Ask Phil: Never Ending Script
As a therapist, I work with clients on improving their mental health. As a screenwriter, I work with writers on improving their craft. This column will be a place where I can do both. This week, I answer a question about working on a script that feels like it’s never going to be finished. Is it procrastination or resistance?
Many of the problems we face as screenwriters are related to the reality of the craft: third act structure, navigating notes, character development, the pitch process, etc. At the same time, there are personal and emotional issues that influence the practical work: imposter syndrome, the inner critic, shame and anger, professional jealousy, etc. I have the screenwriting experience to address questions about the practical aspects of the work, and the therapy experience to explore the personal and emotional considerations that inform the work of screenwriting.
My email address will be at the end of every column, so please send in your questions and comments about life at the intersection of screenwriting and mental health. It’s a busy intersection!
Dear Phil,
I’ve been working on the same script for years, and it feels like it’s never going to be finished. Partly this is because I keep getting good notes from friends and coming up with better ideas to implement, causing me to have to re-break the story and do some pretty serious rewrites. It’s also because I tend to procrastinate and put the script away for months at a time. And sometimes I just don’t feel like writing at all. I feel silly explaining to friends and family why I haven’t finished it yet, but it seems like no matter how much effort or focus I put into it I just can’t seem to produce a final draft. Is this normal?
Signed, Never Ending Script
Dear Never Ending Script,
Yes, this is normal. In fact, I suspect that readers of this column might perk up their ears when they see this month’s topic, being in a similar situation themselves. It’s difficult to know when a script is finished when you’re starting out in your writing career, working on specs and samples that are supposed to showcase your ability and talent. Each person you show what you consider to be the final version might have notes that you feel like you want to / have to implement, and doing so can create a house of cards scenario where what you thought would be an easy polish turns into a third act re-break which can easily spill over into a page one rewrite.
I’m struck by your observation that you tend to procrastinate and not work on the script for months at a time. In my experience as a screenwriter, I learned that when I felt resistance to writing a script I was working on was often not because I was simply lazy or a procrastinator by nature, but because I wasn’t really into the script. Maybe I started out hot about the idea but became disenchanted as I got into the nuts and bolts of it. I remember reading screenwriting advice that you should never leave a script unfinished, that you should always finish what you start, and this made sense to me at the time, but now I have different thoughts about that.
In psychological terms, we would refer to what we experience in this situation as resistance. Resistance is what we feel when we don’t want to do things. Often we react to resistance with determination, with the approach that it’s our job to fight through it. And sometimes this is the case. Sometimes we do need to buckle in and put our nose to the grindstone lace up our boots tightly and use other metaphors to describe how we can simply put in enough effort to overcome the resistance. But other times it pays to get curious about this resistance.
For instance, are we still as passionate about this script as we were when we started writing it? Is this idea still exciting to us? Do we think it’s turning out well? Can we imagine a finished version of this script we are proud of and want people to read? The answers to these questions are sometimes no. And if they are, how is our time best spent to further our screenwriter aspirations? Often times the best solution to a problem like this is the same as the solution to many other screenwriting problems: start writing another script!
If we can liberate ourselves from the feeling of duty to finish the never-ending script we might find ourselves excited about writing a new one. And more importantly, we might find that writing this new script is easier than finishing the previous one because of the hard work we put into trying to finish the previous one. Every script we write (even the ones we don’t finish) is a learning experience that makes us a better writer. It’s like we’re architects building a house, and our first house might turn out badly because we didn’t know how to draw a blueprint. But with our next house, we’ll be able to apply the lessons we learned, and this will make each step of the writing process easier.
At first, you might feel regret that you are leaving a script unfinished, but if you can come up with another idea you’re excited about and get jamming on a new script, you’ll look back on the unfinished script as a trap you were able to escape. It can be comforting to have a familiar script you’ve lived with for years as your main project, and scary to think about starting over with a new one, especially when you factor all the work you put into it!
What a shame to let all that work go to waste by not finishing it, right? Well, I say wrong. All the work you put into any script is also work on yourself as a writer, and sometimes we need to move on to new projects in order to give ourselves the space to practice our craft with our new and continually developing skills. You can always go back to that never-ending script sometime in the future. But I hope you’ll be too excited about your next project to do that.
Therapist and screenwriter Phil Stark answers reader questions about topics at the intersection of screenwriting and mental health. Got a question for Phil? Email him at starktalktherapy@gmail.com
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Phil Stark is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Los Angeles. He is also an author and screenwriter, with credits such as Dude, Where’s My Car?, That ‘70s Show, and South Park, along with a book about talk therapy, Dude, Where’s My Car-tharsis?. Learn more about Phil at starktalk.net.
