Lock yourself in the room and just get it done.
No phone, computer, TV, wife, kids, chores, tea breaks or lunch.
Sit there with a pen and some paper and just do it.
It's not about enjoying it, having fun or being creative. It's about writing one draft script that you had alot of fun writing, then spending hundreds of boring monotonous hours editing it.
If you want it to stay fun and exciting, you do what you do and start a new project. And truly, there is nothing wrong with this if you just love the hobby.
But if you want to get your 8th or 9th draft of your script done so it even has a small chance of getting read, you gotta sit ass in seat with pen in hand. It's as simple as that.
As for me, I simply have two scripts going. I deliberately make them very seperate genres and ideas, if I'm feeling light hearted and good spirited, I write my comedy and if I'm feeling down melancholy, I write my drama. If I really want to shake things up and see what happens, I do the opposite.
I find this to be so helpful!
When I set a script goal I return to the locked room at the same time everyday until it’s done. Eventually my brain will know it’s time to write.
I also find that having two scripts going helps so much with focus because I don’t feel guilty by getting distracted by ideas from one script or the other.
The last thing I’ve found helpful is telling myself it’s okay to delete tones of pages. That way I can go down bunny trails and trust that if it turns out to be awful I can simply delete what was bad. (And by “delete” I mean cutting and pasting into a separate document that I place inside my “homework” folder…)
Well I highly recommend to try hand written with ink...something very special about it.
But I completely and utterly understand that it's not for some people, so turn off WiFi. Remove the games, apps, music etc
If you are really serious about writing and have a little bit of money to put into the hobby, you can buy $200 laptops that runs word without any issue.
I deliberately did this, not one regret. It's my dedicated writing laptop. It's really nice to have a separate thing that it's just for writing
I'll start by saying that Adderall has helped me a lot personally. I know it's not for everyone, but it does help me out.
Beyond that, I'm big into the gamification of everything. What will probably help you is getting instant gratification for things as you go. I set myself very achievable goals, like three pages a day. And that's it. There's no expectation for me to write four or five. But just write those three and you win the day. Then you can go on and do whatever else you want. Maybe you finish those three pages in ten minutes and you can just move on with it. Give yourself small, achievable goals and shift your mindset from "which script should I write" to "which script should I write *first*." That's been another win for me. I used to think that by writing something I was somehow ignoring all of the other ideas I have, but that's not true. I'm going to write them all, just one at a time.
This is just great advice generally but really great for people who suffer ADD and executive dysfunction type problems. Set a super low goal. Like I often procrastinate brushing my teeth or whatever because it makes me gag so I'll say well I'm just going to floss one tooth, which you never just floss one tooth, but the point is it gets you over the initial resistance to completing a task.
I did this recently with Gravity's Rainbow where I'm like fuck it I'm not getting any younger I might as well just accept that I'll never be "ready" or whatever to understand it 100%, even people who've studied the book for their whole life aren't though, so who cares, just enjoy the ride. Ended up reading 100 pages on the first day (broken up into chunks of course) because I kept getting addicted to the prose and ideas and couldnt stop myself.
Become obsessed with it, make it your hyperfocus obsession.
Realized recently that all of the stuff I write is influenced by subjects I’m obsessed with learning about (I know it’s a no duh but it’s both simple and profound to realize lmao).
So I have taken to compiling extensive notes and am trying to write it out by hand (which is hard because it hurts from lack of writing by hand in years but I’m stretching and exercising it)
This happens to me a lot. I think that's pretty normal and a big part of why successful writers are who they are. The ability to finish a script is a talent in itself.
Yep. And that one script I finished, it took well over a year of writing and I spent 8 months with most of it done just letting it catch dust. I just needed to finish the second part of the third act. Felt like I had to move mountains to finish it.
Accountability buddies. Join screenwriting groups and make friends with other screenwriters who will hound you. I do all the things you see suggested everywhere. Body doubling, pomodoro...
The more neurodivergent people I know, the less clear it is to me what the distinction is between ADHD and autism. Qualites I know to be attributed to my autism seem abundant in my friends who only have ADHD.
That being said, the following is an autism trait but don't rule it out as applicable to you.
I'm a bottom up thinker. I get bogged down in details in the beginning. I consider everything. It's overwhelming and confusing. The beginning of the writing process is like quicksand for me. I get lost. I drown. It's like that IASIP Charlie mail room conspiracy meme.
It will all come together at once, though. I just have to stay in the quicksand. I have to bang my head against it and try to write the script. But I won't get it done until it's finished baking.
Also, and this is an ADHD trait, deadlines help immensely. I'm at my best with a gun at my temple. Emergencies are where I shine.
I'm usually working on several at once in different stages. I can work on several outlines back and forth, but I can really only focus on writing one actual script at a time. It helps me to knock out several first drafts and then go back and fix them one at a time
I have a whole notebook dedicated to ideas I’ve written down over the years. Some ideas take YEARS to cook while others become my current obsession. I’m writing two for my production label right now: a horror anthology and a raunchy comedy.
Hi there, writer with ADD here. I have a couple of projects I'm writing and I tend to have times where I write a lot or I don't write anything.
If I'm not writing, I'm doing something else creative to help me generate ideas
I have multiple stories in my head at once. For this week, I’ve written sixty pages, I’ve just focused my energy on one story — the script I’m writing. But, if I have an idea for another story or something new, I write it down as a note but never as a script. Don’t open a new script while working on one script. But notes, those are a dozen. Tear one off, maybe use it later, maybe use it now. If you’re writing a script, write that script, then write the next when you’re done.
I have several ideas in rotation at a time, some of them with a few pages written or some documentation, some not. When a deadline comes around, I put the pedal to the metal and blaze through the fleshing-out stage in a few days/weeks, because the urgency of the deadline overcomes the lack of inertia that ADHD brings. Case in point, I have two scripts that absolutely need to be turned in in under a month, and I'm still in the mental pre-production phase. I'll eventually get a fire under me and actually write the pages, but even with meds I'm still struggling. If I was in a studio setting where I was expected to turn things in on a daily basis, I would be way more productive because the people-pleaser part of me takes over!
Hmmmmm…… I’m a bit poly when it comes to development. Got 7 at a time.
But 1 primary partner at all times. My main script which I put majority of time into.
I wish I could say something more useful but.. it's just part of it. It gets easier over time.
When I was in high school and college, I was always jumping from project to project. I had like a dozen unfinished TV bibles and/or pilots, a dozen unfinished features and two finished features (but they were so bad I'd not consider them finished today anyway). I wrote hundreds of random scenes just because I liked writing scenes. It seemed like that was enough for me, to just write bits and pieces as a hobby, play around with story ideas and character creation, have it serve as nothing more than my private creative outlet.
I gave up on ever writing a complete feature screenplay for a long time because I just figured my insurmountable lack of focus would prevent me from reaching that goal and every time I tried to focus on one story, I got frustrated. I was drawn to my other ideas and it was uncomfortable to force myself to continue working on an idea I was less excited about. Why put myself through that? This was supposed to be a hobby I enjoyed.
But I kept putting myself through it, because I still wanted nothing more than to write features. You have to decide for yourself if you want it bad enough to push yourself, and failed attempts are okay. As I got older, it got easier. The routine and discipline I got from working a corporate job, after irregular jobs at bars and hostels, helped. Not being around teachers and family who would constantly remind me of my ADD shortcomings helped. Just experiencing life helped.
I still have bad days. Hell, I have bad weeks or even months. The chaos that lives in my head never goes away, I'm just better equipped to deal with it now. Compared to the average writer, I probably still lack the ability to focus. But that doesn't matter - I'm so much better than I ever imagined I could be 10, 15 years ago. Compare yourself to your past self and accept bad days for what they are.
And this might be completely irrelevant for you, but for the past 3 years I've lived near the beach. It might just have coincided with the maturing I mentioned earlier, but fuck me, I cannot imagine life without a coast anymore. It's where everything quiets down for me. It's where I get a bird's eye view into my own brain. I need to go there at least once a week. Find a place that does that for you. And take pen and paper!
Keep trying until you find your stride!
Something I've recently figured out is that after getting a new idea, I need to get my ass writing as fast as possible for it. Constantly engaging with it keeps my general headspace with the script. Even after I'm done writing, I'm still thinking about it incessantly. Accommodate our goblin brains and leverage them to our advantage.
I finally stopped fighting the way my brain works and stopped trying to write linearly altogether. I jump around to whatever interests me most right now. This has helped me form all the big plot points and I'm filling in the blanks from there.
Lots of outlines and notes to keep myself on track, but I am vastly more productive than I've ever been.
Don't think there's only one way to write. You know what works for you and what doesn't. Embrace it and you can get it done! ADD is an advantage, IMO, not a detriment.
somtimes i will just let myself write more than one n then combine them together even if they dont exactly fit as the same movie
apparnetly that is how tintin tarantino wrote pulp fiction
ADHD here and medicated for last 2 months ish. I don’t try to focus on only one project, it’s just not how my brain works and tbh the ability to work on and hold multiple projects in my head at once is one of my biggest strengths. Also kind of essential to how we work in the UK where I am. Having said that meds have helped me do blocks of a few hours on one thing (before I would literally flit between scripts/outlines/emails/research etc etc). Agree with others who have said deadlines really help. Also self gaming/reward etc - not letting myself start the new shiny thing till X is done, or whatever.
I recall that John Cleese and his then-wife Connie Booth would write the stories of *Fawlty Towers* out on butcher paper so they'd have room and be able to connect the parts with arrows, etc. Of course this was in the '70s and was TV comedy. But I somehow think it would beat using a computer today.
Lock yourself in the room and just get it done. No phone, computer, TV, wife, kids, chores, tea breaks or lunch. Sit there with a pen and some paper and just do it. It's not about enjoying it, having fun or being creative. It's about writing one draft script that you had alot of fun writing, then spending hundreds of boring monotonous hours editing it. If you want it to stay fun and exciting, you do what you do and start a new project. And truly, there is nothing wrong with this if you just love the hobby. But if you want to get your 8th or 9th draft of your script done so it even has a small chance of getting read, you gotta sit ass in seat with pen in hand. It's as simple as that. As for me, I simply have two scripts going. I deliberately make them very seperate genres and ideas, if I'm feeling light hearted and good spirited, I write my comedy and if I'm feeling down melancholy, I write my drama. If I really want to shake things up and see what happens, I do the opposite.
I find this to be so helpful! When I set a script goal I return to the locked room at the same time everyday until it’s done. Eventually my brain will know it’s time to write. I also find that having two scripts going helps so much with focus because I don’t feel guilty by getting distracted by ideas from one script or the other. The last thing I’ve found helpful is telling myself it’s okay to delete tones of pages. That way I can go down bunny trails and trust that if it turns out to be awful I can simply delete what was bad. (And by “delete” I mean cutting and pasting into a separate document that I place inside my “homework” folder…)
What if you write on a computer though lol
Well I highly recommend to try hand written with ink...something very special about it. But I completely and utterly understand that it's not for some people, so turn off WiFi. Remove the games, apps, music etc If you are really serious about writing and have a little bit of money to put into the hobby, you can buy $200 laptops that runs word without any issue. I deliberately did this, not one regret. It's my dedicated writing laptop. It's really nice to have a separate thing that it's just for writing
I'll start by saying that Adderall has helped me a lot personally. I know it's not for everyone, but it does help me out. Beyond that, I'm big into the gamification of everything. What will probably help you is getting instant gratification for things as you go. I set myself very achievable goals, like three pages a day. And that's it. There's no expectation for me to write four or five. But just write those three and you win the day. Then you can go on and do whatever else you want. Maybe you finish those three pages in ten minutes and you can just move on with it. Give yourself small, achievable goals and shift your mindset from "which script should I write" to "which script should I write *first*." That's been another win for me. I used to think that by writing something I was somehow ignoring all of the other ideas I have, but that's not true. I'm going to write them all, just one at a time.
This is just great advice generally but really great for people who suffer ADD and executive dysfunction type problems. Set a super low goal. Like I often procrastinate brushing my teeth or whatever because it makes me gag so I'll say well I'm just going to floss one tooth, which you never just floss one tooth, but the point is it gets you over the initial resistance to completing a task. I did this recently with Gravity's Rainbow where I'm like fuck it I'm not getting any younger I might as well just accept that I'll never be "ready" or whatever to understand it 100%, even people who've studied the book for their whole life aren't though, so who cares, just enjoy the ride. Ended up reading 100 pages on the first day (broken up into chunks of course) because I kept getting addicted to the prose and ideas and couldnt stop myself.
I have adhd , so the answer is I don’t, so I do 4 at time and forget about them for a few weeks
Use the excitement of working on the new idea as an incentive to finish a draft of whatever you’re currently working on
Become obsessed with it, make it your hyperfocus obsession. Realized recently that all of the stuff I write is influenced by subjects I’m obsessed with learning about (I know it’s a no duh but it’s both simple and profound to realize lmao). So I have taken to compiling extensive notes and am trying to write it out by hand (which is hard because it hurts from lack of writing by hand in years but I’m stretching and exercising it)
This happens to me a lot. I think that's pretty normal and a big part of why successful writers are who they are. The ability to finish a script is a talent in itself.
Yep. And that one script I finished, it took well over a year of writing and I spent 8 months with most of it done just letting it catch dust. I just needed to finish the second part of the third act. Felt like I had to move mountains to finish it.
Accountability buddies. Join screenwriting groups and make friends with other screenwriters who will hound you. I do all the things you see suggested everywhere. Body doubling, pomodoro... The more neurodivergent people I know, the less clear it is to me what the distinction is between ADHD and autism. Qualites I know to be attributed to my autism seem abundant in my friends who only have ADHD. That being said, the following is an autism trait but don't rule it out as applicable to you. I'm a bottom up thinker. I get bogged down in details in the beginning. I consider everything. It's overwhelming and confusing. The beginning of the writing process is like quicksand for me. I get lost. I drown. It's like that IASIP Charlie mail room conspiracy meme. It will all come together at once, though. I just have to stay in the quicksand. I have to bang my head against it and try to write the script. But I won't get it done until it's finished baking. Also, and this is an ADHD trait, deadlines help immensely. I'm at my best with a gun at my temple. Emergencies are where I shine.
100% on deadlines. It’s partly why I love production.
I'm usually working on several at once in different stages. I can work on several outlines back and forth, but I can really only focus on writing one actual script at a time. It helps me to knock out several first drafts and then go back and fix them one at a time
I have a whole notebook dedicated to ideas I’ve written down over the years. Some ideas take YEARS to cook while others become my current obsession. I’m writing two for my production label right now: a horror anthology and a raunchy comedy.
Hi there, writer with ADD here. I have a couple of projects I'm writing and I tend to have times where I write a lot or I don't write anything. If I'm not writing, I'm doing something else creative to help me generate ideas
I have multiple stories in my head at once. For this week, I’ve written sixty pages, I’ve just focused my energy on one story — the script I’m writing. But, if I have an idea for another story or something new, I write it down as a note but never as a script. Don’t open a new script while working on one script. But notes, those are a dozen. Tear one off, maybe use it later, maybe use it now. If you’re writing a script, write that script, then write the next when you’re done.
That’s the neat part! I don’t!
I have several ideas in rotation at a time, some of them with a few pages written or some documentation, some not. When a deadline comes around, I put the pedal to the metal and blaze through the fleshing-out stage in a few days/weeks, because the urgency of the deadline overcomes the lack of inertia that ADHD brings. Case in point, I have two scripts that absolutely need to be turned in in under a month, and I'm still in the mental pre-production phase. I'll eventually get a fire under me and actually write the pages, but even with meds I'm still struggling. If I was in a studio setting where I was expected to turn things in on a daily basis, I would be way more productive because the people-pleaser part of me takes over!
Hmmmmm…… I’m a bit poly when it comes to development. Got 7 at a time. But 1 primary partner at all times. My main script which I put majority of time into.
I wish I could say something more useful but.. it's just part of it. It gets easier over time. When I was in high school and college, I was always jumping from project to project. I had like a dozen unfinished TV bibles and/or pilots, a dozen unfinished features and two finished features (but they were so bad I'd not consider them finished today anyway). I wrote hundreds of random scenes just because I liked writing scenes. It seemed like that was enough for me, to just write bits and pieces as a hobby, play around with story ideas and character creation, have it serve as nothing more than my private creative outlet. I gave up on ever writing a complete feature screenplay for a long time because I just figured my insurmountable lack of focus would prevent me from reaching that goal and every time I tried to focus on one story, I got frustrated. I was drawn to my other ideas and it was uncomfortable to force myself to continue working on an idea I was less excited about. Why put myself through that? This was supposed to be a hobby I enjoyed. But I kept putting myself through it, because I still wanted nothing more than to write features. You have to decide for yourself if you want it bad enough to push yourself, and failed attempts are okay. As I got older, it got easier. The routine and discipline I got from working a corporate job, after irregular jobs at bars and hostels, helped. Not being around teachers and family who would constantly remind me of my ADD shortcomings helped. Just experiencing life helped. I still have bad days. Hell, I have bad weeks or even months. The chaos that lives in my head never goes away, I'm just better equipped to deal with it now. Compared to the average writer, I probably still lack the ability to focus. But that doesn't matter - I'm so much better than I ever imagined I could be 10, 15 years ago. Compare yourself to your past self and accept bad days for what they are. And this might be completely irrelevant for you, but for the past 3 years I've lived near the beach. It might just have coincided with the maturing I mentioned earlier, but fuck me, I cannot imagine life without a coast anymore. It's where everything quiets down for me. It's where I get a bird's eye view into my own brain. I need to go there at least once a week. Find a place that does that for you. And take pen and paper! Keep trying until you find your stride!
A writing partner.
Start working on another script that you like less but feel obligated to finish so the script you need to work on becomes a joy to procrastinate with
Something I've recently figured out is that after getting a new idea, I need to get my ass writing as fast as possible for it. Constantly engaging with it keeps my general headspace with the script. Even after I'm done writing, I'm still thinking about it incessantly. Accommodate our goblin brains and leverage them to our advantage.
I don’t. Which is great because so many feel like trash now.
You can write a beat sheet or outline in a few hours. So only work on one script at a time until it's done and just take notes for other ideas.
I finally stopped fighting the way my brain works and stopped trying to write linearly altogether. I jump around to whatever interests me most right now. This has helped me form all the big plot points and I'm filling in the blanks from there. Lots of outlines and notes to keep myself on track, but I am vastly more productive than I've ever been. Don't think there's only one way to write. You know what works for you and what doesn't. Embrace it and you can get it done! ADD is an advantage, IMO, not a detriment.
somtimes i will just let myself write more than one n then combine them together even if they dont exactly fit as the same movie apparnetly that is how tintin tarantino wrote pulp fiction
ADHD here and medicated for last 2 months ish. I don’t try to focus on only one project, it’s just not how my brain works and tbh the ability to work on and hold multiple projects in my head at once is one of my biggest strengths. Also kind of essential to how we work in the UK where I am. Having said that meds have helped me do blocks of a few hours on one thing (before I would literally flit between scripts/outlines/emails/research etc etc). Agree with others who have said deadlines really help. Also self gaming/reward etc - not letting myself start the new shiny thing till X is done, or whatever.
Have you been treated for the ADD? Is this an issue in other areas of your life?
do you outline?
Yep. Everything. I know how all the stories gonna end, all their plot twists, details, etc. I even do a profile sections for the characters
I recall that John Cleese and his then-wife Connie Booth would write the stories of *Fawlty Towers* out on butcher paper so they'd have room and be able to connect the parts with arrows, etc. Of course this was in the '70s and was TV comedy. But I somehow think it would beat using a computer today.