Hey Readers-- it's me again. I hope you enjoyed my last post about screenplay character creation. You may have noticed it's been a while since I posted a proper screenplay. That's because lately I've been experiencing a bad case of "writers block," and so haven't been able to come up with the great screenplay ideas that normally constantly blast through my skull like a sex hurricane. I apologize to everyone out there who depends on my creativity to inspire their own.
If you're a devoted reader of this blog you're probably also a writer yourself, and so you likely have had problems of your own with "The Block." I've been reading the internet and going back through my diary trying to find a way to get through the problem, and I thought I'd share some of that advice with you- it will probably help you even if it can't help me.
1. Watch some good movies!
Watching a good movie can definitely inspire you to make up your own. My go-to movie on this one is "Virtuousity," which stars Denzel Washington fighting a magic-man serial killer from the cyberverse named Russel Crowe. Anyone familiar with my work can surely see how influential it has been in the past.
Another good one is a forgotten masterpiece called "Ladyhawke"-- not only is it a wonderfully romantic date movie (two people can't have sex because they change into animals! Welcome to makeout town.) it's a creative treasure trove of ideas. I wrote my claymation horror opera, Chewbacca in Boston?!, after two consecutive viewings. Ladyhawke also inspired the character "Manda" from Monster Sex Prison.
2. Freewrite
"Freewriting" is when you just sit down and write whatever comes into your head. It can be anything- what you see around you, what you had for breakfast-- even just the names of everyone you've ever slept with in order of how loved they made you feel. Even when I don't have writer's block I try to free write for two hours a day, and now that I DO have writer's block and was fired from the costume store I'm free writing as much as fifteen hours a day.
The process helps clear your head of all the garbage thoughts and leaves you with a clear canvas on which to paint your screenplay ideas. So don't judge what you freewrite!
NOTE: Be careful not to write down a list of people you want to kill, since later that could be used as evidence. :(.
3. Write Someplace Else!
It's amazing how something as simple as changing the scenery can have an effect on your ability to write. If your room is too full of sour towels and Arby's leftovers to keep working, go to a McDonald's. When they ask you to buy something, go to a library. Et cetera. I wrote 90% of Spaceman's Burden in a Starbucks bathroom. Unbelievable!
4. Break Your Femur!
This sounds like a weird one. But I first got interested in the art of screenplay writing when I was recovering from a shattered femur I suffered in a car accident. I was in bed for several months, and after a brief bout with suicidal depression I found myself FASCINATED with what I was watching on television. And what I was watching, my friend, was screenplays. By my second month in traction I was beginning what would become my first screenplay, later renamed Nuclear Mutant Wife but at the time titled simply Nukeslut. Even then I knew it was a love affair that would last a lifetime.
There's something to be said for the isolation and alone time that comes with a crippling injury. If you're really committed to being a famous screenwriter try taking more risks with your health.
5. Remember to not give up, keep writing, and maybe the dream of hollywood will one day be yours!
See the video below for Proof!
9 comments:
Long time reader first time commenter. First, thanks for all the great advice here Steven! Second, I took a page from your manuscript and decided to make my own movie. I didn't actually write any of it down before we started shooting, but I have to say once the cameras started rolling it all just kind of happened! Please take a look and let me know what you think:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14IDCTSTpPs
I figured that you would like a "cliffhander" ending! Keep up the great work.
Stefan,
I too have had issues with writers block and have developed some strategies to deal with it.
a) Go to the zoo and try to meet some new and interesting animals. Look for animals that don't live in your neighborhood or hang out at your favorite coffee houses.
2) Visit with sick or dying friends and family. This works especially well if you do it at a hospital or at their houses.
3) Take up a new and exciting hobby like rollercoasters or smoking.
Last) Join a service organization like the big brothers/ big sisters or McDonalds. This is a great way to meet people and find new and interesting ways to exercise your racism. Never pass up an opportunity to identify and catalog the physical and cultural differences between yourself and and the numerous lesser races of humans and sub-humans.
Also) Try getting a pen name or (name de plume as the miserable French "people" call it) The internet told me that Earnest Hemingway used to write some of his books under the name Mary Shelley. This way he could write about different things other than fish or old men.
Good luck and don't give up your dream of writing screenplays.
Hastings and Cobblepot! It's so so good to hear from people like you in the screenwriting community. Thanks. Hastings, your short film is terrible and derivative. Specifically it's derivative of me, which although understandable is nonetheless despicable. Send me $50,000 or one percent of the profit you made from the film (which ever is larger) and I'll tell my tenacious bloodthirsty lawyer Emilio to let this one slide.
That said-- wow! What a great Cliffhander!
C Cobb: Thanks for contributing. Some of those tips really might help someone get over their writer's block. Personally I can't go the zoo for inspiration, since I once saw an old man fall into the beaver tank and be cut apart and reassembled into a dam with a terrifying ferocity that haunts my dreams to this very day.
Hey Stephen! I used your freewriting idea and I came up with my own movie idea. Thank you. Can you please post it here for an agent to find?
I'm going to eat I like boats what about a cyclops with a horn on its stomach and the cyclops is the devil but it's a good devil and angels are bad is that sacrilegious Am I religious Did Stephen really work in a costume store how about the cyclops has an extra eye and nobody understands he's a cyclops but they're freaked out about that horn he's got Or maybe he doesn't have the horn and he's a cyclops living in present day except he has two eyes due to a birth defect and every day he has to get up and go to work and try passing as a normal person And nobody understands him and he doesn't have any friends except the big club he's always swinging around and that gets him into trouble because you can add the eye to the cyclops but that club swinging is built right into its DNA Maybe also the two eyed cyclops would be looking for Odysseus' ancestor and he'd want to murder him because Odysseus killed the cyclops' double great grandfather I need to buy some warmer shoes My feet are FRRREEEZING The cyclops, we'll call him Randy, would have to get up every day, put on a suit, leave his club at home, and go to work at the insurance company but maybe when things would get slow he'd just use the internet to see who was related to Odysseus and then he'd save up his money and plan to go over there and confront them for killing his cyclops breathren How'd my shoes get untied when I've just been sitting here this whole time But what he wouldn't know is that Odysseus wasn't real, it was just a story and so pretty much Randy would just be like this crazy two-eyed cyclops who has trouble distinguishing between reality and fiction and also wants to murder innocent people who he thinks are related to a guy that doesn't exist a scone sounds good right now I'd call the movie Biclops
Dear Stephen,
As a former medical aid with a soon-to-be-heralded gift for screenwriting, I simply CAN NOT condone tip #4 (Break your Femur!). While I whole-heartily agree that screenwriting is an art that demands sacrifice, future screen-writers must know that intentionally suffering bodily harm IS NOT AND SHOULD NOT be a method to get your creative juices flowing. It was not your broken femur that inspired you, Stephen. Rather, it was the focus the broken femur demanded. This same focus through means that DO NOT involve broken femurs, and I think for you to suggest such a thing is, I am sad to say, irresponsible, ignorant, and wholly double irresponsible. You have a forum here, and many screenwriters are looking to you for advice. Imagine a 14 year-old aspiring screenwriter taking a sledgehammer to his legs A.K.A. Stephen King's Misery, in the hopes of writing the next Independence Day? Without a printed retraction from you, I personally would hold you liable for whatever medical costs and permanent damage that girl's leg injury might cost. Granted, I am not a laywer, but a soon-to-be-heralded screenwriter. Nevertheless, please Stephen. Just...Please.
Hey you know, one thing I noticed you left out of here is imbibing in mind altering substances. This opens the mind's red doors to creative blue rooms where your expanded imagination is your only limit-station. I'm not the only person to think so. For example, Bradley Nowell of Sublime, Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon, and Jerry Stahl of Moonlighting and ALF fame. And others. Screenwriters are artists. They are. Just like painters and Sublime singers, they create something that wasn't there before. But the world is a trap. We are inundated and bombarded with preconceived notions that limit what we can think and feel and hear and sing along to. Certain mind altering substances can temporarily free you of those brown shackles and let you see things as they really are: Beautiful. Everything is so beautiful. And it's fine to say that, but those who create, the true creationists, they need to do more than say it. They need to inject it into their arm, sit back and actually SEE it. Or else they get sick.
Stephen, I've been writing screenplays for over 6 years now, and I'm sorry, but I don't really think it's fair that you're getting all of this attention and being asked for advice when from what I can tell all you've ever really done is write little snippets of very unmarketable screenplays. You can call me jealous, and maybe I am, but I don't write 300 screenplays a year. I MAYBE write one. Good screenplays take a LOT of work, and can't just be typed out in half an hour while you're chowing down on a burger. While it's fine for you to be successful, forgive me but I feel that critics would find my work far superior. My work has real emotions, real character arcs, and though-provoking action. It might not be as in-your-face as your Flavordrome franchise, but I feel it resonates on a much deeper level. I'm not trying to be a jerk here. Obviously there's a market for what you're putting out. I just don't understand why your screenplays would get so much attention and meanwhile I've yet to find any real studio interest in the screenplays that I've written - screenplays born from sweat, blood, frustration, and commitment. So seriously, what's your secret? The advice you provide is fine, whatever. But it doesn't tell me how I can be a so damn lucky as to have studio's express interest in the material I'm providing. Tell me that story. Tell me whose dick you sucked to get so much support. Seriously, I'd like to know.
FIRST!
Okay, how about a movie where it starts out just like everyday life, except then this one guy malfunctions in the middle of like Times Square and it turns out he was a robot. And nobody can believe it because this guy looked so normal! Think about the implications that would have! They'd talk to the robot guy's wife, and she'd be just like, "What do you mean he was a robot? OH. MY. GOD. No. I refuse to believe it. He loved me like a man. A man!" Put then they'd throw his robot ass on her kitchen table and say, "Believe this, lady. Because it happened. It fucking happened." And they'd try and research this guy, but nobody new who his parents were. BUT...get this. Yes, he went to high school. Yes he went to college. This robot had been fucking growing and aging just like people. Everyone would be so amazed because it's like, who even knew we had the technology to make robots like that? And some people would say that the guy was actually real and he made a robot version of himself and then faked his own fake existence. And everyone would believe that too, until due to sun spots or some shit ANOTHER robot person malfunctioned. And then ANOTHER and then this whole fucking city malfunctions. Everyone would be paranoid because tell me, where are these people coming from and who the hell is making them? Seriously, this is a really good idea for a movie. Nobody would trust anybody and scientists would just be disecting that whole robot town, trying to figure out what the technology and trying to figure out who was responsible for robot town. And I haven't worked out who'd be responsible yet, and maybe we'd never know. Maybe like the whole thing would end with the world getting big time screwed because of all the robot paranoia. Like, the U.S. would think that Canada was invading, and Canada would think that Australia or Austrians or somebody were invading. So it's like could there be any more Red Alert? Everybody would have their hand on the nuke button, just to take out the robot makers. And then in the end, Blade would wake up. It was just another dream of "The Daywalker"
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