John Jarrell's list of Screenwriting Rules

John Jarrell has a great list of rules from his screenwriting experience.

This is critical. If you divide your energies between projects (several different scripts, etc.) you'll kill any momentum you're building on the script that's front and center. Writing is momentum. Without it, you're as dead as John Carter of Mars II. It's hard enough to face the computer every day as it is, cheating yourself out of a running start at it is downright criminal -- and absurdly counter-productive. You are not getting twice as much done, you getting half as much.

3. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.

I believe this is an awesome attitude to have. Unfortunately, I've never been able to approach screenwriting from this perspective myself. For me, it's mostly war all the time; choosing instead to engage in mortal combat with whatever I'm working on. Believe me, I'm definitely not bragging here, and I certainly don't recommend this approach to others.

But that's only Bad Habit #1. My second all-time shittiest, self-defeating habit is beating myself to a psychological pulp on projects, pile-driving my confidence into the ground and talking myself down during tougher days.

Think Hannibal Lecter in Silence mind-fucking Miggs until he swallows his own tongue. Yeah, unfortunately, that's pretty much how I came stock from the factory. The ol' Jerry West/Fear of Failure psych profile from Day One. You think this book can be brutal? Imagine the searing internal monologue unspooling inside my own noggin whenever I'm on a job. (Then again, don't.)

Lord knows, I'm not the only screenwriter on Planet Earth this neurotic. But in the name of all things Holy, Dear Reader, do whatever it takes not to senselessly beat yourself up like this.

Proven fact -- being a ruthless bastard to yourself doesn't produce better results. I'm here to testify to that. This is not a strength, it's a weakness. It doesn't make you a "stronger" or "more dedicated" writer. There is no moral high ground to be seized here. If anything, it's the exact opposite; hampering your progress instead of motivating you to reach higher highs.

Making yourself more nervous and trashing yourself more than necessary can seriously fuck up your writing, kill your self-confidence and keep you from accessing those deeper, hallowed stages of creativity -- those joyous times when you suddenly find yourself "in the zone" or "totally in the pocket", as if channeling some divine Hindu energy force directly onto the page (What? You haven't felt that yet? WTF?).

Yes -- sometimes you have to dig the spurs in, kick yourself in the twat and get fuckin' fired up again. Every writer needs a wake up call now and then. But it's sometimes the sugar, sometimes the whip, and as the old saying goes -- "Pressure is the enemy of art." Few things have I found of greater truth than this.

Many of your strongest ideas will come when you have the clearest mind. Lean on whatever tricks, methods or mind games help you create clean headspace. Breathing exercises. Yoga. Meditation. Going to the gym. Talking a long walk or bike ride. Take it a step further and ask friends and fellow writers what works best for them, get a feel for the different approaches through trial and error. And no, stony readers with "bad backs" and "glaucoma", this is not greenlighting a visit to the local pot clinic every time you "fire up" your script.

Try to bring Henry Miller's calm, joyous, reckless energy to the process as often and as much as you can. If nothing else, remind yourself that no matter what you're struggling with, it actually isn't as bad as it might seem in the moment. There's nothing that can't be improved with a fresh head during a later pass, no matter how terrible you believe your starting point.

4. Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!

This is a huge note for me personally because it addresses the much-needed discipline and routine writers like myself require to get going. Hell, I don't want to face the white elephant every goddamned day, and I suppose that's true for a vast segment of writers out there. There's a lot riding on getting in that chair every morning, it's a shit-ton of pressure and one helluva lot of work. Who wouldn't rather grab some Korean BBQ or go ass-surfing at Venice Beach?

From my first, remedial attempts at screenwriting, I've always needed a "routine" to help force me to get down to business. This involves sitting down to write at approx. the same time, hopefully at the same location (office, coffee shop, kitchen table, etc.), every day I work. Why the same location? Because it helps me establish what Joseph Campbell calls a "sacred space" -- a space specifically set aside for your work and the creative inner journey you plan to undertake there --

"This is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning... This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing is happening there. But if you have a sacred place, and use it, and take advantage of it, something will happen. ...

-- Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth; Sacrifice and Bliss

Of course, facing the temptation of the Net every second makes maintaining any "bliss stations" pretty hard. Regardless, we have to make a point of shuttering away all the on-going distractions or we won't get legitimate work done.

I've also found that going to this same sacred space on a regular schedule establishes the tone for myself psychologically. My long-time office was literally cinder block walls with no phone, no Internet and one taped-over window so I couldn't see outside. Yeah, it pretty much sucked in there -- which is precisely how I wanted it. Being double-booked with studio jobs, I knew San Quentin-style solitary would provide the level of focus I needed to get my work done.

Basically, only one reason existed to go to that office -- to write. During the short drive over, I'd put on my game face, get my mind right about the day's work ahead and review what I hoped to accomplish in the hours allotted for that particular day's writing. By the time I parked, climbed three flights to my office and hit the desk, I was laser-focused, jacked up and raring to go.

Think of it like putting on a baseball uniform, grabbing your mitt and running the tunnel from the locker room out to the diamond -- there is absolutely no other reason to be at this ballpark other than playing baseball. You wouldn't be surfing the Net or checking out Pinterest while starting in the World Series, would you? Exact same deal... only writers don't get monster MLB paychecks and our process isn't remotely that glamorous.

Perhaps my approach sounds too Spartan for you? Not surprising. Frankly, I'd be worried if everyone had the same take. All that's really important is that you come up with your own version of creating a "sacred space" and stick to it. The specifics of location, ritual, time of day, etc. can all be seasoned to taste. The big thing is that you sincerely commit to creating a work zone and accomplishing your goals within it.

Which brings us to the second part of Henry's Commandment #4 -- stopping.

Knowing when to stop is hugely important. A la Clint Eastwood in The Enforcer -- "A man's got to know his limitations." This has never been more true than when writing. Having a stopping point keeps you honest. It keeps you focused on how much time there is left to work, which helps you adjust your pace/tempo accordingly. If you're moving too slowly, the clock will make that clear to you. By saying something as simple as, "I'm going to stop at 5:00" you help maximize your own precious effort beginning at the start of each new day.

More importantly, STOPPING keeps you from plowing past the point of legitimate productivity. Sure, you can work for ten hours instead of five -- and sometimes you simply have to -- but you're fuckin' kidding yourself if you think those extra five hours are going to be as productive as the first five.

For starters, all you accomplish by going long and exhausting yourself one day is siphoning away some of the fresh creative energy you're going to need the very next day.

You're a boxer. Start of the fight, you press hard, thinking you've got a chance to knock your opponent out. But you don't knock 'em out. You're not fighting the type of fighter that gets knocked out. So all you've done by pushing too hard in the first round is ensure you'll be punched out, busted up and flat on your back by the fifth or sixth.

Writing a script goes all twelve rounds, every single time. Screenwriting is a brick-by-brick prospect -- if you don't pace yourself, you'll be the one on the canvas, confidence cooked, energy spent, unable to continue. You'll have endangered your own momentum -- the most vital energetic component of the process.

Push for the K.O. on Tuesday, you're too burnt to write well on Wednesday. How in the Hell can that be a winning strategy?

Digging this hole deeper still, I've found that I lose my objectivity about what's good or not good after I've pushed past my prime working hours. There's a very definite vanishing point where you get burned-out, wasted, fried, outright silly and punch-drunk sometimes. And as you sludge onward, you kinda start feeling like maybe what you're doing is actually working. And you know, what? Once in a unicorn's ass, it might be. But ninety-plus percent of the time you're the Looney Toons guy marooned on a desert island with Bugs Bunny -- so starved and heat-stroked that every time you look over at that damned rabbit you're seeing a savory drumstick standing in his place.

In my experience, these pages often reveal themselves as fool's gold. Often whatever work came out of my forced march will have to be re-evaluated for quality control, much of it reworked or even discarded altogether. Cranking out ten shitty pages not only hasn't helped, it's actually cost me twice as much effort -- the hours pushing through the first time, then the hours spent to patch them up later on.

There are always exceptions, of course, professional circumstances when you have no choice but to keep writing whether you're feeling 100% creatively or not. Sometimes you simply have to suck it up, soldier on and fix things on the fly best you can. Alas, this is a big dynamic of both the film business and the paid screenwriter's journey. In any case, coping with such high-class problems is something every writer should look forward to someday.

End of the day, page count means nothing. Every good writer understands it's all about the quality of however many pages you produce, not quantity. William Goldman estimated that walking away with three good pages meant he'd done a great day's work. This is a guy with Oscars (plural), who's written some of the world's all-time best movies. If he's not measuring himself by page count, why should you?

5. When you can’t create you can work.

Some days, you just aren't feeling it. You struggle to get it up and there's simply no good wood to be had. It happens, even to female writers. But there's still plenty of essential work to do beyond just inking in new pages.

Great place to start? Reviewing your beat sheet -- brainstorming over the scenes you've notecarded but not yet written.

Put the whole circus under the microscope in search of something to improve or dramatically heighten. What you've got may already be good -- but what the hell, test-drive making it better just for kicks. One big advantage to having a rock solid beat sheet beneath you is that it makes experimenting with outside the box ideas risk-free. If you push too far and start getting wacky, simply circle back to H.Q. Every once in while, just by getting loose and playing with things this way, you'll find yourself stumbling onto the truly inspired.

It's not uncommon to find story or character points feeling too rushed, or to discover things you assumed were built-in actually MIA from your beats altogether. Sometimes the lightbulb pops on and suddenly you see how rearranging certain scenes can triple their impact. This is the ideal time to get a handle on all this, perfect the best version of your project, so free up your mind and have a blast sussing out the many options.

On the flipside, there's also looking to cut whatever's extraneous to the story and certain to be dumped later on anyway -- no matter how much you may have fallen in love with it.

Also try thinking your characters through on other levels, giving them deeper subtexts, working up idiosyncratic touches that make them more vivid and intriguing. You always want characters to feel 3-D, and giving them interesting, identifiable ticks and habits, etc. can really help draw a reader in.

Think Clooney's Zippo in Out of Sight -- he only does lighter tricks when nervous. Jon Voight as Joe Buck in Midnight Cowboy -- wearing that sad, boyish cowboy outfit in the unforgiving heart of Times Square, perfectly underscoring his naïveté and displacement. Kurt Russell in The Thing as McCready -- getting beaten at computer chess then pouring Scotch into the hard drive, ruining it; making clear he's a man who refuses to lose no matter what. And one of my all-time favorites, William Hurt in Body Heat -- jogging the full length of that beach, then stopping to light a cigarette -- a loveable loser, best of intentions, but who can never quite follow through and do what's best for him.

(That's right, Smartphone Spawn, if you haven't seen these classics, rent or DL now. It'll help your writing way more than Spring Breakers or some godforsaken Katy Perry "documentary".)

Last, but not least, there's also reading and proofing the pages you written so far, which we'll talk about in more detail shortly.

6. Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.

Back to brick-by-brick mode here. Do the small, steady work that a project requires, as tedious as it may be, rather than go all flashy and try to reinvent the wheel while inking in a properly plotted draft. The thirst for excitement can cause a writer to do terrible, terrible things. Slow and steady always wins this race, as agonizingly incremental as it may seem at times.

7. Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.

This has been one of my biggest problems throughout my career -- physically and spiritually lone-wolfing it, going underground, hiding out, "hitting the mattresses", immersing myself so deeply in the self-imposed pressure of getting shit done that I become an epic douchebag to those around me, especially (but not limited to) my girlfriend and anybody else still within my immediate blast radius.

Taking a break, unplugging, leaving the house, having some fun, etc. does help, big time. I dare say it's even essential if you don't want to go completely bat-shit and wind up with no friends on the flip side of finishing your draft. So once your allotted work hours are done -- don't feel guilty about checking out and doing something fun. (Operative concept being -- "once your allotted work hours are done".) Believe me, your draft will still be sitting there waiting to do battle with you tomorrow, regardless. By blowing off some after-hours steam, you may actually be energizing yourself for that next go 'round.

8. Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.

Yours Truly has been a draught-horse all his life, so I'm clearly the wrong guy to lecture about this one. I rarely work with pleasure, even when I know I'm generating good pages. I also tend to go straight for a script's throat. Once I've notecarded the project out, it takes me approximately eight weeks to write a first draft. This is the short end of the standard contractual length a writer gets to submit their work to their employers -- eight to twelve weeks.

But I'm also going after it every day -- four to six hours a day, six days a week. Many of you haven't broken through yet and have real jobs, making that impossible to do. So the real trick is making time to write on a regular basis, and try and enjoy it at the same time. And let me stress this -- you don't "find" time, fellas, you make it. Sit around waiting to find the time, you and your precious screenplay are going to be some unfinished, gray haired motherfuckers.

The young Lawrence Kasdan, writer of The Empire Strikes Back, The Big Chill and Body Heat, offers us a fantastic real-life example of doing what it takes to get it done despite having adult responsibilities to deal with. The famous story I've always heard was that Mr. Kasdan worked a serious day job in Advertising. God knows, that type of work alone will suck the creative energy out of anybody. I worked a paralegal job on Wall Street fresh out of school, and my total number of pages written during that gig were zero. Yet despite this, Mr. Kasdan promised himself to write a couple hours each night no matter what. Following dinner, after the kids had been dealt with and before he needed to sleep to be fresh for the next day, Mr. Kasdan made time to work on his scripts. Was this ideal? No. Did he make it work? Fuckin' A right he did. Three decades, seventeen produced writing credits and a ton of hit films later, it's pretty obvious that his sacrifice was well worth it.

How much of this is urban legend? Don't know, don't care. The message remains the same. If you can't commit to screenwriting -- often at a level of financial and energetic discomfort completely alien to the average American taxpayer -- how the hell can you expect to reap any of its rewards? The ol' "you get out of it what you put into it" dynamic.

Did Larry Kasdan refuse to be a draught-horse and "work with pleasure only"? I don't have the slightest idea. Maybe you can ask him yourself when you meet peer-to-peer as a successful screenwriter in your own right someday?

10. Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.

Substitute the word "scripts" here for "books" and it's still a perfect fit. When you get neck deep into a screenplay, say forty, fifty pages in, even with a script you've been dying to write for an eternity, you kinda hit the wall for the first time. You realize you're in deep water now, no doubt about it, with no life vests in sight.

Even worse? Being forty/fifty/sixty pages is the worst possible place to be -- you're essentially halfway to nowhere. You've already done a ton of work to get as far as you have, yet half a script doesn't count for a fuckin' thing. Further, you've got another sixty, seventy pages to go before it will count, which by now feels like its going to take at least five times as long as those first sixty did.

This is where your mind can drift, and you start thinking of all the other super cool movie ideas you have that would be WAY more fun to write. You may even spend valuable time noodling on those ideas rather than sticking to the program to finish the grueling fucker you're slaving away on now...

...And that's exactly what Henry Miller is telling you not to do.

These other super cool movie ideas are a mirage, my friends, and you will totally rat fuck yourself by seeking their shelter out of your current sense of despair. Believe me, they will not be any "easier to write" -- all marathons are the same length. In fact, many may have a host of monstrous logic holes you haven't scratched the surface of yet, completely preoccupied as you are with the cool scenes you're going to slam dunk, what the one-sheet might look like, who you'll get to play the lead and all the folks you definitely need to thank during your Cannes, Golden Globes or MTV Movie Awards speech.

Get back to work on what's in hand. That's really the best advice I can give you.

Or as Tom Berenger so cheerfully says as Sgt. Barnes in Platoon -- "Take... the... pain."

11. Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

Another note to procrastination -- Do your four/five hours before you allow yourself to do anything "fun"... even surf the Net or deal with your email. If you go fun first, it's absurdly easy for your will to wane, and all that great momentum swinging your way to begin slipping through your fingers. Plus -- working after fun will never be as good or productive as seriously committing and doing the thankless grunt work of writing first.