Healthy Habits of Screenwriters – Tips, Exercises, and Daily Practices for Creativity and Focus

MZed Education

by Mascha Deikova8 days ago

Stephen King once wrote, “Writing […] can be a difficult, lonely job; it’s like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There’s plenty of opportunity for self-doubt.” Of course, he meant fiction here, especially its long form, but I believe we can apply this metaphor to screenwriting all the same. It is also very lonely, complicated, and even devastating at times. Yet there are some daily practices and habits of screenwriters that can make your work (and life) easier and more joyful. Let’s dive into some of them!

The idea for this article came after watching Johnnie’s “Focus Check” episode from his kitchen, where he talks about filmmakers’ self-care and shares some delicious and healthy recipes. I also believe that we ought to support our bodies, minds, and souls on a daily basis in order to make something great (even if the image of a self-destructive writer with substance abuse and severe psychological problems is sadly still very present). Below, I have gathered some habits, tips, daily practices, and exercises from various writers, books, and podcasts that have supported me immensely in writing. Some of them touch on physiological health, and others help in overcoming procrastination and sparking creativity. Yet all are definitely worth trying out.

Finding a time and place

A couple of years ago, I watched a masterclass by David Lynch. To my surprise, the maestro talked about a lot of issues that any screenwriter could relate to. For example, how, especially at the beginning of his career, nobody took his writing process seriously. The family thought they could interrupt him at any time. Friends and colleagues were insulted when he refused to meet with them during his so-called writing hours. That’s not “real work,” they thought.

I experienced the same, and I bet many of you did too. There are even some people who won’t start because they are waiting for the right time and place. The sad truth is: The proper time for writing will never arrive unless you make it for yourself. Regularly sitting down and actually writing is the only way that will bring you to the finished script of your dreams. Even thirty minutes is better than nothing. Regularity should definitely be among the habits of screenwriters. And to take it to an extreme, if we were to ask Stephen King with what regularity he writes, his answer would be:

I used to tell interviewers that I wrote every day except for Christmas, the Fourth of July, and my birthday. That was a lie […] The truth is that when I’m writing, I write every day. That includes Christmas, the Fourth, and my birthday.

A quote from Stephen King’s book “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft”

David Lynch’s solution is to fight for your sacred writing time and place. Lock the door of your office, if needed. Leave the house and work in a library. Consistently say “No” to the coffee meetings throughout the day. Make sure that everyone, including you, takes your screenwriting process seriously.

Habits of screenwriters for beginners

Once you have established a habit of writing regularly, you might find yourself at the desk in front of a blank page, with tons of anxiety and overwhelming procrastination. Not always, but it may happen. As renowned director and writer Taika Waititi jokes in one show:

Sometimes writing is opening up your laptop, looking at a blank page on Final Draft for about 8 hours and then feeling sad and closing it. It’s still classified as writing.

One of the most important habits that I acquired lately is to start quickly. A helpful way to do so is to establish a specific ritual that brings you into the mental state, focused on writing. Some ignite candles in the room. Others put on a specific outfit or perfume that they connect with their screenwriter’s personality. My go-to tool is the method called DRAW. I found it in Ekaterina Hoarau’s book “Hold On and Write” (sadly, not available in English yet) and have used it ever since.

The abbreviation DRAW stands for Declutter-Read-Assess-Write, and you will need a timer and 15 minutes. As the name suggests, the first five minutes are for decluttering: clearing your desk, structuring your document folder on your laptop, putting away stuff that you don’t need at the moment, reorganizing books on the shelves – anything of the sort. When the buzzer goes off, you stop, but even in this short time, you’ll be able to accomplish a lot. A clean desk = a clean mind.

In the next five minutes, I read something that helps to warm up my brain for screenwriting. Usually, it’s either literature, which I need for research anyway, or chapters from educational or fictional books. After that, the “assess” phase helps me review all the writing projects I have at the moment and create a brief plan of what tasks are important and what can wait. Finally, when the timer goes off again, I start writing. Some people like to time their writing windows as well, but not me. Instead, I enjoy losing track of time and letting the imaginary worlds consume me.

Noticing is one of the habits of screenwriters

A while ago, I heard a tip from a seasoned editor, which went roughly like this: If you want to make good films, you have to live a life. Our personal experiences matter a lot because they become the fabric of our stories. So, for screenwriters, it’s imperative to obtain a healthy habit of being present and noticing the life around them. It doesn’t only mean huge tragedies or delightful events. No, life also hides in small details. On each corner, even in the most ordinary situations, you can find a curious character, an unexpected location, a worthy topic, a sudden plot twist, or an inspiration for the next story. You just need to learn to be always alert and hungry for them.

To train this habit, here are three fun exercises from the book with a talking title – “The Art of Noticing”:

• Take a photo walk without a camera. Sounds illogical. Yet it helps to notice and appreciate new things (and can also enhance your feel for visual composition – if not for screenplays, then for future camera or directing jobs). This is how you can practice this exercise, according to the book: “Camera-free, you can still pause or sit in a particular spot, look around, carefully imagining the pictures you could take, and wait for the ‘right’ or ‘decisive’ moment. When you decide you’ve seen it, move on to a new spot.” A nice idea for the next walk, right?
• Imagine what someone is thinking. Seems easy at first, but it’s actually an exercise in observation. First, pick a location where people are present (a park, a mall, a petrol station, a café). Then choose an unfamiliar subject and start observing (but please, no creepy staring). You’ll have to invent a mood, a mindset, and someone’s ideas based only on what you can observe. Now, imagine the arc of a story and where in that arc this person is right now.
• Test yourself. This one is pretty straightforward: “Look at something stationary, look away, and then jot down everything you saw. Now look back and see how you did.”

Once you have trained your noticing skill, the most important thing is to also remember to write these small details and ideas down. Otherwise, they might get lost in the endless cabinets of your memory. It is up to you to decide in what form to log these notes. Some prefer a simple app on a smartphone. Others use rigorously structured cloud storage or devices like reMarkable. Personally, I always carry around a paper notebook, which is divided into 6 sections: Characters, Locations, Objects, Situations, Actions, and Themes. Whenever I’m in need of a fresh idea or input, I browse through it.

Creativity tools in screenwriting

I believe that creativity lies at the human core. Not everyone uses it for their jobs, but everyone has access to the source. And there are some tips on how to make this access easier. One of them is meditation. Oh, please don’t roll your eyes! I’m not a meditation expert, and I also struggle to do it consistently. Yet there is some scientific evidence on what kinds of meditation help to get into the creative state with more ease.

The protocol, described in Huberman Lab’s podcast, is as follows: First, use open-monitoring meditation for 5 to 10 minutes. Meaning: sit quietly (you can even leave your eyes open), and allow all the thoughts to come, and whatever surfaces in your mind, to surface. Let it be! This engages divergent thinking, which is critical for the creative process, such as brainstorming ideas. After that, switch to focused attention meditation (also for 5 to 10 minutes), which involves focusing on your breath, posture, or another particular location, body part, or idea. That is known to improve humans’ ability to engage in convergent thinking – to quickly analyze a range of different choices, persist in choice selection, and therefore arrive at the final answer more rapidly. I try to follow this protocol at least twice a week.

Once you start writing, your creativity flows, and maybe you share your inspiration with someone else – what an idyllic ideafest! Until it’s not, explains writer and director Seth Worley in his MZed course “Writing 101.” At some point, ideas stop coming, but it’s usually long before the story is complete. So, what do you do then? According to Seth, you have to grow your ideas from within.

This quote means that comedy is rarely brought into a situation from an outside source. It’s found in what is already happening, the current situation. In Seth’s opinion (which I share), it totally applies to building an organic story.

So, when your story stops telling you what it is, you’ll have to get it to talk. One way to do this is by asking questions. Another is to endure this painful phase and write through it.

Sustaining focus

This is how we arrive at patience and sustaining focus. There is no shortcut around it because we’ll have to write even through the moments when we don’t feel creative and inspired.

What can help you stay productive is to organize your day and adopt some physical healthy habits, such as morning sun-gazing, regular exercise, eating nutritious food, and taking after-meal walks, among others. In another episode of the Huberman Lab podcast, Andrew Huberman shares how he uses science-based tools from morning to evening, and I recommend you watch it in full:

For example, here are some tiny, simple tips from this video that can help you to stay focused while writing:

• We are more focused when our eyes look up, and not down. The latter, on the contrary, makes our body feel sleepy. So, adjust the position of your laptop or screen accordingly. And if you are writing by hand, how about trying to write using a vertical easel?
• White noise is also proven to help us concentrate better. There are plenty of videos on YouTube with hours of white noise, so you can just switch it on using headphones while screenwriting and try it out.

Other healthy habits of screenwriters

This text has already become quite lengthy, and I feel like we’ve only touched on a handful of basic, healthy, and helpful habits of screenwriters. There are so many more of them to explore! (Maybe, we need a part two?) Still, I hope you found some of these tips useful and will try to implement them into your writing routine.

Let’s turn the tables now! What are your healthy habits that support you in creative endeavors? Please share them with us in the comments below!

Feature image: Image by freepik.

Full disclosure: MZed is owned by CineD.

Additional sources:

• “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” by Stephen King, 2000;
• «Держись и пиши» Екатерины Оаро, 2022;
• “The Art of Noticing: Rediscover What Really Matters to You” by Rob Walker, 2019.