“Guilt drives me. I know I have to write every day. During the story period, it’s so much harder, it’s much more fluid… When I start to write, I give myself a goal of five pages a day. I don’t stop until I get that done, whether it’s taken me two hours or twelve. Sometimes if I get rolling I can write more, I can write ten pages… It makes you push. Because otherwise, you’d come to the tough part two pages in and you’d go, I’m gonna give up. You have to push through. Because with every scene you come to, you know that the last scene was easy to write, but this scene is impossible. And you get through that, and you see the next scene, and you say, that last one was easy to write, but this one’s impossible. Every single scene is usually like that. Always, impossible. And then the characters start talking to you.”
Paul Haggis (Crash, Million Dollar Baby)
From The Dialogue Series
How cosmic. I just posted a blog about sticking it out during the tough scenes.
Check it out, if you'd like: http://jcordelia.tumblr.com/post/538243920/toughscenes
I'm glad Haggis stuck it out, I love his work.
Great screenwriter.
Quitting Scientology was best thing he ever did though.
I almost totally agree with Mr. Haggis.
Sometimes it's better to skip a scene if you can't figure it out.
And sometimes it's great to write the next scene — one of those scenes that you've been dreaming about forever.
But usually, I just push through the misery of writing (or birthing) a scene to the next scene.
And then the next one…