Sometimes sitting in front of your computer is not enough to make writing happen. We've talked about writer's block in the past, and my summation of how to beat it was just to write on or write something different.
But how do you do that?
The short answer is: try some creative writing practice exercises. These are tools that you can use to really jumpstart your brain's battery. They can be worksheets or prompts or just exercises that get you thinking outside of the box.
The "science" behind them is simple. When you shake your mind out of the mundane and the ordinary, you can find solutions to your problems. The best writing exercises are not procrastination but ways to get you back to doing your best work.
These aren't just writing exercises for aspiring writers, but things season professionals use to unlock their best ideas.
So today, I want to go over some of these strategies and how they can apply to you.
Let's get started.
One of the things I've tried to do here at No Film School is democratize screenwriting for the masses. That meant building a ton of worksheets to help guide people through the process of writing a script. We have the book, which you should download (free screenwriting eBook), but we have a lot of screenplay writing worksheets, too.
Check out some of the ones below.
A treatment is a multi-page document written in prose that tells the story that happens in your screenplay. It is a synopsis, with action and sparse dialogue, and works as a roadmap for the reader, producer, and writer.
A screenplay outline helps you organize your thoughts and the beats of the story. It's a way to also entice yourself and the reader of the outline.
A beat sheet is a list of emotional moments in a feature film screenplay that helps a writer outline their story.
In general, screenwriting and creative writing share a lot of the same theories behind them. All writing is about communicating to an audience.
Most of the ones I find to be most effective come from a place of emotional vulnerability. If you begin writing from a place where you are vulnerable, you might share things with an audience that make them connect to your story and characters.
Some examples of creative writing prompts are:
Crafting interesting and unique characters takes a lot of effort. You need to think about people you know, people you'd like to meet, and get inside actors' minds to make sure someone wants to play these creations.
None of this is easy to do, but hopefully, our character prompts help guide the way.
What are character archetypes? They're broad-stroke headings that refer to the kinds of characters in stories or screenplays.
I love using these molds to help me learn about expected outcomes or tropes. But also, I like to lean into certain qualities presented to format parts of the story I'm working on telling. I think they are useful tools to help inspire and breathe life into the people on your pages.
Character development comes in two parts: internal and external.
You can think of internal character development as your character's fundamental goals and motivations for their actions. And external development as the struggles and scarring or transformative experiences that make them who they are on the outside.
A character arc is an emotional and physical transformation that a character undergoes throughout a film, TV episode, TV season, or TV series. The character arc depends on the person's physical and emotional response to events in the story.
Now that you have the basic worksheets on how to write a screenplay, let's look at some prompts to get you out of the tough binds you'll get into on the page.
One of the hardest things to do when you're writing is just to get through a hard scene. One of the things I like to do is to insert a new genre into the movie or TV show. Like, when I am writing horror, I try to write a romcom scene into it. Does it fit, will it advance a storyline?
Another tip I would push is to make it rain.
Changing the weather in a scene can add drama or comedy. It can also spark more nuance and add tension.
So what are some generic scene prompts to get you started beyond that?
We have 75 more writing prompts that will supercharge your scenes, and if that's not enough, you can check out 100 Scene-Writing Prompts here.
When your scene is going well, bad dialogue can derail it.
We have some tips for writing dialogue, but you should think about the prompts. What do your characters believe in, where have they been in their lives? Is this a conversation where they are giving or getting advice? Are they talking about one thing but mean another? Maybe they see something in the street or hear a song come on the radio.
When it comes to writing dialogue, try to make it feel like a natural conversation.
As we know from our drama genre article, these film and TV series portray realistic characters in conflict with either themselves, others, or forces of nature. They usually focus on character and how these people arc over time.
When it comes to the exercises at the center of this genre, you have to think about the root of every scene. conflict!
Some drama writing exercises can be:
As you can see, any of these situations involve squaring two or more people off against each other. The center of the drama is conflict. Let this stuff get weird and wild, and see where these stories can take you.
The comedy genre covers any work in film or television whose general purpose is to create humor and intentional laughs for the audience. It has its origins in ancient Greek plays and oral tradition. People love engaging in comedy. It puts them in a good mood and can be incredibly good at keeping their mind off bad things.
To make your comedy writing pop, you need to workshop different punchlines, setups, and situations.
Some comedy writing exercises can be:
Most comedy prompts are just experiences that would be a drama in any other light. They should be difficult for people, and we should see them go through hell. This will make sure the jokes all land, because we like to laugh at other people's misery.
Now that you've mastered all these scenes and prompts, you can get back into your own work and put them to good use. So much of writing is just about jarring you from the place of stasis and challenging you to be vulnerable with the audience.
The goal of all the exercises here is to make you better at understanding yourself, your characters, and the progression of your story.
Got more tips for us? Put them in the comments.
I can't wait to read what you write next.
Now get back to work.
From Your Site Articles
There's nothing better than the adrenaline-pumping action sequence or set piece to build momentum in your screenplay. Since the dawn of filmmaking, we've had great fight scenes captured for us to enjoy.
The best ones are like a roller coaster. Ups. Downs. and lots of twists and turns. In honor of John Wick's fifth anniversary this week, let's highlight the best action sequences that didn't have any guns in them. Just two combatants using their fists, knives, swords, or trash cans to beat the crap out of each other.
Each of these scenes also advances the plot in new and intriguing ways as well. So strap on your brass knuckles, and let's beat some asses.
Before we jump into the main event, I wanted to peak at three honorable mentions.
First up, we have to herald John Wick 3. While the franchise holds some of the best gunfights in history, it also does so much for epic movie fisticuffs.
This threequel's glass wall set piece is one of the most fun and violent action scenes of the franchise. I love how it builds on Wick's lore as a famous badass.
If you've read our take on underrated Soderbergh, then you know Haywire holds a very special place in my heart. Each scene in this movie has a ton of fun with a real-life action star, Gina Carano, beating people up.
But this hotel sequence serves as the best and most realistic fight I've seen in a film.
Rumble in the Bronx was the American introduction to Jackie Chan. While the movie contains lots of jaw-dropping maneuvers by the actor, I wanted to put a different one on this list.
If it were up to mean, Jackie might take all ten spots. But my editor rejected that idea. So here we are.
Sir Ridley Scott is one of our greatest living directors and it is shameful he doesn't have an Academy Award for Best Director. We talk a lot about how cool scenes can be, but this fight services the story so well. It shows that Maximus has become even more powerful than the Emperor and also that he's only human.
This was my first Jason Statham movie. Somehow, it seems as if he hasn't aged since then. But this British badass showcases one of the coolest ideas ever as he uses oil to slip and slide his way into beating a room of thugs.
Not enough people have enjoyed this dark and gritty Cronenberg classic. It's a movie about survival, and there's no better scene about the pure desire to fight to survive than this bathhouse encounter. This is about a man who wants to live and will do anything to make sure that happens. Even if it means fighting naked in a bathhouse. Because reasons.
The 1980s were defined by action films. Most of them were about blowing things up. But They Live was so close and personal. It made you confront the subliminal messages in your own life and when it came to one of the most famous fight scenes of all time, you have to obey and put it on the list. And to think it all starts with a conversation about glasses.
I feel like when I was a kid there was much more crossover between foreign language films and American audiences. Maybe it's because Crouching Tiger got dubbed and thus was easier for mainstream audiences to digest, but I feel like when I saw it it had subtitles? Nevertheless, I love this scene because it takes the old and new guard and aligns them against one another.
Jason Bourne kicks ass in the first two movies, but this scene from the third film raises the bar in terms of tension and choreography. This is the only fight I thought Bourne would lose. It's also the culmination of this threat who has haunted him for the whole story. Greengrass' editing and shooting style doesn't make this feel too shaky, either.
Marvel movies have gotten so huge that things rarely come down to fisticuffs. I was tempted to put the Endgame battle against Thanos, where Cap grabs and wields Thor's hammer, but I am still stunned by the mastery of this all-timer MCU scene. It was our first introduction to what the Russo brothers would imbue on the other films in the Marvel universe. It felt personal, the stakes felt real, and Cap never looked so cool kicking ass.
What's the first Jackie Chan scene you saw that wowed you? Because I think this movie has three or four of them for me. It was hard to choose between this movie, Operation Condor, First Strike, Police Story, and Who Am I, but I am going here because of the sheer amount of jaw drops it instills. This market scene is quintessential Chan. There's an outrageous comedy element, incredible moves, and long takes that make everything look so real.
Sean Connery's second James Bond movie expanded upon the success of the franchise's first film, Dr. No, and doubled-down on the exotic locations and complex Cold War plots. It also started a franchise staple future movies would use as a benchmark: Bond having a long, brutal, and inventive hand-to-hand fight. From Russia With Love's train brawl, with its then-"never-been-done-before" staccato editing style, coupled with the raw fighting style of its two combatants, gave the movie a jarring jolt and audiences one of the most iconic action scenes in all of movie history. It's still the bar to which all future Bond movie fights would measure themselves against, with Spectre making the most obvious attempt to match it.
Look, no action or fight list is complete without TheRaid 2. Everything in this movie is built to excite. So when you get into the movie's epic and iconic kitchen fight scene, you know shit is about to hit the fan. The Raid movies always make the most of their surroundings and have inspired every fight scene that came after them.
You'll never hold a hammer the same way again.
Oldboy is a contemplative, slow-burn revenge drama, where a guy eats an octopus and. I don't want to give away the ending, but it's nasty. And shocking. There are so many disturbing and weird things that happen in this film, and yet the standout is this legendary oner where a guy takes on 20-plus people with a hammer.
Fight scenes might be some of the most exciting to watch, but they're also some of the most complicated to shoot. Capturing a fight for a film requires a lot of carefully executed techniques in order to make it exhilarating, realistic, and safe for all involved.
So learn and do it right!
