Screenwriting 101: Whit Stillman

“I find scriptwriting pretty painful until enough of the world and characters are in motion — which can be a very long time. At the start, I find it’s all lame and bad — it’s just bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, and then more bad. I don’t like to write too many hours in any one session because I find, after a few hours, I just keep going down the pike of some bad idea. The scripts that worked and became films took me years to write — 18 months at least. I feel writing is like this stream that does not have a lot of gold. I’m prospecting, I’m panning for gold — or, rather, anything of value — and this stream is very weak on precious metals. Look at Woody Allen’s productivity versus my productivity. Or, rather, don’t look at it! I mean, he really is a comic genius — incredibly fecund with ideas. I feel that I don’t have that many ideas and I really have to work them. It’s the tortoise and the hare — and I’m a total tortoise.”

— Whit Stillman (FilmCraft | Screenwriting, P. 148)