Congratulations!
You’re 8 pages into your screenplay.
If I were at your place right now, I’d give you a high-five.
Actually, that’s not a good idea in this environment. How bout I send you a virtual elbow-bump instead? Not as visceral but still gets the job done.
And, hey. Even if you’re not 8 pages into your new screenplay, there’s no need to panic. The opening of your script, where you set everything up, can be deceptively tough.
Think of it like a party. In order for everyone to have fun, someone has to order all the liquor, schedule the catering, make sure all the invitations have been sent out, prep the house, etc. That’s essentially what you’re doing with your first 15 pages.
Setting up all the characters, conveying relevant mythology and backstory, constructing the setup for your plot – that stuff doesn’t naturally flow off the fingertips. So give yourself a break if the opening is kicking your butt. You can make up for it in the coming days.
That actually brings me to today’s topic, which I, surprisingly, don’t see discussed often in the screenwriting community.
That would be the psychological effect of writing.
Let’s be honest. Some days, writing beats you up. I’ll give you an example from a script I wrote a long time ago. It was a big sprawling science-fiction script with a lot of characters and a lot of mythology. I’d been thinking about the script for a long time. I’d been living with the characters. I’d inhabited the world. I even spent hour-long meditation sessions attempting to “experience” what a real hour on this imaginary planet I’d created would be like.
Needless to say, I was SO EXCITED to write the screenplay. And when I finally sat down and wrote the first 20 pages, they were nothing like what I had imagined them to be. I learned quickly that I didn’t know some of the characters as well as I thought I did. There were small logistical gaps in the setup, such as where certain secondary characters were located geographically. And how to jump between different sets of characters and keep the narrative flowing. All of this stuff seemed insignificant during prep but now that I was facing it, it was anything but insignificant. This turned what I assumed would be a fun breezy writing week into a taxing depressing slog.
What I noticed after those 20 pages was that my desire to write went way down. So the day after that, I only wrote two pages. The day after that, I wrote one. And then I found myself avoiding writing the script altogether. All of this stemmed from those first 20 pages beating me up. Psychologically, I was defeated. And I let that defeat dictate my motivation.
Writing is still an art. All art contains a strong emotional component, both in connection with your characters and in connection with yourself. It’s like a relationship. You can’t go on auto-pilot. You have to emotionally invest to do the work. As everybody knows, when you emotionally invest in anything and it doesn’t go well, you become emotionally exhausted.
But here’s what I’ve learned over time. No matter how tough a script gets, you always get back to a high point as long as you keep writing. So I get it. You might experience what I experienced on that sci-fi script at some point in this first act (or later). If that happens, go watch a Youtube video that makes you happy (do NOT watch another fear-mongering pandemic video – that will NOT help). Grab a snack that always makes you feel good. It’s a pandemic. People will understand if you gain a little weight. Then get back in there and keep writing because it WILL get better.
4 scenes or 8 pages a day. That’s it. In 2 weeks, you’ll have a feature screenplay that you may be talking about in two years from the red carpet of the film’s premiere. They’ll ask you, “How did you come up with this idea?” And you’ll answer, “Actually, Scriptshadow made me write the script. I didn’t have a choice.”
Now get back to it!
