This is like Mamet's three uses of the knife but... six or seven uses of the script.
It's amazing how easy it is to spend a ton of time as a writer thinking about why one's characters do what they do, what they want, what they're doing despite what they want, etc., without asking the same questions about ONESELF. I've read a lot of (the usual) screenwriting and playwriting books, and rarely do they treat the writer or the script as anything but matters of formal inquiry: what is the shape of a good script, what are the habits of good writers. Your posts here are the rare exception and, selfishly, I really hope you keep writing them, because:
Writing tends naturally to involve so much of the bad kind of self-awareness: "Do I suck? Why do I suck? Why am I such a lazy bastard?" What you're talking about here and elsewhere, by contrast, is a very healthy--because immediately useful and generative--sort of self-awareness: "What do I really want at this stage? What can I tweak to get there?" I don't think anything can remedy bad self-awareness better than crowding it out with the good kind.
This is like Mamet's three uses of the knife but... six or seven uses of the script.
It's amazing how easy it is to spend a ton of time as a writer thinking about why one's characters do what they do, what they want, what they're doing despite what they want, etc., without asking the same questions about ONESELF. I've read a lot of (the usual) screenwriting and playwriting books, and rarely do they treat the writer or the script as anything but matters of formal inquiry: what is the shape of a good script, what are the habits of good writers. Your posts here are the rare exception and, selfishly, I really hope you keep writing them, because:
Writing tends naturally to involve so much of the bad kind of self-awareness: "Do I suck? Why do I suck? Why am I such a lazy bastard?" What you're talking about here and elsewhere, by contrast, is a very healthy--because immediately useful and generative--sort of self-awareness: "What do I really want at this stage? What can I tweak to get there?" I don't think anything can remedy bad self-awareness better than crowding it out with the good kind.
I say this time and time again: it's a miracle any film or tv show even gets made.