Screenwriting Mind Games

There are various mind games you have to play on yourself to be a screenwriter. Here are my top 4:

1. THE GAME OF FIRST DRAFT vs LAST DRAFT

Your first draft will never, ever be your last draft. Unless you're directing, producing and paying for the film yourself - in which case, may God have mercy on your soul.

You will end up rewriting the bloody thing 5, 10, 50, 100 times. Whatever the total number of drafts you eventually reach, the only guarantee is that it will be at least 2 and possibly 200 more than you thought were strictly necessary.

However, when you're writing that all-important first draft, you have to forget about all those future iterations and treat it like the last draft you'll ever write. Why? Because there's no quicker way to kill off whatever life is in the words you're writing than the thought 'that'll do'.

You have to pretend that this weak baby gazelle of a script, spindly legs burdened by the weight of expectation, inexperience and its own tortured story logic, is the best version of itself it's ever going to be and give it everything you've got. That's the only way it will be anywhere near good enough to earn its passage to the second round of the endless Script Olympics.

2. THE GAME OF WRITER vs READER

There are two distinct roles you have to play in the writing process - writer and reader. Personally when writing a draft I move constantly, like a shark, never reading over what I've written out of fear that its total awfulness will sap my self-belief and I'll never get to the end - and getting to the end, especially on a first draft, is everything. No-one ever had two-thirds of a script produced (although some would argue that George Lucas achieved this not once but three times).

But once a draft is done, it's time to take off the writing hat - the racing helmet worn to protect the wearer from dangerously high typing speeds - and put on the reading hat - the deerstalker in which one can comfortably ease back in the armchair to absorb a good yarn.

Leave as long as possible between writing and reading. It takes a generous cushion of time to fully achieve the hat-exchange maneuver - to stop being the precious writer and forget about all the great reasons why super-criminal Toby Nutkins just has to be wearing red trousers when he's confronted by The Beagle - and instead calmly observe the boring scene/annoying character/terrible joke and take a hatchet to it with a cry of 'who wrote this shit?'

3. THE GAME OF ARROGANCE vs HUMILITY

Writing any script - particularly your first script - is an act of extraordinary arrogance. 'Here I sit, Josephine Shithead, preparing to join the hallowed ranks of the Coen Brothers, Lena Dunham and the guys behind the Scary Movie franchise by writing a script. A script so goddamn great it will pole vault its way over all the scripts written by all the other Shitheads who think they are the real deal when the fact is they are not - whereas I, on my very first try, quite definitely am.'

It's essential to be drunk on a neat shot of 100% proof arrogance before writing a script or you'll simply never manage to pull it off. A balanced, reasonable view of one's own capabilities and the odds against success would mean the balloon of self-confidence deflating approximately halfway through the first scene, leaving nothing but the low pathetic hiss of dead ambition.

But that neat shot is strictly for First Draft Guy. First Draft Guy can be as arrogant as Han Solo but subsequent drafts need to be written with the humility of Yoda. Otherwise you'll just be another knobhead with a terrible script he thinks is great. And Lord knows we don't need any more of those.

4. THE GAME OF DISCIPLINE vs RELAXATION

Professional writers learn to make friends with deadlines. But what do you do without deadlines – when no-one is waiting for you to deliver your script or frankly cares whether you finish at all?

Create artificial deadlines. Much like a six-year old who imagines if they step on the cracks in the pavement a bear will attack them, you can pretend that if you don’t finish a scene by the end of the day, a bear will attack you. If you don’t find the prospect of bear attack convincing, go for a different threat, such as ‘if I don’t finish this scene by 5 o’clock I am a total failure as a human being.’

Problems start when these fear tactics work too well. You find yourself typing sweatily, looking down the barrel of a lifetime of self-hate you have so enthusiastically promised yourself, and in the process, are unable to write anything halfway decent. The brain needs to be supple not clenched to do its work. You may find that taking a walk in the park is as crucial to your creativity as banging away on a keyboard. Just as long as the walk doesn’t end in a run to the pub/cinema/crackhouse.

If you are tempted to run, remember – the bear will find you. Not a metaphorical bear, the actual bear you hired me to bring round at 5 o’clock – remember?

Originally published in The Guardian on 31/7/13: 

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2013/jul/31/sam-bain-how-to-write-screenplay-script