Twitter Rant: Eric Heisserer on Finding the Joy in Your Writing

Tweetstorm: Eric Heisserer on Finding the Joy in Your Writing

If you are an aspiring screenwriter, Twitter is an amazing resource. Eric Heisserer (Arrival, Lights Out, Hours, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Final Destination 5, The Thing) is probably the Hollywood screenwriter most willing to go online and provide a tweetstorm on a specific subject related to the craft.

Last week, Eric shared some of his personal experiences, both ups and downs in his professional life, and how through it all, the importance of finding joy in the work. Reprinted by permission.

Most of you gorgeous monsters know I occasionally go on a writing/craft rant. If you’re new to the group, welcome. Also, you have to fight.

No, wait, that’s the other club. Anyway…

This is an exhausting business. You are never really done with the work. It’s a bit like being a postal worker. More is waiting for you.

It’s an unfair question to ask, and yet it’s one you face in this line of work.

Sometimes it’s with your own babies (spec scripts). Sometimes it’s with adopted children (assignments). But the love has to be there.

Because you know what? A reader can tell when you love the characters you’re writing about. There isn’t a signature tell, but it’s clear.

You will work for months on a project, rewriting dialogue and experimenting with scenes and themes and emotions. And then: no sale. Done.

Then a month or a year or five years later, after a dozen other failed projects and one or two partial successes, you get a call about it.

So it comes back, and you do more work. You’ve learned more. You tinker with it again. See if it goes. And it doesn’t.

It’s like playing an incredibly hard video game, where the controller zaps you with live current when your character dies.

Sometimes you come on board someone else’s project and put in months of work on it, all the while aware you could be writing your own.

If you have the passion, and the endurance, you can hang on and ride something for a long time. But that’s a new level of exhaustion.

By the time shooting is done, I may have 100. Some of them very similar, some moderately changed, many wildly different.

You will be asked to change your character’s name. Their gender. Their occupation. Their relationships. Their wardrobe.

If you feel passionate about one or more of these things, you fight for it with all your life, but you can’t play that card every time.

And sometimes you can’t win anyway because the name didn’t clear with legal. Or the talent wants the change. Or the location won’t work.

All the while, the really hard work of yours is seen by a few hundred people, and it changes (sometimes vastly) during prod/post.

And you’re left with a product that the general public will believe you wrote exactly as it is, no matter the reality. This can haunt you.

Recently, I attended a screening of THE THING (2011) and I was flooded with memories of what I passionately loved vs the final product.

Directors suffer this same ailment, but because it starts with the written idea, it tends to cut deeper when the idea doesn’t make it.

And you can’t complain about it because by the grace of some benevolent god you got a movie made and your name’s on it somewhere holy shit.

But you also have to acknowledge that it won’t look like what you intended.

And whether you want to or not, you can and will be replaced. Even on something entirely of your own invention. And that will hurt.

My callouses are my 51 screenplays I’ve written, most of which have died long before they saw a screen.

It’s a strange job, unlike other writing occupations, because it happens during a phase of a larger process. The public don’t read scripts.

The public go to see movies.

And because our part of the process is first, before it boards a train to production and release, it’s the most volatile stage.

It’s like dressing your kid for a trip and while you’re picking clothes, the destination changes 12 times to disparate places. And it rains.

That can drive you mad. But it’s also the cheapest way to find the best version of a story. Sometimes you just have to see where it goes.

And the pay is eventually great, which helps, because it’s largely a thankless job — again, find that joy. Really.

Most of all, everyone will decide what kind of writer you are based on whatever they think you wrote. That can be tough, too.

I have co-written an animated film. I’ve written fantasy, drama, action, romance, thriller, horror, and even comedy. Doesn’t matter.

So keep finding the joy. Keep learning to love again. And occasionally, write something the world can see. Make that connection.

Maybe that happens because you direct it. Maybe it happens because you hop to another medium. But it’s therapeutic, trust me.

Too many of my friends — people who are far better writers than I — have gotten fired off their projects for absurd, stupid reasons.

I know how much it breaks my heart to see them torn from the things they were nurturing so well, and it must be 100x worse for them.

But I’m also inspired by their ability to get back up and live to tell another tale. To get back in there.

Wise words from a super talented writer and a fine human being.

You may follow Eric on Twitter: @HIGHzurrer.

Eric has put together a book that arose from his Twitter exchanges: “150 Screenwriting Challenges” which is available for Kindle here.

You may read my April 2013 interview with Eric here.

You may see all of the Screenwriting Tweetstorms archived on the site here.