Do any of you take a break (several weeks) while writing your screenplay?

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  • Do any of you take a break (several weeks) while writing your screenplay?

    I've read many novelists will take a couple weeks to a month off from their manuscript and totally avoid their work. Do any of you do this with your scripts? Have you found it helpful?

  • #2
    Re: do any of you take a break (several weeks) while writing your screenplay?

    A pro screenwriter is probably never doing this, I'll wait to hear from one here to make sure, I'm assuming the deadlines they are working under prohibit any kind of break like this. I can see Novelists doing this, it takes much longer to write a novel, the pages are full with double the words as a screenplay page, maybe 3x.

    Amateurs stop and start projects all the time. Finishing is not our strong suit. People don't finish. Raise your hand out there if you have more than one screenplay that has been half scripted, and not nearly finished, for more than a year? More than two? More than three?

    Jeanpaul, see all those hands raised? I have my two arms and legs in the air.

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    • #3
      Re: do any of you take a break (several weeks) while writing your screenplay?

      I often take breaks between stages of a script, like between drafts of a rewrite, or between development/prewriting phases. It can help to get away from it for a bit, especially when doing rewrites. But I try not to take breaks while I'm directly in the middle of anything. Sometimes life happens and I can't get to it for a little bit, but stepping away for weeks at a time is a good way to lose steam, in my experience.

      Edit: Not a pro.

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      • #4
        Re: do any of you take a break (several weeks) while writing your screenplay?

        I echo both Cyfress and omjs. If I'm just lazily writing a spec that who knows where it may go, I'll at least get the story on paper (sort of a quasi treatment) and script out the scenes I've developed in my head.

        But as far as screenplays with deadlines and projects with an expected completed screenplay and activities lined up after that (whether that be pitches, query letters, contests, etc.) I don't take time off.

        However if you've completed one, while you're waiting for feedback for a rewrite or shopping it or whatever, definitely take a break to either:

        Start another screenplay.
        Read a bunch of screenplays (both produced and unproduced).
        Take a break.

        Besides being cathartic I think doing a "mental cleanse" of what you were just working on is a good thing and then revisiting after that break.

        But like Cyfress said, I've got about 60 "started" screenplays and a bunch of others on deck besides the ones that are completed. Not enough time in the day.
        You know Jill you remind me of my mother. She was the biggest whore in Alameda and the finest woman that ever lived. Whoever my father was, for an hour or for a month, he must have been a happy man.

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        • #5
          Re: Do any of you take a break (several weeks) while writing your screenplay?

          Taking a time-out is a luxury that you can afford if you're not on a deadline. Wagner made a several year long pause somewhere in the middle of composing Siegfried… Non-professionals can do it. Sometimes it's necessary. Often it's good, to let your mind sort things out without pressure. Maybe it's like they say about relationships: a short separation will strengthen your love, a long one will kill it.

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          • #6
            Re: Do any of you take a break (several weeks) while writing your screenplay?

            The thing is, unless you have a deadline you can do whatever you like. If it helps you to have a break, then take one. Other writers like to go hard until it's completed. There's no rule, there's no one-size-fits-all. The only qualifier I would add is that having the discipline to get it completed as soon as you reasonably can without diverting or procrastinating will benefit you as far as a writing career goes.
            "Friends make the worst enemies." Frank Underwood

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            • #7
              Re: Do any of you take a break (several weeks) while writing your screenplay?

              a fishing trip is always good medicine to take your mind off of work of any kind. get your line in some wild water and you'll soon think about all kinds of things not related whatsoever to pen and paper and words and character arcs and settings and screenwriting software and agents and lawyers and consultants and blah blah blah...you're in nature, you and the river or stream or ocean or lake, and at lunch you wish your packed ham sandwich tasted a little like the onion sandwich in that Hemingway fishing short story, which wasn't really a story about fishing at all, or later as the smallmouth bass you hooked sails like a bronzed god out of a deep river pool you know Moby Dick never could look so beautiful, and when that big Muskie makes you lose your footing on a muddy creekbank and you disappear into where it lives, you know it won't gobble you up like Jaws did with Quint, you hope, and you think about how a story said how one feller a long, long time ago once fed many with one fish and your thoughts wander to when you really got that special time to go fishing with your dad or a brother or an old friend, like you used to way back when small waters were big ones...you think about a river must run through the whole dang thing of it all. burt reynolds can shoot a carp with his bow while standing in a canoe. now that's a fisherman, you suppose. fishing trip ends. go back home. good to get away from it all. start writing a story about some guy fishing who gets swallowed by a whale but that's been done before so he's now catching the whale and it looks like a marlin...you get going with it, has some real guts you think and a little magic too, screw structure and all the other b.s. right now and you wonder...where the hell did this come from? then you wonder what an onion sandwich, dunked into a trout stream, tastes like.
              Last edited by AnconRanger; 02-19-2017, 09:02 PM.

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              • #8
                Re: do any of you take a break (several weeks) while writing your screenplay?

                Originally posted by Cyfress View Post
                Amateurs stop and start projects all the time. Finishing is not our strong suit. People don't finish. Raise your hand out there if you have more than one screenplay that has been half scripted, and not nearly finished, for more than a year? More than two? More than three?

                Jeanpaul, see all those hands raised? I have my two arms and legs in the air.
                Not even one in my case. I've finished all scripts I've started writing.

                I like to think that this quality of a stubborn mule is the secret to my success at achieving many of my professional dreams. It's like this brain condition, an obsession.

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                • #9
                  Re: do any of you take a break (several weeks) while writing your screenplay?

                  Originally posted by goldmund View Post
                  Not even one in my case. I've finished all scripts I've started writing.

                  I like to think that this quality of a stubborn mule is the secret to my success at achieving many of my professional dreams. It's like this brain condition, an obsession.
                  A casual approach rarely leads to much success in this game. Succeeding usually results from one, or a combination, of three things: passion, discipline, and obsession, with some talent thrown in for good measure. There's an old saying along the lines that it's funny how the people who have the most luck are the one's who work hardest.
                  "Friends make the worst enemies." Frank Underwood

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                  • #10
                    Re: Do any of you take a break (several weeks) while writing your screenplay?

                    I suppose that if you need a break to achieve some perspective on things, in any task that is quite healthy, you could always go to other ideas, but if you abandon everything, it may become a problem; what am I saying, it just depends on you, everybody is different, if you get it done eventually, and unless there's a deadline, why does it really matter at this stage?



                    .
                    Forthcoming: The Annual, "I JUST GOT DUMPED" Valentine's Short Screenplay Writing Competition. Keep an eye on Writing Exercises.

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                    • #11
                      Re: Do any of you take a break (several weeks) while writing your screenplay?

                      Finished is a subjective term goldmund. Is a script finished when you type fade out or when it moves a reader how the writer intended?

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                      • #12
                        Re: Do any of you take a break (several weeks) while writing your screenplay?

                        I want to put in a plug for Cyfress. He checked out our script on which we'd just typed FADE OUT and gave us notes we are now using to tighten it and make it more emotionally effective.



                        Originally posted by Cyfress View Post
                        Finished is a subjective term goldmund. Is a script finished when you type fade out or when it moves a reader how the writer intended?

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                        • #13
                          Re: Do any of you take a break (several weeks) while writing your screenplay?

                          Originally posted by Cyfress View Post
                          Finished is a subjective term goldmund. Is a script finished when you type fade out or when it moves a reader how the writer intended?
                          lol you're too deep for me man

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                          • #14
                            Re: Do any of you take a break (several weeks) while writing your screenplay?

                            Originally posted by Cyfress View Post
                            Finished is a subjective term goldmund. Is a script finished when you type fade out or when it moves a reader how the writer intended?
                            It's finished when it works. But whether that means it has to work for you or for a reader is another question...

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                            • #15
                              Re: Do any of you take a break (several weeks) while writing your screenplay?

                              You know how clear-eyed you are when you read someone else's script? How objective and dispassionate you are?

                              That's what happens when you take a break from your own project. You come back to it with greater objectivity. To be recommended.

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