[…] Recently I was struck by five personality traits and five skill sets that keep popping up. So I thought it would be helpful to do a series, a checklist if you will, of …read more […]

Excited for this series; must have missed it the first time around... I LOVE movies, but I think I love story more than I love movies. I've always been a devourer of good stories. Movies came a bit later, but now I'm firmly in love with them as well. My drive (or passion) has always been for others. There have been times in my life when a great movie was the only thing I had going for me. When all the chips were down I could always turn to classic characters, archetypes, speeches, landscapes, songs and emotional undertones that inspired me to pull myself up and live the life I've always wanted to live. I'm forever thankful to those who created these wonderful stories and I just hope that one day I can get the chance to help someone else who's going through hard times as well.

Hmmm. I wonder what the other 3 are? I'll throw some wild guesses out there.... persistence? or openness to learning?

And getting back to the tidbit about how hard it is to get in the seat and just write....I think at least for me, it might be rooted in perfectionism (is that a word?). You see the Apartment or Godfather and it's dam great that it inspires you...but when you look at the black screen you're worried that you're not going to crank out anything resembling that---that it's just going to be garbage. So, you start net surfing or texting or going to Starbucks, reading blogs about screenwriting.

I think it's going to take more than 2 movies a week.... Quite frankly, I tried to catch up to Q. T. in terms of his movie knowledge. I literally sat in a room and watched 14 hours a day and it still wasn't enough. I think you'd probably have to watch all day 7 days a week since you were a kid...and maybe have watched those films a dozen times--which is probably what Q.T. did. The problem I found with some fans wasn't that they weren't watching movies--they do...it's that they do not do the hard work of watching movies. Anyone can rush out to see Transformers or the Avengers... but, the more hardcore are watching all the classics, the foreign films and the seminal films that filmmakers reference with each other when they are talking to each other. Sometimes, I'm embarrassed if I missed on some film or do not remember the dialogue because the truly fanatical all seem to have that knowledge base.

[…] 5 Screenwriting Traits: #1 — Passion […]