Chapter | twelve

The Dark Point: Why Are You Doing This Again?

Sometimes – let's face it – writing blows. There will come a day when you just can't handle it any more. Every line of dialog will sound like gibberish; every scene will feel wrong in a way you can't explain. Your concept will seem patently ridiculous, and even your own outline won't make sense. The very thought of sitting down to type will make your head hurt.

Just know that you're not alone. Not only is this normal, it's nigh on mandatory for every screenwriter on every project since the golden age of Hollywood. The Dark Point comes to us just as surely as it comes to our protagonists. And like them, we endure it, we push through it, and we grow stronger.

If you're reading this book, I already know a lot about you.

I know you're dedicated. You're not a dabbler; you don't do things half-assed. You've chosen to devote yourself to the enormous field of storytelling, which encompasses film, television, screenwriting, and a host of other related topics. And you want to know everything – even if that means watching every film and reading every book and blog post you can get your hands on.

I know you believe that art matters. And not just the kind of art that you have to go to a gallery to see – the kind that enters people's homes and shares their lives for a little while. The kind of art that you share with loved ones, or talk about with friends, or relax with alone. You believe “popular art” like film and TV is more than escapism, more than just an opiate for the masses – it's the defining culture of our time. You know it has the power to change the world, and you want to be worthy of that power some day.

And last, I know you shun the easy path. You're probably aware that you picked one of the most difficult professions in the world. You could have put your natural skill with language to work in a hundred other fields, from law to advertising to academia. Instead you picked the one with no health care, fixed salary, or proper unions, the one where nobody owes you anything and everybody competes for a tiny handful of jobs.

But that doesn't matter now. You're in this for the long haul. You'll do what it takes to succeed, because you can't imagine doing anything else.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you're only doing this because you think it'll make you a lot of money (in which case, I'm sorry, but you've been grossly misinformed). But I don't think so. I don't think that's you. People persist with something as difficult as screenwriting only for irrational reasons, like love.

I know you love screenwriting. You know it, too.

But every now and then, you forget. The work gets too hard, the days feel too short, and there are a million other things you'd rather be doing than sitting in front of a computer putting words in the mouths of fictional characters. At these times, it's a good idea to step away. Take a day off every once in a while, or perhaps just an evening. Kick back with the drink and dessert of your choice and watch your favorite movie or TV show.

And by “favorite” I don't mean the new episode of Mad Men from last Sunday. I mean your formative film or series, the ones that made you realize you wanted to become a writer. I'm talking about the stories that live in the back of your brain – the ones that changed your life when you first saw them and now subtly influence everything you write. Mine are Blade Runner and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. What are yours?

When the screenwriting grind gets you down – and it will – take the time to rewatch your own personal classics. When you go back to work the next day, you'll feel a lot better.

Nonwriters just don't get it. They think we're being boastful when we say that we can “see” the entire script perfectly in our mind's eye, and they think we're being melodramatic when we complain that the words on the page don't match the brilliant ideas in our head.

But you and I both know that this does happen. Nothing we write is ever quite as good as we imagined it would be. It's a crappy feeling, but it's something that comes with the territory when you're making art.

Yes, art – any kind of art. Painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, novelists, and poets sometimes feel the same way about their work as we do about ours: crappy, because it's not quite what they imagined it to be. And why wouldn't they feel bad? When an artist conceives of an idea for a project, they don't immediately think of the dirty, compromised, hacked-together version of that idea – they think of the best possible version, the Platonic ideal of the concept.

This is because Platonic ideals are quite easy to imagine. Just take an idea for a screenplay and then picture it moving the audience to tears with the raw power of its imagery and themes, the emotional intensity of its characters, and the sheer intellectual vision of the story! You can see it now, can't you?

Well, not really, because what you're imagining is an impossibility – an exaggerated cartoon version of a perfect screenplay. The truth is, no script (and no work of art) was ever that perfect. All of the most successful and highly regarded films of all time waded through rivers of crap to become what they are. Apocalypse Now almost murdered its lead actors. Nobody wanted to buy Slumdog Millionaire, let alone release it. The original draft of Alien featured a spectral psychic space octopus. And Star Wars used to be called The Adventures of Luke Starkiller as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga I: The Star Wars. Yes, really.

Great films, and great scripts, don't just spring fully formed out of your skull like Athena from the head of Zeus. There's nothing in there to spring. A script doesn't exist in any form, great or not, until you sit down and do the hard work of actually writing it. Your Platonic ideal is nothing more than a golden target, a battle standard to keep in your field of view as you're hacking your way across the battlefield. Your ideal script is also a useful dream – something to think about when you need that little extra hit of motivation.

But that ideal script is not your script. Your script is the one that exists in this reality, the one you get to share with the whole world. It'll be full of compromises, patched-up mistakes, clever revisions, and last-minute additions, because as you worked on it, you will have realized that not everything about your ideal script was actually feasible. Certain changes had to be made, and they were all for the better because they allowed your script to get written. And a flawed script that actually exists is infinitely more valuable than a perfect script that lives only in your mind.

Don't fear that your real script is getting too far away from the one in your head. Be grateful that you have that ideal script to show you the way … then get back to work.

Writer's block is a myth.

Well, sure, it exists. But the way people usually think of it – as a bedeviling curse that stifles creativity and leaves the writer in a depressed fugue state – is romantic nonsense. We do get stuck while writing, but that's only because we don't know what happens next.

Sometimes you reach a point in the narrative where everything stops making sense. You've lost any sense of the protagonist's voice and you can't remember why she set out to do whatever she's supposed to be doing. You went off the outline twenty pages ago, and now you're flying blind with dark fog all around you. You know something needs to happen to move the plot along, but damned if you know what that is.

Relax. Deep breaths. This happens to everyone at some point. And the only solution is to go back to Act 1 and attack the problem at the root.

What you've got to understand is that problems as big as these (losing sense of the protagonist's motivation, mushy plot where things happen for no reason, etc.) aren't the kinds of things you can patch over with a new scene or a few additional lines of dialog. These are deep problems – iceberg-deep. All you're seeing are the symptoms of the problem, but there's a whole mass of issues floating just below the surface. What you need to do is go back to Act 1.

Really examine that first act, especially the early setup pages. Go even farther back and look at your own backstory and concept notes. Figure out what's absolutely vital to your story versus what you might have thrown in there because it seemed like a good idea at the time.

If you're lucky, you'll find the cause of the problem. And, unfortunately, it won't be an easy fix. It'll be something quite drastic. Two characters need to be rolled into one. The protagonist should clearly be a teacher, not a stockbroker. The romantic subplot should be with her best friend, not with the barista character you invented just to give her a love interest. Or maybe the whole thing is too absurd to play seriously, and the script should be a comedy instead.

These are major surgeries. But the thing is, if the changes are right – if you've correctly diagnosed the problem and identified the fix – it won't feel difficult or daunting at all. In fact, you'll find yourself inspired. You'll cheerfully dive back into your script with a scalpel and a blowtorch, because once you know what you have to do, all you'll be able to think about is fixing it.

Even a page 1 rewrite – the most dreaded of all rewrites, the mere thought of which is enough to reduce a normally stoic screenwriter to tears – won't sound so bad to you, because you'll have the keys to the story again. You'll be back in control, and screenwriting will suddenly feel less like work and more like fun.

If you get stuck or lost, don't despair. You've just been given a unique opportunity to drastically improve your screenplay. Now go back to Act 1 and crank up that blowtorch.

Screenwriting Tip #113:

Remember when you were a kid and movies were beautiful, frightening, and transformative? Forget the rest of the world and write for that kid.

Screenwriting Tip #115:

Keep writing. When your first draft sucks, and you don't know how to fix it. When you've been rejected by every agent with an email address. When your boyfriend leaves and takes the cat with him. Keep writing.