A Screenwriter's Hot Takes on Productivity

Do you agreement?

PATREON:

KO-FI:

If you know where the opening background is from, you are elite.

[TemporaryTown]

I just have to say that your the first channel that gives genuinely good advice that isn’t blatantly obvious, thank you so much

[EphemeraEssays]

Something that works really well for me is not to read my inspirations, but read the things that inspired them. By meeting that certain idea further back on the road before it was fully developed, I have an opportunity to turn a different corner.

[GameTornado]

Or you could do what Tolkien did: Don't plan, just write, and any time you run into a problem while writing, you stop until you figure out a solution, and when you do, you start over writing from the beginning again.

[PharaohofAtlantis]

A thing that I have started doing recently is that whenever I am consuming some media I ask myself, "how is this helping my work that I should/want to be doing". Sometimes it is obvious, "it is the same genre" or "it has a similar structure to what I was thinking about". But sometimes the answer is just "I want to do this and I will be happy if I do - which is good"!

Re-affirming that things I am doing as things I am wanting to do and that they are helpful, is helping me a little bit.

[smelyely]

As for gardener vs architect, as a gardener I will say gardening a script is much more dangerous than gardening a book. They are both writing but books don't have constraints. Movie/show scripts do. Architects will always excel more in a script format because they plan around their constraints. If you're gardener, you could write a sequence of scenes by the seat of your pants, maybe even give them narrative fluff for your satisfaction, but don't actually write the script until you have a plan. I haven't done a lot of script writing but the little I have done I had to force myself to plan because you can't just wing time/resource constrainted mediums like that without a lot of pushback. For books? Go ahead

[narimdraws]

I call myself a plantser - plotter and pantser :) As I write my novel, I already have the canon figured out. I have key scenes brainstormed, but what I'm leaving to pantsing, are the actual scenes themselves that connect the key scenes together. It's fun to discover what your characters choose to do especially when you already have their core characters and how they'll develop throughout the story figured out. I'd say the plotting eases my anxiety, and the pantsing of the scenes and how they play out really bring out my excitement!

[Mithros]

I find the sweet spot for pantsing is leaving some room in my outline to have the characters take control of the story a little. Maybe there's a lull in the action and they decide they have a heart to heart in the heat of their dying campfire. And then maybe I cut that heart to heart because it was something I needed to know, but was boring as hell to read. By not getting too attached to the plan, I can savor the little surprises my characters can show me.

[paddyq]

I'd call myself a chaotic planner. I have some gardener tendancies but I'm so busy with other creative works and school that writing is almost constantly set on the back burner for me. I haven't gotten the opportunity to sit down and write so I haven't had the chance to garden. I find I consume content about writing like this channel because it scratches that writing itch despite the fact that I don't have time to write. I end up in an endless loop of planning and changing and planning and changing because I can plan things out in my head while working or doing mundane tasks but can't/don't make the time to to sit down and actually write.

[nerdock]

My contribution as a gardener is: I find that I write first in scenes (a friend told me that Kurisawa does this, so it's fun to accidentally be lumped in with him) with a great idea of the overall story and then I get a bunch of scenes down, but certainly not all of them, nowhere close to it. "Scene nuclei", if you will, large battle scenes and important events, deep conversations that I know need to happen, etc.

After I allow myself that more creative expulsion, I go into the architecture mode and start to construct and plan everything from there. I then see which scenes are missing (most of them), which I have and how they all start to connect. It's also early enough in the process (the very start) to where the events are malleable and I don't have to pull the problem out of the middle of the cake. I can bring in new characters, adapt others and make any changes to my core problems without disrupting everything I've done - because it isn't done yet.

I typically look at a character's goals and see if the scenes surrounding them are natural, make sense+follow my universe rules and if they take enough/too much time and add subtract from there.

I know nothing.

[smelyely]

Doesn't matter what you do, as long as you make the choice to do it. You can be lazy without being on constant autopilot. This is also a very good way to mitigate ADHD symptoms for the days where your brain feels like it's at 2% capacity, very cool video thank you.

[saessakharmony]

watching this made me realize why i'm in a stump right now. i have a friend who, albeit doesn't really know what the hell i'm writing about, gives GREAT ideas, and whenever i talk to her about my works she always has something to suggest which makes the pieces link together better. back then i never talked to others about my works because i was embarrassed but now i realized that i'm not the type who can productively work alone. great video man 👍

[oj]

You’re the first YouTuber I’ve ever seen that I feel is so similar to me. I also fall into media traps but I also like to watch cinema, and in order to write my novel I started to read Frankenstein as a productive piece of investigation. I’m stuck at home without a job or school (3 month gap period) and I have nobody to talk to about writing. Your videos are almost therapeutic to learn that what I’m doing is a struggle, and a step in the right direction. Thank yoi

[bradyarguin]

Agree agree agree, and I think the “hustle culture” dickish tone here is the way it NEEDS to be delivered. I know I’m the type of person to lean toward the Instagram reels for 2 hours over a dedicated rejuvenating movie, but obviously feel better when I commit to the latter. Feel the same way about movie theaters forcing you to do that. And one of my favorite things my screenwriting professor does is assign us films to watch specific to our project bc in the end that IS the best way to the end goal. And yet? Knowing all that? More often than not when left to my own devices I choose the device that fits in my pocket. I know you’re speaking against re-watches but I can picture myself coming back to this video a lot when I need motivation and need someone to yell at me about it. I’ve been needing a creativity specific hustle culture video. Thank you.

[peanutgallery]

The hypnotic Windows XP screensaver forces me to agree with every statement you make

[Onezy]

"Don't wait for consumption choices to inspire your project. Allow your project to inspire your consumption choices."

And this is exactly why I decided to sit down and start properly reading A Song of Ice and Fire and rewatch certain Sopranos episodes.

But in more important news, this is damn valuable advice.

[isaacsteward]

Ideas are like vampires. They usually suck😂

[octopuddle]

A few years ago i had a tightly plotted, designed and worldbuilt magnum opus comic. I have 10 or so WIPs of pages. My silly little fancomic i make based purely on vibes howevever, is about to break 100 pages.

Pantsing lets me ride the excitement of ideas as they happen, bypasses the "im a hack oh god" stage because im done by the time its happening, and gives me a place to force interesting twists "in the edit" as i construct the timeline and plot. Plus, people seem to like my self indulgent bs for some reason.

I wouldnt nessesarily recommend it, but its working for me in the space I'm in right now. Editing a screenplay or novel into submission is also probably easier than figuring out how to place completed 5-15 page sets on a timeline, too.

[bruh]

As an extreme pantser (really tried the planner method for a while but found I did my best work winging it), I feel like none of the stated reasons really get at the heart of why it works for me. Which is fair as I didn't discover this until recently. Basically, I need to be in the story to know how the story goes. I need to experience the plot with the characters for it to come alive. I'm not able to get proper emotion and understanding just looking at a plot or a character outline and so my additions feel forced and lifeless.

Recently I've tried to get back into planning after having spent two years now in full pantser mode and it's tough. Legitimately facing block because I don't know what should come next (well, I know, but again it feels lifeless), but the stories I pants are flowing smoothly and I'm right where I need to be. When I throw caution to the wind and just write, suddenly the world is alive. Suddenly the characters have wants and needs and they want to go in different directions, and I follow them all throughout like a dedicated cameraman.

Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's frustrating, often it takes long (2nd draft becomes the clean up draft). Sometimes the plot is pretty much whole inside my head, I'm just getting it down on paper. And sometimes I don't know where the fuck I'm going, I'm literally making up brand new characters on the spot and bullshitting. I suspect there are a lot less pantsers in the community than one would be led to believe. Something about the stupid belief that true writers are artsy and intuitive + not wanting to put in the work to learn story structure. Which is bizarre because I'd say knowing structure is doubly important when you pants. You gotta memorize that shit.

[summertime]

I'm working on a project surrounding the Korean war. Because of this I decided that I would consume and engage with media that are also on that topic. Documentaries, mostly, but also MASH, and other fictional interpretations.

Letting the work inspire the media is genius and thats how I allow my relaxation/refuel time feed my productivity on projects :)

[JT_Film]

As someone who, for various reasons, was forced into going phoneless recently, it lead to the most healing, inspiring, exciting week. I watched movies and read books without the ability to scroll. I drove without access to maps, and learned more about my town as a result. It's a lot harder when your phone is handy, but turning it off, leaving it in a room, convincing yourself that you'll miss NOTHING - calls, emails, posts - that can't be caught up on later, is something you won't regret.