Screenwriting 101: Dana Stevens

“The truth of the matter is, I couldn’t solve my [writer’s] block with location. Or silence or self-flagellation. I could only let myself off the hook. My block was about my own ego as much as anything. I had become my worst critic: a one-woman, pissed-off audience. I was writing for myself alone, trying to please this harsh task-master, and I had forgotten the primary reason we write or make movies or do any of this. COMMUNICATION. We are trying to communicate — to other people. So I came back to my little office, which, after all, I had leased for a year. Someone had broken in and stolen my boom box. No matter; Radio Shack is right down the street. So I got a new deadbolt and a new boom box, and I turned my chair away from the windows. And I pinned something on the bulletin board, a message, over the maps of Grenada and haunted Kate Moss, and it was this: Tell Us A Story.”

 — Dana Stevens (Blink, City of Angels from “Why We Write”)

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