Why “Touch Grass” is Actually Great Advice for Screenwriters

First, let's look at it figuratively.

Most screenwriters end up forming a core social group with other writers and entertainment folk, within the entertainment industry where they work, usually in a big city like Los Angeles or New York. That's a bubble within a bubble within yet another bubble! If a writer never steps out of those nested concentric bubbles, their writing will not only become severely limited and gradually more narrow-minded, but also pretty stale and uninteresting to audiences who don't exist within the bubbledom (i.e. the majority of audiences).

This is one of the reasons that television writers' rooms “cast” writers to fill different slots based on specific life experiences, skills, and knowledge sets often gained before they became writers. A showrunner might hire a writer specifically because they grew up in a specific locale or culture, or because they have professional experience relevant to a character on the show. Some might also be hired because they are particularly strong at a specific writerly skill like jokes, structure, or research.

Even so, very few writers want to be thought of as a one-trick pony for their entire career (I certainly don't!), and one way to avoid pigeonholing is to seek out broader knowledge and experiences to draw from. Make friends with people outside the industry. Gain skills purely unrelated to writing or entertainment work. Travel to places totally unconnected with any of the people or places you're used to.

Travel, in particular, can be career-changing for a writer. Every time I travel or live somewhere, especially for an extended period of time, I come away rich with information and ideas for stories - and even knowledge or context that improves old drafts of existing projects. Living in Hawaii for some time heavily informed three of my original pilot scripts and counting. 

Trips to the Bodie ghost town eventually influenced my first-ever feature script, along with a couple of current works in progress. Studying abroad in Paris inspired my first children’s TV pilot, a sample that played a part in getting me three jobs so far. If new experiences and information are a writer’s nourishment, such experiences are a banquet for the creative mind that directly and massively impact a writer’s work.

I get that it's so much easier not to, especially when you're starting out and struggling just to stay afloat, but writers need to experience life, observe people, and go places. I know this is not an easy ask considering how much of our lives are taken up either by our jobs or by networking in order to find the next job, but in the long run, it'll make you a better writer, and a happier person because your life will be about more than just your work.

One caveat, for the sake of clarification: Not everything you write needs to have a purely tangible link to your past. Yes, Gravity Falls was inspired by his childhood with his twin sister and grandfather, but that didn't mean Alex Hirsch couldn't also include zombies and vortices into parallel dimensions in the show. Similarly, while the ways in which American Graffiti was inspired by George Lucas' own experiences are pretty broad, any analysis of Star Wars along the same lines requires significantly more parsing. Not for nothing, this whole grass-touching idea is not all about interacting with other people either.

Now, let's take it absolutely literally.

If you're an avid solo hiker, you may have had an inkling that even if you don't spend a lot of time around people (and some writers don't), feeling connected with nature diminishes or eliminates feelings of loneliness - and you'd be right. There's even a study to back it up.

What happens when someone physically touches grass? When someone steps outside, removes their shoes and socks, and experiences the sensation of their feet sinking into fresh grass? It stimulates the mind, not unlike a splash of water to the face but with the added senses of the sights and scents of the outdoors.

Since your mind is your whole job, you might be interested to know it improves brain function too. There's a ton of research showing how spending time in natural environments (ideally 2 hours or more per week) reduces stress, improves emotional and mental health, and boosts creativity. One experiment even showed that glancing out a window at an urban green space for 40 seconds once in a while improves concentration and attention to detail. If you're blinking at this article through glasses (like I am), you'll also be glad to discover that studies have shown spending time outside reduces near-sightedness.

Some writers go so far as to write by dictating into an audio recorder while hiking. I remember novelist Kevin J. Anderson advocating exactly this and uploading the recordings into speech-to-text software during a WonderCon panel a few years ago. He has also described his own practice in more detail (hiring a typist to transcribe instead of using software) on his blog.

More than that, getting outside is also great for physical health. After spending this summer building tanned, toned “strike bods” from getting in 19,000 steps a day under the blazing sun of the picket lines, you'll be surprised how easily you get back your pale, doughy office-chair bod again if you don't put in real effort not to.

You'll probably laugh when I tell you that part of my decision to be a writer was to adopt a healthier lifestyle. But as someone who spent years working as a video editor, often in parts of buildings jokingly referred to by coworkers as “the troll caves” or “the dungeon,” I was all too familiar with the pattern of developing an unhealthy pride in the practice of barricading oneself into a darkened inner sanctum for hours and banding together to knock out mountains of work even before I transitioned into a career in screenwriting. 

Everyone knows intellectually that sedentary lifestyles increase the odds of heart disease, cancer, and other maladies, but it's something else to see it unfold in real-time before your eyes. I watched older editors compare their swollen reddish-purple feet and varicose veins, listened to conversations about their blood pressure, hearing loss, and migraines, and commiserated when we heard a colleague had died from heart disease much younger than they should have. 

It's such a common topic of conversation among editors there's even one who runs a fitness guru business for post-production workers on the side. As strange as it may seem, I've noticed it's more socially accepted for writers to be physically active, if only by pacing up and down a few minutes to think every half-hour or so (which is recommended by health professionals – bonus!).

Takeaways

Now that you know “touching grass” will make you a better screenwriter, how do you get started?

Go places and see things! Have adventures! Before I had a car, I went as far as each bus or metro route would take me, just to see what was there. A couple of years ago, I made a plan to visit a different park every weekend until I had seen every park in a 20-mile radius. You can start small or go big, whatever is within your means.

Develop new interests and hobbies! Try needlepoint, axe-throwing, Gregorian chant, or astrophysics; anything that suits your fancy. Even if you try something and don't like it, you'll grow from the experience.

Meet people! Online or in-person, just strolling around town or going to big mixers, whichever you prefer, as long as you're expanding your social horizons.

Spend time in natural spaces! Go forest bathing, watch seagulls on the beach, hike in the mountains (just don't blast annoying music from your phone while you're doing it!), or at least visit an urban green space like a city park. Every little bit helps!