Twitter Rant: Daniel Kunka on Being a Productive Writer

Tweetstorm: Daniel Kunka on Being a Productive Writer

An informative series of tweets about the craft of writing.

Yesterday screenwriter Daniel Kunka (@unikunka) crafted a litany of tweets which laid out a challenge to all of us to be more productive in our writing. Reprinted here by permission.

A few notes/answers about my pages — these were 3 finished drafts — meaning I had nothing, wrote, rewrote, polished and turned in.

Process wise I don’t do pages per day or anything like that. I just write and keep writing. But absolutely positively deadlines are a must.

All three scripts had deadlines. The last week of each I wrote “all day”. 8 AM to midnight with various breaks.

But I was determined to meet my deadline. If you’re writing a spec or just getting start writing — pick a reasonable due date and meet it.

How much pre-writing do I do? A ton. But all three scripts had different processes.

The first was a true story book adaptation I was doing on spec. The plot from the book = the plot of the script.

So that I was able to have a very detailed outline to work off plot wise and structurally. Character stuff I trusted to find as I went.

I did end up with a fairly extensive 25 page outline to go off. And the first draft was pretty close to the outline save a few cuts.

Second script was a 2 hour TV pilot that had a very detailed outline. 25 pages, every scene laid out.

That script had the tightest deadline and I did something I had never done before but am now incorporating more.

Some scenes had little/no dialogue and there were no polished sentences. This allowed me to just “revise” while writing the first time.

I cranked out 10+ a day for a while and those wound up being very useable pages. I recommend trying it if you can.

Third script was a feature that had the least amount of pre-planning. The document I was commenced on was 8 pages long and had huge gaps.

But I knew the setup and first act, the major characters, and what the finale looked like. This was enough to get started.

Sometimes you just know the story and know what you can/can’t do as a writer and taking a leap off 8 pages and a lot of questions is OK.

It wound up coming together well I think but the key was all those major points in the 8 pages were hit almost exactly.

You can’t just with a premise and a prayer. You gotta know what kind of house you’re building first.

Those pages were also action-based and while they present their own challenges it was different than first 2 scripts so it worked for me.

So my biggest takeaways — you gotta be able to move your story from A to B to the end before you go. Don’t need everything, but need goals.

Don’t be afraid just to vomit out scenes. If you can vomit your way from A to Z you got a movie, then make it good.

Don’t get bogged down on 10 drafts of the same story. Just write some new shit. Make pages every single day and the pages will get easier.

So anyway — I have nothing to write today so the first thing I did when I woke up is started thinking “What’s next.”

If the authenticity of Daniel’s words don’t grab you, this should: In 2011, he sold the spec script “Agent Ox”, in 2013 he sold the spec script “Bermuda Triangle”, and in 2014 he sold the spec script “Yellowstone Park” which went on to make last year’s Black List.

To read my June 2013 interview with Daniel, go here.

To read all of the screenwriting tweetstorms I’ve aggregated on GITS, go here.