Don’t forget the most important screenwriting lesson of all: Have fun.
"You know when you’re a kid and you get crayons and papers and just draw whatever you want and it’s just a bunch of messy lines, but to you it makes sense, and then they put it on the fridge? From that point on, you’re always trying to get back on the fridge, you start drawing things that look like something, like, the more it looks like a horse, the more chance you have of getting it on the fridge. We wanted to get back to that place before we were trying to make the fridge." - Ryan Gosling
This theme has been running through my life in multiple ways this week: this idea of getting back to being a kid, to re-discovering play, to getting back to the place before I was trying to "make the fridge."
What can you do this week just for the love of it? Not because of some potential outcome? What can you write this week that isn't influenced by all the "how-to" blogs and books and podcasts that have sucked the joy out of writing?
You can have a perfectly structured, perfectly formatted screenplay that checks all the boxes of what the industry is "looking for" and it will be dry and boring and dead on arrival if it is not drenched in your deep-seated passion.
Start with that passion. What is the movie you most wanna see right now that no one is making? What is the idea that you could disappear into for weeks without coming up for breath because you're so excited about it? A script that is fun to write is a script that is fun to read. Go play.
What if you could write multiple screenplays every year and have a clear path to getting those screenplays sold?
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