Are you strictly linear or a multi-tasker?

craigbowman

craigbowman

Veteran
Currently I'm developing two feature scripts at the same time. Previously, I had been more tunnel visioned on a single script taking it through many drafts, coverage and table reads before finally going back to my list of movie concepts. Are you a single script at a time writer or a multi-tasker?
 
Humans are pretty notoriously bad multitaskers. We exhibit a property called inattention blindness -- what happens when you try to use more processing cycles than you actually have. For example, talking on the phone while driving -- many wrecks, in particular rear-endings, happen because the driver doesn't see that the traffic right in front of them has stopped moving. They can't see it even though they are looking directly at it, because all their processing cycles are being used for the cell phone.

Working on two scripts at the same time isn't actually multi-tasking however. It's more like serial mono-tasking. It sometimes helps to stop working on one script and switch over to another. Or to switch over to something else entirely, like music or painting, or just going for a walk.
 
Processing cycles? Although I understand this in relation to computer hardware I'm not sure exactly how a brain has "processing cycles". Can you elaborate on what exactly constitutes a single processing cycle in the brain? ie. What is its structure, how does it work and how many of these "cycles" does it take for one to be cognitive vs. being non-cognitive of something?
 
Personally, I work on several projects at a time, continuously adding new ones along the way, partly because my brain may explode if I don't get all that stuff out.
But there's a more practical reason, too; To be blunt, one thing I've learned in Hollywood is that Writers and Whores have more in common than the "W".
The Writer is at the mercy of the Producer, Director, and pretty much everybody else [#%&?! Actors!]. What the writer wants to write is of little importance generally; what counts is what the Writer CAN write well (in whoever's opinion-- just not the Writer's own!), and the best way to show that in a flat one minute is to be ready to pitch-appropriate when the chance arises.
So I can pitch you a good dozen stories in four or five genres, in depth, right now. Some finished, some started, all at least bare-bones-outlined.
 
I may work on different things in between drafts. But when I'm writing a draft of a screenplay, that's all I'm doing. Only when I get to page 110 do I allow anything else to enter my mind.
 
Are you truly multi-tasking? I see mothers talk to their kids, watch/listen to the news on TV, talk to a friend on the phone, and be cooking dinner, all at the same time (not being sexist but women seem to be wired much better for this than men) and know exactly what is going on with each. Being male, I lose it with the TV news as soon as the phone rings.

To equate that with script writing implies more then one document is open and you're adding/editing to both at the same time.

I will work one project until I hit a wall or reach a predefined break point, then set that aside and work on another, in my opinion, a very serial process.
 
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