3 Uninspired Ideas for Screenwriters Stuck in the Mud

One caveat: this post is designed purely for self-inspiration. Unless you are either A) a screenwriter frustrated with a screenplay he’s been working on for over a year or B) interested in what goes on inside the head of a screenwriter frustrated with a screenplay he’s been working on for over a year, then it may be of minimal interest to you. I do not have three exact ideas in starting this, but hope they appear somewhere in the midst of composition and so ultimately relieve my larger problem. As a bit of background, I am 80% finished with the plot of a new feature length screenplay. But it has been like walking through boot-deep mud much of the time, with the tugging tiredness of legs giving way to the slurping sound of mud allowing a few more feet of progress. Every now and then, I try to pull up a boot and it doesn’t move. So, here are my three ideas for getting unstuck.

1) Don’t allow yourself to start answering emails, surfing the internet, or doing busy work: this is procrastination, the gentle whisper that calls siren-like for you to do something – anything – other than stare at your monitor, pace about the room, and question the motives of your characters. I do not know why this happens to people who really enjoy writing, but I know it does and is quite endemic. The uninspired solution is to block off a long section of time in a place where you won’t – better yet, can’t – be disturbed and start writing (or thinking, musing, pacing, playing with a pencil or whatever it is you do to prepare to write). Turning off the internet is necessary here. (Turning off the rest of your life and its sundry demands would be nice, too, but probably unrealistic. A few undisturbed hours will have to do.)

2) Now that you’re sitting in a place where you might actually be able to write, if nothing comes to you immediately, then go back and review what you’ve already written and remind yourself that it’s not half bad. You can even tell yourself it’s pretty good. (If it’s really not, you can deal with that later once the first draft is finished. Somehow editing is easier than writing the first draft.) Think about where you characters started and where they are headed. Do you use outlines and sketch out plot points and character development? If so, review them. Who are these people you’re spending so much time with? What’s the one thing they really want? If you were sitting in a dark theater having just seen what came before, what would be different and unexpected if it came next? Was the prior sequence exciting, does there now need to be a rest, or does the excitement need to ratcheted up one more level? I realize this is pretty uninspired, but looking at what I’ve already written seems to give my characters new life that often translates into what their next actions will be. When your characters start talking to other characters on their own, it’s great just to sit back and listen. Like a long distance runner, it’s the “writer’s high.” Sadly, this doesn’t happen as often as I’d like. Instead, my characters often just sit on the page and stare at me, blank-eyed and quiet.

3) Blank-eyed and quiet characters are the worst. And the white nothingness of the page below the last bit of typing is so completely frustrating. So my last uninspired idea is to take my computer and throw it out the window-  no, although it could be cathartic for about 5 seconds, that emotion would be quickly followed by a sinking nausea: much worse than the frustration of an empty page. So, my last uninspired idea is to write something you just grab out of the air, something you completely intend to change, but something that puts black marks across that empty white. And, honestly, that unthinking, unintentional motion will often stir loose some decent ideas that have become lodged together in the pathways of my brain. It reminds me of a story I heard from a guy I met who was an incredible kayaker. He was completely focused on it, working desperately hard to become good enough for the Olympics. (Apparently, he was very close.) During his training, he did some kind of roll and broke his shoulder (or maybe it was his back, although that seems severe – how do you recover from a broken back?). The long recovery ensured that he was no longer in the running for the Olympics, so he had to give it up. After a number of months, he got back into kayaking and started working again on his form and technique, just for the fun of it without the pressure of performing. And something amazing happened: he got much, much better than he ever had been before. He realized that it was only when he stopped focusing on his craft that it began to come naturally. Translated to writing, it means we have to stop worrying about outside pressures and just enjoy the fact that we’re doing something we really like. So what if it’s not incredible – do it for the enjoyment of it, and perhaps it will end up being decent after all. But focusing and worrying about it will likely just thwart the entire process.

Oh, and I guess I should add a final uninspired idea that came from remembering that great scene in The African Queen when they are stuck in the shallow mud and they have to pull the boat back to the river (or something like that). I honestly have been in a situation exactly like that, walking through waist deep water in the mud pulling a big boat behind you as other people push, and hoping, always hoping you can find deeper water. The one uninspired idea I got from that was simply this: You cannot give up. If you do give up, then you’ll always be stuck in the mud. So just keep pulling and pulling – there is a channel out there somewhere.