Screenwriting 101: Barry Jenkins

“Once I’m in the writing phase of something, I do try to write something every day, seven days a week, even if it’s terrible. I think it’s important to stay in the world of the characters. It’s more about once you enter that space, you gotta just stay in it. I don’t have quotas per se. Usually the way it works for me is I will have two days where I just write a ton and then on that third day I get very little done but it’ll be a gut check where I’ll say to myself, ‘You kinda got over today, Barry.’ Then I try to hunker down and go back in the next day. i try to end the day in the middle of a scene, that way when i start back up the next I can just get back to work, as opposed to thinking, Oh, shit, where do I start today?”

— Barry Jenkins, writer-director, Moonlight

From WGAW Written By, February | March 2017, P. 34

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