Film Courage: Do you have a writing routine that you follow?
David Wappel, Screenwriter: I have two answers for if I have a writing routine that I follow
and one is yes I have a writing routine.
Two is I don’t always follow that writing routine.
The best work I’ve ever done is when I followed that routine but for some reason I don’t
follow it all of the time.
It’s tough and sometimes it is because of whatever else I’ve got going on in my life,
that routine that I liked and really worked for me didn’t, it’s no longer sort of
the option for what I have going on right now.
Other times it’s just tough to sit down at a desk and write even though I know I already
have a plan to do that, it’s just tough when you don’t want to and so sometimes
I don’t.
I fail at sitting down and writing.
But when I was following it it was great.
When I do follow it it’s great because it forces me to write and the routine was basically
I would get up, two hours in the morning I would write and then that was it for the rest
of the day.
As far as official writing time I would pull out a notebook or if I was really inspired
I might open up the computer and write some more but those 2 hours I would set the timer
and I would write.
At the end of those two hours I would stop no matter where I was, no matter if I felt
like I could keep going for another two or if I was like “Thank God I just barely made
those two hours that felt like a slog.”
But having it be time-based told me that it doesn’t matter what I’ve written as long
as I’ve shown up and I’ve written and so some days those two hours would produce
ten pages, other days it would produce one.
But I was measuring weather or not I was doing my job by the time I was spending doing it
and not necessarily page count or word count.
I think so much of what we do is up here and it doesn’t always translate to the pages
and so that one page that I wrote over those two hours that might have been really difficult.
It was a lot of thinking and feeling and kind of moving through what was going on there
and that one page is great output for those two hours.
And those other ten pages I wrote the day before might not be great.
So I shouldn’t measure my progress with what was going on the page but more about
the fact that I could sit down, show up and do the job.
Film Courage: Does active or passive voice come into play in screenwriting?
Or is this more of an issue with prose writing?
David: I think active and passive voice doesn’t come up in screenwriting for me.
I don’t know if that is because I’m just not thinking about that as much.
So I’m not sure?
Film Courage: Okay…it’s just sometimes they say don’t write in passive voice and
I just wasn’t sure with the rules of screenwriting is it a faux pas to write in passive voice
for a screenplay even if it’s just little action lines?
David: I think one of the things that is great about screenwriting is that there are no hard
rules so if there is a reason that the passive voice should used here for an effect it’s
permissible, you can do whatever you want.
I think understanding why this action line is better in a passive voice as opposed to
an active voice or vice-versa is more important than adhering to any sort of “You should
never write in passive voice, you should never do this.”
Because for every rule that was laid out there was a bunch of examples of it being broken
and broken successfully and I think you can break it successfully because you know why
breaking it is going to produce some greater effect than adhering to it and one of the
freedoms of the screenplay format is that you have so much room to break all of these
rules.