:
Something just went wrong with my previous post :).

Anyway...

Isn't Lucas actually older than Spielberg?

"Know thyself!" - the biggest\toughest adventure.

"There are many ways" - agree!
Click to expand...

Hi Karapetkov,

1. Maybe, but Spielberg was still the Jedi master!

2. Agreed, and for those who remember "City Slickers" will probably relate to this scene with Billy Crystal and Jack Palance:

Curly: You know what the secret of life is?
Mitch: No, what?
Curly: This.
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don't mean ****.
Mitch: That's great, but what's the one thing?
Curly: That's what you've got to figure out.

So indeed, it seems there's an infinite number of ways depending on where we're coming from, where we're at, and where we're going...

Incidentally, I've really enjoyed Emmy and Peabody winner Peter Dunne's book, "Emotional Structure - A Guide for Screenwriters". Among his awesome quotes, this one is appropo here:

"No plot, no matter how clever, is worth anything if it doesn't ultimately connect your truth to mine."

Happy Trails, Michael
 
Artman: Everyone has their own opinion. This one, I borrow from an Italian saying: "Aim for the moon, settle for the stars."

I think that it's wonderful to have huge goals in place, and to get it all written down to costantly remind yourself what you are striving for. It's a lot easier to get lost and wind up in the middle of nowhere if you don't have that destination in front of you. The moon, baby, go for the moon!
 
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