Writing Question: How do you develop your writer’s instincts?

This question comes from one the writers I’m working with in a current Screenwriting Master Class course:

How do you develop your instincts? Of course, watch movies, read scripts, write pages. But what else? Obviously, not every writer’s unconscious instinct is going to be fine-tuned and capable of supplying the gold, at least not in the beginning. So what is your “instinct diet” or “instinctual exercise routine”?

That instinct…

On how to structure a scene.
To put this scene next to that scene to create tension.
Not to go down this narrative path because it leads to a dead end.
To write subtext.
Of making a moment be more by writing less.
To zero in on the conflict and ratchet it up.
Of setting something up and paying it off.

To think visually.

About playing characters off-the-nose.

On and on an on. The hundreds, perhaps thousands of bits of writerly business you hope you have so infused to your creativity, they just emerge naturally.

How do you develop your writer’s instincts?

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