A Screenwriter's Journey #7: Killing Writer's Block

Now things are really starting to roll. With the beginning of the structure in place, it was time to further develop things. I have all the existing pieces arranged as best I can. To solidify that, I go through and start giving each chronological idea a scene header. For those that don't know, these tell you whether you are inside or outside, the time of day and where things are taking place.

As I go through and make these scene headings, the locations quickly solidify and once a choice is made about a location in one scene, that informs other locations for other scenes. And if I have notes that don't have a home (like Ahmed is a football player), I find a place in the story to show that and not tell it. Going through each of those things leads to not only more scenes and more locations and more characters, it helps organize the script more. Things shift to more logical places, things that don't make sense anymore are eliminated and new things have to be added.

All the set-up ideas for characters, motives, personalities, kills and any other outcomes have to be created here. Every set-up has to be brainstormed and every payoff has to be thought out. This is easy since I already know who is going to live and die. I have to pick when and where each death takes place and find ways to set-up the deaths, fears and obstacles that the characters can overcome or fail to overcome.

So, at about 35 pages, I had most of the scenes set. The next thing was to figure out the rest of them and over the 5 pages after that, I came up with every scene that I think that I need in the story.

And that's the tipping point. Once all the scenes are in the document, it's a race to the finish. I don't write the screenplay straight through, I go through the scenes and mark the unfinished scenes with an easily searchable ***.

And this gets to my method for killing writer's block. I take two approaches to this. The first is if I get stuck on a scene and can't come up with anything or I don't have the inspiration or interest in writing a scene right away, I search that *** and go on to another scene that I feel good about or am inspired by. This works really, really well. The document currently has 39 *** points. That means I have 39 scenes to finish writing (and an uncounted number of scenes that I've already finished because of inspiration or previous work).

The second strategy is to methodically go through the script and find each one of those *** and force myself to write one sentence for each. The first sentence in the scene that hasn't been written. No matter what it is. It doesn't even have to be good, just get a sentence out. I can fix it later. About half the time, this leads to more than one sentence. Forcing myself to write one sentence creates ideas for what comes after that sentence. I write one, if more comes, I keep going. If nothing else comes, I move on to the next ***.

Notably, during this part of the process, if something gives me a new idea or a connection to something else, I write that note down and save it for later, even if for now it's in the wrong place. On a review, I'll move those notes to where they belong, but not while writing is coming out. I try not to get distracted when the words are flowing.

One last note on this process, and this is super helpful. By not writing things in order and skipping around, it does two important things. First is that it keeps me thinking about the entire script all the time. I'm always seeing every page and every scene and making sure that they tie together. It's very easy to see the connections with all the parts of the story always in front of my face.

The second big benefit is that it really helps with fixing potential errors. Typos, mismatched names or facts. Set-ups that don't pay off. Pay offs that aren't set up. I get to see words over and over during this process so I can find errors easily.

Finally, once I get to this point, it's a quick sprint to the end. I know everything I need to write to finish it. Every existing scene has a time/location/order in the script. The plot is laid out. The characterizations are set up and arcs have been chosen. Who lives and dies and when and how are laid out. Every scene has been started with at least one sentence and a note about what the scene has to accomplish.

With this process, I'm now about a week or so away from finishing this script.

Pages: 40 (looks like it'll be out of 90-100)