FIVE REASONS TO
HANDWRITE YOUR
NEXT SCREENPLAY
LUKE FOSTER
CenterFrame Team
New AI tools such as ChatGPT have provoked considerable debate about whether screenwriters should use them to generate story and character ideas and help write their screenplays.
But what about doing the opposite, eschewing modern technology altogether and writing the old-school way: with pen and paper? Here are five ways handwriting your next screenplay could help your process.
When you use a laptop, tablet or phone to write, it can be tempting to interrupt your writing to check social media, emails, WhatsApp, the news, the weather, sports scores, IMDB, YouTube, Amazon, Ebay…the potential distractions are endless.
Even a well-intentioned Google search to check the exact model of classic Jaguar owned by one of your characters can lead you down a rabbit hole of research into vintage cars that prevents you from getting any meaningful writing done.
The constant ping of new messages or social media alerts on your phone can be equally disrupting.
The beauty of writing by hand is you can switch your computer off, put your phone on silent, and out of reach, and do nothing but write. If you juggle screenwriting with another profession and are pressed for time, it can be a particularly effective way of completing at least one hour of focused, distraction-free writing a day.
Using screenwriting software, you can wipe your words off the screen simply by pressing delete. This might be quick and convenient, but if you’re not careful, you can get stuck endlessly writing, deleting and rewriting the description and dialogue in one scene, trying to improve it, rather than moving forward.
There’s absolutely a time to unleash your inner critic and subject every word of your screenplay to rigorous scrutiny, but not during the first draft. You just need to get your initial ideas out and get to the end.
Writing by hand can be freeing in this respect, as it compels you to keep moving forward and get what’s in your head down on the page. Sure, you can cross things out, but this quickly gets messy. Since you can’t make the words magically disappear the way you can on a screen, there’s not the same temptation to constantly rework everything.
Linked to this is the idea of creative flow. When I write by hand, I feel there’s a direct link between my brain and my pen. This allows thoughts and ideas to flow more easily than when I’m staring at a cursor on a blank screen.
I also feel there’s less pressure to be perfect and greater permission to write the messy, bad version of a scene or sequence, which sometimes can lead to the most interesting ideas.
My favourite reason to handwrite is it allows me to write in any place, at any time. Whether it’s first thing in the morning, just before bed, or if I get a spare 15 minutes when out during the day, I don’t have to faff around, plugging in and switching on a laptop. I can just grab my notepad and pen and start writing.
I can also write last thing at night, without worrying about the blue light from a computer screen affecting my sleep.
As screenwriters, we spend the vast majority of our time writing and only a fraction of our time finishing anything, and, to be candid, when we do complete a screenplay, the chances of it actually getting made can be slim. So the actual act of writing itself has to be fulfilling and fun, or why do it at all?
Personally, I find writing by hand much more enjoyable than using a computer, as it doesn’t feel like: “work”. I feel I’m doing something creative and rewarding, rather than just churning out documents and making PDFs.
Studies have also shown that writing by hand is more stimulating for the brain: activating and connecting more parts of the brain than when we type.
All this said, environmental issues clearly need to be considered, you still need to type everything up and everyone’s processes are different; so you might decide writing screenplays by hand is simply not for you.
Even if that is the case, you still might want to consider doing some writing related to your screenplay or story idea by hand.
Freewriting about your characters, your themes, your personal connection to the story or a plot issue you need to resolve can be particularly effective using pen and paper. For the reasons detailed above, you can get your thoughts out unedited and unfiltered, which may lead you to some interesting discoveries about your characters, your story or even yourself.
LUKE FOSTER
Development Executive | CenterFrame Team
Luke Foster is a screenwriter and Development Executive for Iron Box Films. He wrote the horror comedy Ravers, which premiered at FrightFest 2018 and was released in 2020, including theatrically in North America. He also wrote the comedy drama Betsy & Leonard, for which he won Best Original Screenplay at the Madrid International Film Festival in 2013. Luke hosts the monthly CenterFrame Script Club and has a video essay series on horror filmmaking, Alive In The Morning.
Other Stories
Related articles
You can edit text on your website by double clicking ely, when you select a text box
You can edit text on your website by double clicking ely, when you select a text box
You can edit text on your website by double clicking ely, when you select a text box
You can edit text on your website by double clicking ely, when you select a text box
You can edit text on your website by double clicking ely, when you select a text box
You can edit text on your website by double clicking ely, when you select a text box
