Mike Werb, he wrote Face/Off, he always says that when he gets stuck he just sits at his computer and he says out loud, “I’m going to write the worst scene ever written,” and then he writes it. It works, because for almost everyone, it is so much easier to re-write something than it is to write it for the first time. It just becomes more clear what to write once you see the wrong thing in front of you. A lesson to learn — to not be so precious about what you put. You know what you want to happen in the scene, so just write the crappiest version of it, take a deep breath, and say, “Okay, I have actually accomplished something.” As writers, we tend to beat ourselves up. If we’re not proactive or we can’t figure out a scene, we just get ourselves into a funk, thinking maybe we’re not talented, or maybe we’re not going to be successful. Thinking, “Maybe I should just take a nap or have a drink.” You just can’t let yourself go down that road. Just write something shitty and then make it better. It took me 2 decades to learn this lesson. I hope you learn it faster.
Posted on: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 17:52:11 +0000