Write, write, write

I've said it before and I'll say it again - screenwriting is easy. All you need is a few basics, discipline, stamina and a passion for film ... and then just remember to never, ever, bore the audience. What that comes down to is simply twists and turns.

Read the books, go to seminars, attend the workshops, by all means. Every guru has a bit of something useful to impart. But all they do is, in the end, give you the basics in a thousand different forms. They give you names for everything and put a larger meaning into every single step you might possibly consider taking. All of those elements wear you down and all of those names and explanations weigh you down. Your potential script becomes this artistic monster if you choose to believe them, if you choose to take all of what they say on board.

The monster will stare at you, stare you down, scare you. You'll wait, you'll put your story on hold, you're not ready. You haven't yet mastered this or understood that. When you write your script, you want it to live up to everything they preach, you'll want it to be perfect. And all of that sets you up for failure. Here's what you should do:

Stop all of the above.

Don't try to measure up with your script. Don't try to live up to other films, other voices, other writers. Don't try to describe and analyze everything. Forget about all of those fancy words - screw the climaxes (hell, lousy pun intended, sue me), tell that reversal to kiss your ass, kick the shit out of beats and the sequences, choke the inciting incident, shoot mid-point right between the eyes and take the chainsaw to the hero's journey. Okay, seriously now, all I'm saying is, don't let all of that stuff strangle your creativity.

Back to my statement: "Never bore the audience". That's it. In a nutshell. Whatever stage of your story you're in - be creative, be inventive. Whatever the fancy word, and that includes the ever portent "subtext", of course, they all come down to "twists and turns". Every subplot, every layered line - they're all surprises built into your tale. So - whatever you write, regardless of genre - surprise your audience, keep them guessing, deliver but in unexpected ways. That's what it comes down to. Period.

Whether your story will be good is a whole different matter - but at the very least you will have written something that didn't bore the audience. That's more than can be said for a great many films - so snap to it - TWIST AND TURN!