The Best Way to Rush Through a Screenplay? Try Slowing Down.
Surviving my Five Day Screenwriting Fever Dream. Day Four.
Three days ago, I embarked on a truly masochistic and thoroughly inadvisable quest of writing a screenplay in just five days. The previous two days of writing have netted me sixty pages of a screenplay, a blistering pace that only Darren Aronofsky and, well, only he can relate to.
Today, I finished it up.
And you know what? It was the easiest day of writing I’ve had.
My previous Chief Creative Officer at Salesforce, John Zissimos, compares writing to a knife that you need to keep sharpened. So maybe it’s because I put myself through a mental and emotional ringer for two days, with each sentence I produced being the survivor of an internal grudge match, that the third full day of writing felt easier.
Or maybe it’s because I had the finish line clearly in sight that I put my head down and just went for it, and each line of dialogue pulled me closer.
Or maybe, just maybe, it’s something else.
Tactic: Be Mindful
When I sat down to write these last thirty pages, with two days of exhaustion weighing me down, I was surprisingly calm and composed. I knew what I needed to do. I was looking forward to exploring the ending. And, instead of battling myself to get words down on paper, I just took my time to get there. The journey had somehow become the prize.
Writer’s lore holds that Ernest Hemingway would pause for a second after each word he wrote just to allow his mind to make sure that word is correct. I’m not going to lie and say that I did that, or that he did that, but I was definitely more in control today in what I was writing.
It could have simply been my posture. I caught myself sitting upright, feet flat to the ground, breathing deeply as part of my process and not as a forced intervention. I found myself eating chocolates as needed and not impulsively. I realized that my anxiety was replaced by relaxation.
I was content in the moment and in the process of writing, and I wanted to soak in every word.
This definitely wasn’t expected. This definitely felt wonderful.
Tactic: Write Joyfully
In case you haven’t picked up on it from the previous sixty pages, I really love basketball. To put it in perspective, my love has always been at a Jordanesque level, and it’s only rising higher. And these pages really allowed me to dive into the poetry of the game.
It was important to me, and maybe only to me, to write these basketball scenes with a very specific point to them. They’re not highlights. They’re not just dunks and deep threes or feats of athleticism. Instead, what happens in the game are tests of Charles’ evolution as a person as he figures things out for himself. They’re his existential crisis in full display on hardwood.
I asked myself if getting too deep into the details would derail the reader.
Will they know what a “pick-and-roll” is?
That’s when a ballhandler runs his man into his teammate on purpose and then passes to him, “the picker” who is “rolling” to the hoop? (He could also not pass to the picker, keep the ball himself and drive to the hoop. It depends on what advantage they have over the defense).
Here’s two of the best (Tony Parker and Tim Duncan) showing how it’s done:
Or how about when the team runs “Horns”?
That means you have two teammates situated on opposite ends of the foul line (or even further out), which presents the ballhandler with a series of actions and decisions that puts the defense at a disadvantage. He can dribble off the pick. He can pass to one of those teammates, and then pick for another in the corner. Basically, he’s presented with a ton of choices.
Here’s how that looks:
I’m guessing that it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that it sells the action as intricate and expertly researched and true to the character — and that his progression is clear.
Getting into these details right was the most fun I had in the script. Game planning it, seeing it play out in my head, relaying my own experiences, going through Charles’ progressions during the play, and then finding the right words to express it, all of that filled my bucket. It made me happy. It made me proud.
Isn’t that the point?
Well, actually, in this experiment, finishing a script in five days is the literal point. And if you scroll down, you’ll see a link to what looks like screenplay. It’s ninety-seven pages long, but honestly, that’s doesn’t mean it’s “finished”. There’s so much work to be done.
There’s plot holes that need to be addressed.
There’s character development that needs to be colored in.
There’s scenes that need descriptions, from visuals to sounds to an overall feel.
There’s more scenes to be added, and some to be erased.
That’s why tomorrow’s work is really the most important. It’s the last step to move this script from “a collection of words hastily put together in a screenplay format” to “an actual story that makes sense and paints a picture in the reader’s mind”.
But that’s tomorrow.
Here’s v.1 of the “script”. I can honestly say I never wrote ninety-seven pages in three days ever before, and that in itself, is an accomplishment I can be proud of. It’s like a writer’s version of an ultramarathon.
So take some time, read, enjoy, and please excuse the mess. It’s still under construction.
If you have any comments, direction, encouragement or bitingly clever mocking, please share them with me at steveohville at gmail.com.
Thanks in advance. See you tomorrow for the rewrite. That’s when I usually do my best work. I’m looking forward to it.
