The deadline for High Concept Showdown is fast approaching. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s a post where I explain. Basically, it’s a screenplay contest where I pick the five best-sounding concepts from your e-mail submissions and those five scripts compete against each other. Readers of the site vote for the best script, which then gets a review. I’m low-key hoping to find a great script to produce. Here are the deets:
Where: Entries should be sent to carsonreeves3@gmail.com
What: Include title, genre, logline, why you think your script deserves a shot, and a PDF of your script!
Entries Due: Thursday, March 4, 6:00pm Pacific Time
I’ve noticed a few of you point out you don’t think you’re going to finish your script in time for the showdown. I’m not buying that. You still have an entire month! It’s not the ideal amount of time to write a script but it’s certainly possible. Especially if you’ve already committed to an idea and started writing some pages.
So today I’m going to talk about how to write fast and STILL WRITE A QUALITY SCRIPT. Some of it is logistical. Some of it is psychological. All of it is hard work. Let’s jump into it.
SCHEDULING IS YOUR FRIEND
At 30 days, you are writing 3-4 pages a day, which comes to about 2 scenes a day. That’s not a lot of pages. Especially by screenwriting standards (try writing 4 pages of a novel – I guarantee you’ll never think writing 4 screenplay pages is hard again). Obviously, every writer is different. But all of you are capable of writing 1 page every 30 minutes. Which means we need 2 hours a day.
So the first thing I want you to do is schedule out two hours a day for the next month. Figure out what time works best for you. The more consistent the time of day, the better. But I understand schedules change over the course of the week. So figure out when, each day, you can block out two hours. Then do that for a month.
I can’t stress this enough. If you wake up every day and go by how you’re feeling, you’re not going to complete the challenge. There isn’t enough time. When you’ve got a deadline this tight, you have to schedule your writing ahead of time.
SEEK OUT INSPIRATION
One of the goals of writing is hitting those inspiration bumps. We’re all at our best, as writers, when we’re inspired. We often find inspiration WHILE writing. We’ll be plodding through the script, when, all of a sudden, WHAM! We get this cool idea. And that idea leads to another idea. And that leads to a way to correct that plot hole you’ve been stressing over. Before you know it, you’ve got a million great ideas running through your mind and you can’t stop writing. Which is great. Cause when you can’t stop writing, you can easily take down 10-20 pages in a single writing session.
For that reason, we’re going to factor inspiration into our schedule. When it happens, you keep writing. No matter what. I don’t care if your postmates delivery just canceled and you only have eight minutes before Five Guys stops taking orders. If your house is burning down. If someone just stole your car. If you become a victim of Immediate Deaf Syndrome. There are going to be days when you don’t get your four pages. So on the days when you’re inspired, you’ll be expected to make up those pages.
This shouldn’t be difficult because there’s no easier time to write than when you’re inspired. So go on that ride as long as it will take you. If it’s ten pages later, twenty pages later, thirty pages, I don’t care. Not even threat of divorce should stop you. If your significant other has had enough with your writing antics, give them my e-mail. I’ll be happy to explain to them what’s going on. I can’t promise you you’ll have a husband at the end of the day. But as we all know: writing > family. And family members need to understand that.
GUN TO THE HEAD
Judgement is one of your biggest enemies as a writer. If someone put a gun to our head, we could all write 100 pages in a day. Why would we be able to do that? Because with a gun to our head, we’re not asking if our protagonist, Willy, would realistically ask Deborah, the Home Depot cashier, out on a date. We’re writing to get to those 100 pages. Self-judgement no longer plays a role.
To write a script as fast as we’re writing one, you need to have a similar gun-to-the-head mindset. While I’m not going to say, “Write anything you come up with,” the only way you’re going to finish this script is if you exorcise the self-judgemental demon inside of you and send him on a vacation to Siberia for a month.
I know a lot of people are afraid of doing this because they think they’re just going to write a bunch of shit. But what you lose from careful deliberation, you will likely gain from inspiration. The more you’re writing, the better the chance that you hit that inspiration turbo boost. Those moments will offset some of the mediocre choices you made.
I’M GOING TO WRITE A STORY TODAY
Okay, Carson. You’ve told me how to write a script fast. But how do you make it good? Cause I don’t see how the two can mutually co-exist.
It’s true that time almost always improves a screenplay. The reason for that is you can analyze what isn’t working in your script and rewrite it with new, better ideas. And after you write that new draft, you can do it again. Figure out what’s wrong, make it better. Figure out what’s wrong, make it better. The more time we have, the more time we’ve got to keep writing better drafts.
However, there’s something about a short time frame that helps a writer focus. Not just on the entire script. But in each individual writing session.
When you’ve got 4 pages a day – which basically amounts to one or two scenes – you can laser-focus into writing the best scenes you can. A great way to do this is to treat every scene like it’s its own mini-movie. It has a beginning (often a character goal), a middle (the character struggles to achieve that goal), and an end (they either achieve or fail at their goal).
Yesterday’s TV Pilot, National Parks, did this well with its opening. Our “hero” had a goal – go arrest the person who broke into the car. They struggle – the squatter family refuses to tell her where the burglar is. It concludes – She tries to fight the family off but they ultimately kill her.
You can do that with EVERY SINGLE SCENE in your script. It’s hard. Especially when the scenes are short. But not every scene has to have a giant climax. You don’t have to kill off characters every five minutes. It could be as simple as trying to get the kids ready in time to go to school that morning.
The point is, you’ve established these bite-sized chunks of the script you’re going to work on every day. Let’s turn it into an advantage. Every day, tell a little story (or two stories) in those scenes. That way, when you get to the end, you not only have a big story. You have a series of scenes that are entertaining in their own right.
WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT GET DISCOURAGED
Last week, I went to play in a doubles tennis league. I hadn’t played doubles in a while but I had these designs of how the night was going to go. In particular, I was going to poach all night long (this is when you cross over and slam the ball down the other team’s throat).
Well, when we started playing, I realized my partner wasn’t hitting strong enough to give me easy poaching opportunities. All of a sudden, this version of what I had predicted was no longer possible. Instead of covering the whole court, I stood in place almost the entire night, frustratedly watching the two back-court players rally with each other. I became so frustrated that it started having an effect on the rest of my game. Soon I was missing returns that I usually make, netting serves that I never miss.
I’m telling you this because writing sessions are similar to this. You go in with these grand designs of how things are going to go. But, all of a sudden, you find yourself in some inert scene where your characters are exchanging polite boring dialogue, and by the end of the first hour, you’re not only convinced you’re a terrible writer, but that tomorrow you will be giving up screenwriting for good.
Eventually, while playing doubles that night, I accepted that whatever amazing version of myself I had envisioned, they wouldn’t be showing up. And that was okay. I shifted my mindset to playing each individual point as best as I could. And it worked. I started playing much better, salvaging what looked like a disastrous evening.
Accept that there will be plenty of writing nights where things don’t go as planned. That great scene you had in your head all day? Maybe it turns out awful. That character you’ve never had a good feel for? Maybe you’re even more confused about them by the end of the night. Don’t get discouraged. It’s all part of the challenge. Try something different. Or move on to the next scene. The next scene is always an opportunity to find inspiration. And once you hit that, you’ll forget about how bad the night started.
But if you let enough scenes get you down, you will eventually stop writing your script. And we can’t have that. We’re all human. We’re imperfect. We screw up. If you’re going to write a script in 30 days, you can’t be beating yourself up the whole time. You’ll eventually give up.
That’s all I gotta say. I’ve given you your blueprint for finishing before the deadline. Now get to it!
