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Beginning Screenwriting: Road Trips, Rudy, and Regrets

© Travis Sexton

Two recommendations this week:

First, if you desperately have to go somewhere – drive. I feel American’s are losing the art of making “road trips” anyway. Don’t make excuses either. I drove from Colorado to North Carolina to California to Oregon to Colorado and back to California again without air conditioning, without an SUV, without a CD player, without plush leather seats, and without cruise control. It was just my 4-door, 1991 Mitsubishi Mirage and me driving across America several times. It might not have been the most comfortable way to travel – I can remember driving through Kansas in the middle of August’s unbearable heat wearing nothing but a pair of boxers and having my left foot hang out the window while driving 85mph just to generate a breeze – but, I’ve seen America up close and personal.

I’ve seen the boisterous and sweaty southern truck drivers smoking cigarettes and drinking black coffee while talking to their loved ones at midnight in a lonely Tennessee gas station. I’ve passed by the friendly smiles of people living in small town Washington who wave as you drive by, regardless of whether they know you or not, because it’s instinctive for them to do so. My car is no longer with us (may it R.I.P.), but I take with me the many memories we shared together. Great memories too, despite the many hours consumed and the many cramped butt cheeks and the many McDonald’s stops. I’d never give them back.

Second, don’t claim to be a screenwriter if you’re not one. Claiming to be a screenwriter when you’ve never written an entire screenplay is like claiming to be on the varsity football team having never played a single down. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, leave your computer now and run as fast as you can to your local video store and rent “Rudy.” As a writer you can learn a lot from this movie because it makes two very distinct points: The first point is that you have to keep trying, no matter how many times you get knocked down, beaten on, or discouraged. You have to keep trying because one day it’ll pay off. The second point is that you have to play before you can say you’re on the team – that’s the rule. It’s the same for writing.

You’re going to hit walls while you’re writing. Every writer, even the great ones, hit walls. You’ll also be distracted, discouraged, and even bored at times. Not every script you start will be good enough to reach the end, maybe not even to the midway point, so you’ll be forced to throw it away or to delete it from your files because it’s worthless. You’ll be heartbroken, especially given the number of hours you’ll of spent on it. Fear will then hit you. You’ll be afraid to waste your time again - as we Americans are terrified of wasting time, and you’ll find excuses to not start your next project. But you have to keep trying. Five partially written scripts hold nothing against one finished script. It doesn’t matter if the five partially written scripts are great and the one finished script is terrible. Only the finished script can become a movie, and that fact alone makes it more valuable than anything partially written.