CS Daily Archive > Son of a Pitch > 04/08/04

Writing Your Screenplay and Your Day-to-Day Life

BY Jim Mercurio

David Wharton is out this week, but Creative Screenwriting columnist Jim Mercurio graciously agreed to pinch-hit for him.

After playing Tetris for six hours straight, have you ever gone out to a nice restaurant yet, out of the corner of your eye, geometric patterns fall from the sky? After an all-nighter of poker, when you're driving home do license plates like A45 789 seem like a gut-shot straight draw? After spending a hot and heavy weekend at a Hampton Inn with your ex....

Okay, enough about how I avoid writing.

Actually, my list above was a way for me to start thinking about what it's like when you start a screenplay. There always seems to be a point of no return in the creative process where you are committed to the story and until your first draft is done, you're in a daze. Just like the Tetris shapes raining down on you, when you are away from your computer or notepad, the world is still a stage or a screen. Everything in your life will be filtered through your story. If you are writing about the Underground Railroad, a trip to the zoo will make you feel warm and fuzzy knowing that all the animals in their cages are being protected from a hostile world. If you are writing the sequel to Scenes from a Marriage, the same trip to the zoo will make you lament the creature's physical entrapment because it is an inherent reminder of the metaphysical entrapment involved in monogamous relationships. You are in a delicate state that not everyone will understand or be able to support.

You'd better get used to it.

When you are lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling and silently working on the intricacies of your inciting incident, inevitably your significant other will walk into the room two hours later just as your stutter-snore gives away that you're dozing off. Rather than trying to defend this for what it is, work, try to pick an opportune time to incorporate the people around you into your writing process so that they might better understand it. However, you should use your best judgment. Your brain is a finely tuned receptor for ideas at this point. If you've just returned from driving the Natalie Portman-in- Beautiful Girls-look-a-like babysitter home, don't pick this moment to use your wife to test the dramatic plausibility of your act one turning point, "Honey, you know the hunting rifle downstairs...could you imagine ever using it on me, if I had slept with the babysitter?"

Besides clichés in your writing, you should also avoid the clichés in your writing life. Take, for example, the cliché about the mad creative genius who wears a beret and ignores all other aspects of his life while creating his "art." (He's clearly avoiding the fashion part of his life: he's wearing a friggin' beret while at the computer.) Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whose theories in the psychology of optimal experience and the creative habits of artists, coined the term "flow" to describe that intense and exciting experience and concentration when a creative process is engaging a person's skills to the fullest extent. There is a magical and mystical word for what helps you reach this state; it's called research.

When you get "in the groove" and your writing flows, you can have sudden and personally stunning insights into the story process. But that doesn't mean everyone will share in the joy. A singular obsession with your screenplay can be good for your work, if not your relationships with others. At the Thanksgiving dinner table, your in-laws aren't going to be overcome with your same euphoria when, immediately after saying grace, you spit out your epiphany, "At the end of act two, in Se7en, the killer turns himself in, so at the end...of course her head is going to be in the box."

Maybe this is why it is so important for screenwriters to try to seek out other screenwriters. They can seek solace and validation in a community that shares a way of being. The world just doesn't see things the way writers do. You can't be excused from jury duty because, "You finally figured out the subplot that defines the foil character and you need time to write it." There are sick days and vacation days, but no such thing as "creative days." Well, actually, there are such things, but they are not given to you. You have to find them, you have to make them, you have to carve them out of two hours here, three hours there.

Michael Lent and Ron Suppa often talk about the writer's life in their Creative Screenwriting columns. They argue that sometimes a day job is important, so you don't put too much pressure on your writing. Don't fret too much if your gig at Kinko's is a drag. Keep working hard to stay in the "flow," so that when a grumpy customer makes you change the color copier toner and a cloud of magenta and cyan dust blows up in your face, you will be prepared. Instead of thinking to yourself, "Self, a cloud of magenta and cyan dust just blew up in my face," you can find creative inspiration and realize how nice it would be in the final scene of your sweet romance to use a big red burst of fireworks.

There is also an even more practical reason to get a "normal" job. When your mom calls and asks you why you're not coming home for the holidays, instead of saying, "I gotta spend a few days alone to figure out how my character organically resolves his dilemma in my act three climax," you can say, "I was promoted to graveyard shift supervisor and I gotta oversee the Xerox machines." When she asks you if you got a raise, you can tell her, "no, but I get to make copies of my script for free."

Jim Mercurio is a writer and filmmaker who has never played Tetris, too much poker, or worked at a Kinko's.

From the Trenches (Monday)
Working screenwriters discuss in their own words a particular aspect of screenwriting, from the mechanics of writing to the personal and professional impact that writing has had on their lives. > VIEW ARCHIVE

The Art of Craft (Tuesday)
Screenwriting experts discuss how to approach various aspects of writing and the writing life. A mini-seminar each week from the people who write the books and teach the classes. > VIEW ARCHIVE

Expert Witness (Wednesday)
A panel of experts assembled to provide the facts about the screenwriting business. Readers will be able have their questions answered by an agent, producer, entertainment attorney, and WGA representative—and without paying that 10% commission. > VIEW ARCHIVE

Son of a Pitch (Thursday)
A weekly tutorial on how to write a script. Each week deals with a different element of creating a script, with the ultimate goal to provide a step-by-step instruction manual for new writers. The guide for this is a writer just diving into screenwriting himself, who asks the pros questions any new screenwriter would have about this brave new world. > VIEW ARCHIVE

Weekend Read (Friday)
Film, book, web site and technology reviews from a writer’s perspective. How can these items help a writer on his or her journey, or make that journey more enjoyable? > VIEW ARCHIVE

DVD Review of the Day (Every Weekday)
DVD reviews from a writer’s point of view. What aspects of this script and features of this DVD illuminate the writing, development, and storytelling process? > VIEW ARCHIVE