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beats, character, cliche, scene, writer's block - February 07, 2023

CHECK YOUR HEAD

Sometimes the script doesn’t want to cooperate. You stare at the page and nothing comes. The scenes you’ve written all seem tired and obvious. You’re forty pages into the script, and going further feels like a chore. What happens next? You don’t know. Nothing clicks. It’s the condition commonly known as writer’s block. There is no easy cure. But it’s just a part of the process. Everyone hits these odd corners of development, and solving for them is what makes writing an art and a craft. Each instance of block is its own beast, unique to the script, the writer,...

SHAKE YOUR HEAD YES

I have never in my entire life gotten into a cab and had the driver ask me, “Where to, Mack?” In 2022, thanks to the magic of rideshare apps, it’s unlikely there would even be a taxi involved in the first place. Has anyone, anywhere, in the year 2022 a) gotten into a taxi and; b) had the driver ask, “Where to, Mack?” Not impossible. But highly unlikely. Where does that kind of thing happen? In old black-and-white movies, right? So what does it tell us if a character in a contemporary screenplay jumps into a cab and the driver...

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