First of all, watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGt3-fxOvug Distractions and interruptions are hard to avoid sometimes. In my opinion reading material on screenwriting/writing is one of the biggest distractions because you are suddenly bombarded with rules and information you want to keep up with. Screenwriting should be thought of as storytelling at first, not how well it is written or structured. That way you're focused on the story, scenes, and characters you want to develop. After you have a draft, I would read several screenplays to get a sense of some of the technicalities and structure. Also, continually reading material on screenwriting can lead you to get caught up in someone else's success. It might be motivating, but it is more gratifying when you have written something and THEN go back to verify that you have followed a similar procedure. Their advice falls into place and makes more sense afterwards. When I wrote my first screenplay I was under a time constraint. At first it was a little hard to get into and write, but the more you focus and become familiar with your characters, scenes and dialogue come easier. Just remember, don't focus too much on the word, rather than your envision that is your story.

The internet is my biggest distraction/temptation/timesuck. When I put aside time to write, I have my daughter change the wi-fi password so I can't go online. I set a goal for the number of pages I want to finish that day, and she doesn't change the password back until I've shown her that many pages (or more). I suppose I could just develop self-discipline, but this is way easier.

When it's about cranking pages it's fine, the solution is hard but simple: butt on the chair, wifi off and write following your beat sheet. I experience that for me the hardest part is to get a solid beat sheet. I try to experience different methods to split that huge mysterious and necessary process that comes before writing FADE IN.

Fear works best for me. I used to feel bad about that, and look for more "carrot"-oriented motives, things I could be prouder talking about to other people. Plus, fear includes all that stress, which also feels bad. Just thinking about all that stress-sourced cortisol dumped into my bloodstream makes me feel guilty for corroding my body that way. But the fact is, fear works. Usually that means deadlines imposed on me by other people. Then, to deal with all that productive stress-fear, I take walks, do yoga, or love-up my cat. (Loving up my man is reserved for procrastinating.) Green tea, SAM-e, and choline are also useful for keeping my butt parked long enough to bang out something. Finally, I could mention provigil, but that would be cheating.

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WyWe, first off thanks for that video recommendation. I'm a huge Monty Python and especially John Cleese fan. I did something I rarely do: I sat and watched the whole video instead of bookmarking it for later reference. Glad I did. Going to do a series on creativity in May in the run-up to The Quest and will use this video as part of that. I'll be sure to give you a Hat Tip! You make a lot of sense on multiple subjects. Here is one point you hit on I'd like to riff on. As you may know, I do not believe there are any actual rules for screenwriting. I take that rather radical position in order to fight what we may call the 'formulization' of the Hollywood storytelling. So much focus by aspiring screenwriters to find THE formula, THE process, THE paradigm, THE approach, THE secret to a million dollar spec script. And what do we end up with? 30,000 submissions a year that are lifeless, uncreative, and without much in the way of inspiration. Oh, they may have a swell structure and the pages may look great to the eye, but start with formula, end up with formula. So to your point about the dangers of screenwriting advice, very true. And that goes for anything I have to say as well. My advice is this: Absorb as much as you can. Then when you sit down to write, push all that stuff off to one side of your consciousness. With most of your being, go into the story and 'be' with the characters. By immersing oneself IN the story universe, you can have a direct interaction with the heart, soul and spirit of your story, its organic nature. All that screenwriting theory, it can play a part in the process, but hopefully on an intuitive level as you approach each scene. Here's something I've found to be helpful: A script diary. I start off each writing session by opening my script diary and going through whatever is on my mind about the upcoming scenes I'm going to write. My concerns, goals, thoughts, ideas, bits of dialogue, question whether it would be better to try this approach or that, where's the conflict, how to enter late and exit early, why these characters in this scene, theme and so forth. Then I go to my script. I close my eyes to take myself into the story universe as best as I can. And I write as much from instinct as I can. I find bouncing back and forth between the script diary and the script itself enables me to do both things: consider the story with screenwriting theory in mind, then write it as much as possible from instinct. But to your point, we should do whatever we can to AVOID getting caught up in the trap of writing by numbers because that way leads to perdition. Thanks for your comments and the link!

Barbara, that is awesome! Using your daughter as your Internet threshold guardian. I've actually managed to handle that particular beast (Internet) pretty well using the Pomodoro approach. I wrote about it here. When I start that timer for 30 minutes, that's it, I'm working and no stopping. I only use that for blogging, script analysis, writing lectures, etc. When I'm screenwriting, I block off several hours and will only have Word and Final Draft open to keep me from checking email or going on Twitter, etc. But I have to say having one's own personal threshold guardian is a damn fine idea!

Pietro, I call that prep-writing, as compared to page-writing, and prep-writing is like the 90% of the iceberg you DON'T see, the 10% being the actual script. Which is to say most of the work of writing a script is done in prep. Or SHOULD be. You might check out the Prep workshop I created for Screenwriting Master Class. Tom will be teaching the next session starting April 29. It's a 6-week workshop that literally walks a writer through a process from concept to outline. Tom and I have taught it dozens of times, and it works. Plus it's an approach writers can adapt to fit their own creative instincts and use on all future projects. For more information, go here.

Jewel, it certainly works for some people. And I've tapped into fear many times to compel me to write. It's one of the benefits I derived from having performed music for 7 years and especially stand-up comedy for 2 years: Fighting that inevitable stage fright night after night. I wrote something about the subject back in 2008 here. Thanks for your observation!

Regardless of what you're doing, the trick to getting shit done is: a. Figure out *exactly* what it is you're trying to get done. b. Break your work down into small as possible sized chunks that can be completed in one sitting (for me it's usually one scene at a time). c. Find a comfortable place and routine that's conducive to work. Avoid interruptions (studies have shown it typically takes 15 mins for someone's concentration and flow to fully recover from an interruption) Remember, writing a script is not a sprint, and you can't rely on inspiration appearing that will get you in the chair and help you write 20 pages in one sitting. By necessity you have to spread things out. OTOH, the good thing about breaking work down is that progress is motivational, so as you complete each piece of work, scene by scene, then entire acts, that really helps you build momentum. When you begin work, start with the easiest bit. If you get stuck on one chunk, move on to the next, armed the knowledge that any work done around the problem scene will help you solve it later on.

Realizing that this question is from more than 3 years ago, you’ve probably either not written at all or have gotten over this by now. BUT maybe I can still share some of my experiences and someone will find it useful anyway. It’s a long story, but hang with me. There’s some useful stuff at the end. I went through a very similar malarky last year (2012). I had made a 13-minute short film, and was “going to” write the feature length version. Trouble is, the short finished in November of 2011 and a year later, I was still “going to do it”. I was putzing around the internet on Christmas Eve 2012, thinking about everything except actually typing out the words, when I ran into a YouTube video by Freddie Wong. (Check him out, but don’t spend all day there) One of his videos had a guest star, a musician whose sound I found interesting. I looked up the album on iTunes and fell in love with the music. I looked up the artist to find out more about her. I found that she had made some good music, and is now touring the world with it. The thing that I found most intriguing was that she seemed to be doing it without big label support. I don’t know if that second part was true but that’s how it came off, and that was good enough because it made me feel like I could relate to her. We were of similar age. She was producing content and making something of herself. In the face of someone like that, I felt so sick of myself for “wanting” to write, but not actually doing it that I decided to write something right then and there. Even more important; I felt, for the first time, that if someone else could make good content, I could, too. I was “inspired”. Okay, okay, that’s not really useful advice, but that’s coming up. Just hang with me for a bit longer. Her music literally made me want to write. I felt the compulsion to write when the music was on. When I tried to listen to the album when I’m not in a position to write, I was so overcome with the urge that I had to stop the music to concentrate on what I was doing. The practical effect of this is that I had a sort of muse. When I turned on the music, it made me want to write. I resolved to write every day, at least for the duration of the album. That translated to about 50 minutes a day. Not a lot, but after about two weeks, I had produced more words than I had in the first eleven months of 2012 put together. And you know what? After two weeks of writing every day, writing every day got really easy. Now when I say every day, I mean every day. Weekdays, weekends, holidays, vacation, even when I’ve been out until 1 in the morning shooting a commercial. Since Christmas Eve 2012, I have written one first draft, one second draft and I am now 75 pages into the first draft of another screenplay. I’ve also written over 50,000 words of outlines/summary/treatments to break the story before I start writing each script. All that from about an hour of writing a day in just three and a half months. Sometimes more, sure, but mostly for about an hour, and always at least 50 minutes. By the way, I do NOT start writing the screenplay without a solid outline, but prep writing does count as writing for me. Research does NOT count. Writing = you putting words down on a page. Let’s get to some practical tips: The only way to start writing is to start writing. Find a way to make yourself start, even for just a little bit each day but do it consistently. Consistency is much more important than quality or quantity in a single sitting. There’s a-whole-nother discussion to be had about consistency, but you’ll have to take my word for it. Find a muse. Anything will do. In my case, it was the album, but it doesn’t have to even be music. It just helps me get on track and put my mind in the game. Notice I haven’t told you who the artist or the name of the album was because it doesn’t matter. There’s no magic in those particular songs, and it’d be silly to pretend there is. I’ll tell you this, some of my best writing has come from nights when I was tried and didn’t feel like writing. This has happened so often and so consistently that I now get excited whenever I feel too tired to write. Here’s another tip, if you don’t know what to write, just write about what think your idea is. Brainstorm on paper. It forces you to be specific about what you’re thinking and not let your mind wander. Here’s an excerpt from one of my “brainstorming on paper”. Completely unedited: —Begin Excerpt— I want the story to be about discovering Amanda's identity and dealing with it as a quasi couple. Amanda is an assassin. There's no two ways about this. Rodger doesn't know she's an assassin. He will discover that she is an assassin. This is about Rodger dealing with the fact that he now has to fight, or possibly kill his ex-girlfriend, who is still in love with. They need to reconnect. BEFORE his discovery. She didn't want him to know. Why? Is she like a female batman? She doesn't want him to know because she's afraid he might disapprove? Or maybe she doesn't want him to know because she's afraid other people might come after him? That doesn't make sense. It only matters of OTHER people don't know. He can know. So she's just afraid, then. —End Excerpt— I’m not saying this is gold, I’m saying it got me writing. Ask yourself questions and answer them right there on the page. It helps. Trust me. If you made it to the end, I hope you found something that was useful for you, or at least interesting. Now, I’ve goofed off on the internet enough. Time to put the music on and write.

Thanks for that, pliny. It's funny that creativity is typically associated with what used to be referred to as right-brain functions [intuitive, instinctive, kinetic] as compared to left-brain [logical, sequential, well-ordered]. And even though science pooh-poohs that strict delineation between right and left-brain nowadays, as a metaphor it still works. What your comment points out is we need a combination of BOTH. We need the spark, the inspiration, the ability to tap into the heart and soul of a story, but we also need the skills and mindset to organize all of that, then pound out pages on a consistent rigorous basis. Sometimes even dumb little writing tricks like Don't finish that scene or Snacks can make a practical difference. Thinking it's about time I busted out some new Dumb Little Writing Tricks That Work... Thanks for your comments, pliny!

Art, that is great. Do you mind if I use this as the basis of a blog post? There's a lot of good stuff here and I'm sure plenty of folks will relate to the frustration of not doing it. I love that you found inspiration in a particular musical artist. Having been a musician professionally for 7 years, the very idea that something a musician writes and records could have that sort of impact on even one person is its own motivation. Let me know about the blog post. And congratulations on developing such a writing habit: every day. It's key.

wow, this is a great question - I have been going through this for ages myself though slowly getting better at it. Just sitting and avoiding distractions...a good thing that I use now to block out the internet is this software called self control. You can set it like a timer and it blocks out the net completely. I also use music (scores, songs) to motivate me to write - I absolutely can't write without it. Speaking of which, sometimes the net can be a good thing - I have gotten into this weird habit of letting trailers play on youtube in the background as well as trailer music (plenty on the net) while I work - it helps me remember where I want my end product to be. Avoid TV shows and the like though, found that a bit too distracting. Pliny, that is a good point about writing not being a sprint - I have struggled with that - because I have two scenarios going on: either I get so picky about what I put down that ultimately all I have is a paragraph (not fun) or I have pages of crap written and then struggle to figure out where I am and what my plot is about after. One thing that is helping a bit with that is just writing pages of crap and then converting it to pdf and reading the whole thing (even if it's hateful) and making notes...helped me figure out where I am. last but not least, keeping that butt on chair really helps...taking breaks, but not giving up until you get there...

I used to do the exact same thing...until I made the decision that I was going to accomplish my goals. It is all about changing your mindset. "I should write." vs. "I'm going to write." "I would like to write a script." vs. "I'm writing a script." "I will finish this script one day." vs "I will finish this by January 1, 2014." I was 39 years old and I realized I hadn't accomplished any of the goals I wanted to in life. I hadn't become a published author, and I hadn't written a screenplay. I gave myself some goals and I decided that I had wasted enough time and I was going to finally do it. I gave up my time killing video games and I started waking up at 5:00 am to write. Every. Day. I purchased Scrivener, because it looked cool and I enjoyed working in it. Writing went from a chore to an obsession. I gathered all of the ideas I had over the years and I put them all in one place. I started to jot down any idea I had, whether it be a dream, news article, or some rambling story that came out of my child's mouth. Before long, instead of trying to talk myself into sitting down to write, I was tearing myself away from the laptop. I had so many things I wanted to write! A year later, I have completed my first script (which needs a rewrite), started a second and third feature screenplay, I'm working on five different TV scripts, and I'm almost finished with my first book. I also have a full time job and a family. It takes 26 days for something to become a habit. Start creating your habit today. Decide to sit down and do it. What are your goals? Write them down. What is the date you will complete them? Write it down. What do you want to accomplish before your next birthday? Write it down. Make a decision to do it and then shut up and write.

Great topic Scott and brilliant suggestions above. I particularly love the trick from Barbara about getting someone to change the password on the WiFi. Genius! "I find writing my screenplay so painful. Its like pulling teeth and I have to force myself to sit at the computer for small chunks at a time. I am easily distracted and would rather do just about anything other than write." What I'm getting from this person is abject fear about their ability to actually get the words on the page. I I also get the impression that he/she simply doesn't know their story well enough. Are they afraid that when they get to the blank page, nothing will come? Maybe. Are they afraid that it will be rubbish? Possibly. And it probably will be rubbish the first time round. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have value. My experience with such things is that if I don't know my story, or I'm simply not in love with it, I will do anything I can to avoid writing it. If I love my story and know it inside out, a chair filled with acid couldn't keep me away. (Okay, maybe I went too far with that analogy but you get the point.) Know your story. Love your story. And the writing will follow.

I recall seeing an interview with Graham Linehan, writer of some fabulous UK TV comedy ("Father Ted", "The I.T. Crowd"), who said he HATED writing. This was music to my ears as I have always found writing torture. Unfortunately the compulsion to write never goes away. Art's post (7) may illustrate one of the great secrets of writers - I suspect if you polled enough of them you would find many use music to get in the mood. Personally I find Radiohead works for me - I honestly don't know why. Listening to them for 'pleasure' is a bit heavy for me, but I find I'm more inclined to write afterward. The song "Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box" seems particularly useful - it actually sounds like an engine getting going (creative engine? whatever...). I have a half-assed theory that Radiohead are useful because they are proper artists - even if you hate their music, no-one can deny they are consistently inventive and strive to create. Does this open up more doors in the brain of a listener? Soundtrack music is also helpful. Thomas Newman is my personal favourite. Again, Thomas Newman is a fairly creative composer - uses unusual chords/melodies/rhythms - does this open more brain doors? Yuk. What a lazy image... I think a blog post on this could be one of the most interesting and helpful Scott will have ever written - and that's saying something.

Sure, if you think this could help someone out there, you're welcome to use it as basis for a post. Thanks for running a cool site!

It's interesting, Aarthi, how many of the writers I've been interviewing this year need some sort of stimulation to write. Like go to a coffee shop. Or listen to a soundtrack. Me? I need perfect quiet which is why I have those Bose noise-cancelling headphones. I also have some white noise tracks if I need to take it to 11 [nod to Spinal Tap]. I like your thought about movie trailers. Perhaps that's one reason I should keep posting trailers Mon-Fri. My thought was just to keep readers informed about what movies are coming out, but I your point is even more valuable: keep us locked on target to write a MOVIE, not just a script. Thanks for the comments!

Aaron, this thread is turning into solid gold. Could I use your comment for a blog post? What really hit me was the distinction between should write and going to write. I don't know ANYBODY who likes the word "should". It immediately puts us into a position where we are subservient to some legalistic mentality or voice. Who wants to be a slave. But going to implies a sense of ownership, the imperative not coming from without, but from WITHIN. Let me know about the blog post. And thanks for the comments! BTW: Do you have a link / source for this whole 26 days to become a habit angle? That sounds like an interesting post, too.

Lydia, this - again - speaks to the importance of prep-writing. With minimal prep, anyone can write a first act, even the next 10 pages. But that's when they get lost. And then all bets are off except one: I'll bet they do NOT finish that script. Your thoughts echo the point I made in the OP: Find a character you love. That will keep you coming back to your story. But you said it best: "Know your story. Love your story. And the writing will follow." That's one helluva mantra!

Hobbs, please see a previous response re music and writing. Although I almost always write in silence, there is one soundtrack - selected cuts - I will occasionally listen to while writing, and that is The Shawshank Redemption by Thomas Newman. I even have a CD autographed by him, that's how much I love his music. Your point re Radiohead, how them being so creative may somehow inspire / elicit creativity in the listener is really quite interesting. It can work on multiple levels, can't it? We can so appreciate the craft and daring of an artist, we aspire to it in a CONSCIOUS way. "I want to be like him/her/them." But I think what you're suggesting is there is a more subconscious or instinctive connection or resonance that happens, and that I believe is true. That's why for me, watching a bunch of movies and reading a bunch of scripts, the Gestalt experience of that is so helpful in terms of learning the craft and creating inspiration. Re a blog post: This thread has spawned some great observations and ideas. I'll try to wrangle some content out of it for blog posts, perhaps even a series. Thanks for your contribution!

You can absolutely use the comment for a blog post. I was actually incorrect on the 26 days to form a habit. Research shows it is 66 days. I'm not sure where I pulled 26 days from. It appears the right side of my brain took over and I invoked "creative license" with that part of my comment. From the smart people who can count days: How long does it take to form a habit?

Can completely relate to this. For years, I called myself an ASPIRING screenwriter, if for no more than "show" --- this year, I finally said enough of this ASPIRING crap. It's time to put some WORK behind my words. I _AM_ a screenwriter. PERIOD. Then something shifted in my psyche and I started after it like never before. Mindset has so much to do with it. You have to sit down and read/research/outline/write/rewrite ON PURPOSE, even when it's the last thing you want to do.

One day I was surfing the internet. I was watching Letterman on youtube. And there was an episode of sometime ago, with Eminem. And there were top ten advises for kids from Eminem. And the last one, no. 1 exactly, made me cry a lot: don’t waste your time watching this show. It’s goddamn artistic wisdom, IMO. Cheers!