Reader Question: Is it typical to hate your script when you’re writing it?
But you love having written!
But you love having written!
From GITS reader Mahmoud:
I heard many times of writers who fall in love with their scripts and stories. Their love could blind them from the fact that this whole story is maybe nonsense. Now my question is:
Is it normal to hate your script when you’re writing? Not hate it because it’s uninteresting but because you think it’s not good enough. I always get that feeling when I’m writing. I think it sucks but when I show it to one of my friends who I make sure they understand in movies and writing, they tell me it’s not bad at all.
It this part of the process?
Oh, heavens, yes. I’m sure the GITS community will chime in on this, but let’s just pull a few quotes from noted writers:
“When people say, ‘Oh, I just loving writing!’ I know they’re full of crap. They’re probably lousy writers who are regurgitating their daily thoughts in a journal. Actual writing is hard work. Even when you have the flow and it’s going well, it’s still incredibly taxing. My deepest nights of sleep are after days of having to write ten pages.”
– John August
“Writing is easy. All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.”
– Gene Fowler
“Being an author is like being in charge of your own personal insane asylum.”
–Graycie Harmon
“Every writer I know has trouble writing.”
– Joseph Heller
“I write one page of masterpiece to 99 pages of shit.”
– Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.”
– Annie Lamott
“Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day.”
– Norman Mailer
“When you start writing, you’re 98% pure writer and 2% critic. After you’ve written for a length of time, you’ve learned a great deal about your craft, and you’ve become 2% pure writer and 98% critic. It’s like writing uphill.”
– David Westheimer
And that’s just from a quick browse through the GITS “On Writing” archive.
So you’re not alone, Mahmoud! I’m virtually certain that all writers, at least at some point in their lives, hate what they’ve written. The key to success can be gleaned from another writing quote:
“Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.”
– Ray Bradbury
This is why it’s so critical to answer this question about any story you consider writing: What is my emotional connection to this story?
If you HAVE a strong emotional resonance with the material, especially some of the characters, and ESPECIALLY your Protagonist, you can ride that connection through the grind of getting from FADE IN to FADE OUT. You may still end up despising the writing process, but hopefully you’ll still have some sort of bond with the characters and story itself.
However if you do NOT have a strong connection to the material, that makes the hard slog of writing a script that much more difficult. Writers in Hollywood often face this when they land an OWA (Open Writing Assignment). If it’s a project which is not particularly inspiring in nature, but it is, after all, a paying gig, you do your best to find SOMETHING about the story you can resonate with. I suggest zeroing in on a central character. Can you identify with them? Is there anything in their personality or life-circumstance which evokes an emotional response in you? If so, delve into that character until you DO find a connection with them.
That said, writing a feature length script is always a challenge. And that’s BEFORE you get into having to rewrite the draft multiple times due to producer / studio / talent notes.
Hey, writing is hard! If it weren’t, EVERYBODY would be doing it. Just think of the competition then!
UPDATE: Some great observations in comments. Make sure to check them out.