To start the creative flow
Monday, July 21, 2008

In an earlier article I mentioned Linda Seger’s book “Make a good writer great” and that one thing that differs between a great writer and a good one, is that a great writer knows when to write and knows how to kick start the creative flow.

I can dive right into a scene and write, sure, but in general these scenes do not get a golden star in the margin. The creative flow is not there.

What do start the flow is planning the scene. Rather practical. Except for the fact that it is something I don’t want to do because it is boring. Or rather feels like boring before I get started.

What I do is quite simple in theory. I write down my goal with the scene, what I as a writer want to show. Then I write down each character’s goal and it is important that there is a conflict between these goals.

It is interesting how goals can be so difficult sometimes. But if I can’t find any goals, then the scene is useless. It does not have to be any complicated goals, but every character in the scene must have a need to fulfill.

When I work with this I get very inspired.

Then it is so easy to jump right in and write. But where to go when that scene is done? Well, here we go, I don’t need any goals for the next scene, I just continue. That is not good. It will be a horrible result.

It is much better to do the goals for as many scenes as possible. Then dive into the script and write. You see, I have noticed that reading my goals starts the creative flow too.

So far I have never succeeded to write goals for every scene and really do my pre-work properly before I start to write the actual script, but I am capable of learning, so there is still hope.

The scenes become so very much better with these goals and the other pre-work done so I am stupid to work otherwise.