The Secret to Writing 60 Pages in Two Days? Beyonce.
Surviving my five day screenwriting fever dream. Day Three.
Two days ago, I embarked on a truly masochistic quest of writing a screenplay in just five days. The fruits of my first day of writing resulted in a three-page treatment that lead to a torturous but successful exercise that resulted in thirty pages in one day.
That was the easy part. Writing another thirty pages (making it sixty pages in two days) is causing a mental apocalypse.
When I scoped this out and developed my process, I didn’t realize the toll this would take on me. My brain just stops working after a certain point and it takes a ton of effort to turn it back on. Also, I’m getting overwhelmingly paranoid about the scenes I’m underwriting, but fixing them now takes time and energy I just don’t have. So although I get that, for right now, this is more of an exercise of getting words down on paper rather than getting it right, it’s just not sitting well with me. Cue anxiety rising. Feel creative dignity being lowered.
Steve, repeat after me: Just get the words down and fix everything in the rewrite.
Tactic: Let Music Be Your Guide
One trick I did to avoid my exhaustion was to listen to music while writing — specifically vinyl. One side of a vinyl record plays for about twenty-two minutes. So I’d put one on and then write until the music stops. And then, I’d take a quick break by asking myself: What was I in the mood for? Or, more importantly, what was my script in the mood for? That might be listening to the other side. Or it might be finding another record. Then I’d play it. Then I’d get back on it. Break over.
The point was to allow myself to work uninterrupted for twenty-two minutes, followed with breaks that allowed my mind to solve another type of problem.
It worked. I wound up writing to the music. The tempo lifted me up. The lyrics got me thinking. The beat kept me going.
Here was my playlist. It looks random, but it wasn’t when I was in the thick of it.
- Beyonce, “Lemonade”
- Billy Joel, “The Stranger”
- Bruce Springsteen, “Darkness from the Edge of Town”
- Sturgill Simpson, “A Sailor’s Guide to Earth”
- Sugarhill Gang, “The Sugarhill Gang”
- The Allman Brothers, “Eat a Peach”
- Chuck Berry, “The Great 28”
- Bruce Springsteen, “Greetings from Asbury Park”
Tactic: Stay Organized.
As I was following my treatment, I just started getting bewildered. A lot of this was just from being tired. The rest came from asking myself if this is right and what if I did it this way instead and then getting caught up in mind games.
But then I remembered a very sage piece of advice I received from a friend on Facebook who commented about my treatment.
So I compiled a list of what I needed to accomplish during these sixty pages. It made what I had to do next much easier to digest. And it was also easy for me to move plot points around before I wrote them, saving me from the madness of copy-and-pasting. This was truly invaluable.
Tactic: Keep Moving Forward
Here’s another problem: I’m sixty pages in and I’m not feeling my main character. He’s coming across as passive to me. That’s not ideal, but I’m aware of it. However, all the other characters are really filling out nicely. He might just be the constant that they all play off from. But that doesn’t necessarily make for a compelling story.
Also, I hit some conceptual snags, like things I didn’t consider or moments I wish I had. So, if the snag was minor, I went back and rewrote some of the first thirty pages. Most of it was character development. A little bit was foreshadowing. If it was major, I wrote it down and left it for Rewrite Friday.
Oh, and here’s something else: I have no idea how bad this script is right now. I’m drowning in quantity and grasping for quality. I need context and perspective but this project doesn’t call for either. All I know is that it’s just not good. There’s potential for it to be better, but removing craft from the proceedings is difficult for me to handle.
Also, I might have overstuffed the plot, and tomorrow might be more of a 40–50 page jaunt instead of just 30. That’s just great.
Just keep moving forward. Trust the process.
So here’s where I’m at, my work in progress. Introducing the first sixty pages of “The Transition Game”.
If you have any comments, direction, encouragement or slightly clever mocking, please share them with me at steveohville at gmail.com.
Thanks in advance. See you tomorrow for the last of the pages. I don’t have a plan on how I’m gonna tackle them, other than they need to get done.
