By Britt J.

Do you sometimes find yourself languishing in front of a blank computer screen, attempting to ‘will’ yourself into writing every last scene of your script completely from scratch?

If so, I’ve found that augmenting your screenwriting arsenal with a ‘passive-creative’ approach can often be helpful in eliminating this particular form of frustration as well as the screenwriter’s block that can often accompany it.

Here’s how it works:

Whenever you are about to create a brand new scene, first GET YOURSELF AWAY FROM YOUR COMPUTER!!!

(Film is primarily a visual medium. At this earliest stage of creating a scene from scratch – logical word processing and inspired visualization simply don’t mix all that well.)

Instead, spread out on a comfortable couch, bed, futon, hammock, yoga mat, etc.

Close your eyes and envision yourself in a darkened movie theater.

Then proceed to ‘watch’ the scene unfold on screen exactly as if you were a passive member of the audience and not the writer of a screenplay. (Repeated practice should make this easier and easier to do until it becomes fairly routine.)

Once you’ve set the tone of the basic storyline, allow your characters totally free reign to ‘do their thing’ while engaging with one other on screen.

If any part of the scene appears be getting caught in the mire or heading off in the wrong direction – simply back up your imaginary movie reel and once again resume a passive audience role while watching the scene play itself out a bit differently this time.

Remember, the experience should be a pleasurable one of discovery and entertainment – not work.

(A good sign that you’ve succeeded in getting out of your characters’ way is when their behavior and dialog occasionally turn out as refreshingly unexpected as they would in any film you’d be viewing for the very first time.)

When you reach the point where you’ve fallen in love with what you’ve just watched ‘on screen’ – I mean passionately enough to want to recommend the scene to all of your friends and co-workers – run as fast as you can to your nearest computer and try to get it all down in Scripped Writer format exactly as you envisioned it.

This includes all the action and physical gestures of the characters, their specific word-for-word dialog, and any spontaneous flashes of inspiration that may have altered the storyline a bit. Now is the time to take what you’ve just passive-creatively visualized and add it (in words) to the rest of your screenplay.

(Note: To avoid possibly losing portions of what you’ve just viewed – you might want to keep a micro cassette recorder handy to quickly reiterate all the details before heading off to your computer.)

Regularly enlisting the passive-creative part of your brain to view each and every scene in your film before you translate it into a script means that you’re far more likely to come up with freer-flowing action, more innovative twists and turns of plot, and dialog that is decidedly more natural.

Compare that to the traditional approach of self-consciously forcing yourself to conjure up entire scenes at your computer in an upright (read that “uptight”) position, with nothing in front of your eyes but endless strings of words on a monitor.

As a huge bonus, you’ll soon discover that the passive-creative writing approach eliminates the need to ever again have to write completely from scratch. (You’re simply dutifully recording into Scripped format what was already ‘written in your mind’ a few moments before!) And because it reduces the bulk of screenwriting into one of simply editing what is already entered into your computer — the possibility of screenwriter’s block is pretty much eliminated from the process.

Britt J. is a clinical psychologist, advertising copywriter, and novice screenwriter who happened upon the passive-creative writing method while writing scripts for TV spots many years ago.

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