Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. – Gene Fowler

I’m pretty sure what everyone has been calling “writer’s block” is just anxiety. Sometimes I find it hard to move forward on a screenplay I’ve been working on because I’m scared I don’t know who my characters are and what they actually are feeling, or what they believe. I’ve been having them go about their daily “business,” finding a few hints about what’s really going on here and there… but I’m slowly beginning to doubt myself, because they feel like strangers.

Inevitably, whatever the character is really feeling comes rushing out in dialogue and action in some crazy, nothing-really-happens, scene. It’s usually two characters screaming at each other and kissing or something. You can see it throughout the screenplays I’m working on, most notably this recent entry in the Henry & Mary story.

Gordy Hoffman, the screenwriter of “Love Liza” and “A Coat of Snow,” actually suggests trying something similar at SimplyScripts.com:

Take your lead characters, pull them out of your script and have them talk in a void. If that’s too abstract for you, put them on the porch of a house, or in a diner having coffee. Have them scream about what they care about. Tweak the combinations. Have your characters talk to God. Have them talk to you. This process will give you pause over your movie, and then you might find where this is supposed to live.

[...] Submerge yourself in the ridiculous. Shoot for the absurd. Chances are you have limited yourself and believe there are only a few places you can land. Bullshit. [...] To really floor people, you have to go off the grid. Start with all the stupid stuff you can think of. Your ideas will flow from this crazy place, and you will find something, a seed, that will sign you off.

Most traditional teachers of screenwriting encourage their students to always hide what their characters are really feeling. It’s considered bad form to have your characters reveal themselves. I think this idea is popular for a few reasons.

I think the main reason is that this sort of unbridled emotional content makes a lot of the people uncomfortable. If you never get to express how you really feel to others, and the characters on the page/screen get to, you might feel cheated, or it won’t ring true to you… and you’ll opt out. Or, it might stem from the idea that no conflict can exist if our characters actually say what they mean – if the “truth” is out in the open. Or we might just prefer leaving this sort of stuff to the soap opera writers.

But you always have the final say whether or not a scene like this ends up in the final draft you’re handing out to everyone. So it doesn’t matter. If it keeps you writing, it can’t be that bad.

The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why. – Eleanor Roosevelt

It is impossible to discourage the real writers – they don’t give a damn what you say, they’re going to write. – Sinclair Lewis

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. – Ray Bradbury