• Wondering which camera, gear, computer, or software to buy? Ask in our Gear Guide.

screenplay What Stimulates Your Writing Skills and Creativity?

My question is for anyone who writes for a living or even as a hobby (Screenplays, novels, stories, songs, articles, etc.)...What environment (if any) stimulates your writing abilities, talents, and creativity?

For instance......writing in a coffee shop at your favorite table?....writing in your apartment with your cats purring at your feet? At night or during the day?....When you're rested or when you haven't slept in a day or two?.......When all is quiet or with your favorite music playing?......When you have a completion deadline or with no timeline stress at all.

Does your diet help at all?.....sweets, chocolate, coffee, alcohol?......Does it help you to write all at once....or over intervals of time?.....At home or in public?....Sharing your thoughts or ideas with trusted friends....or keeping everything to yourself?....Do you rewrite over and over...or is your first written thoughts and words usually the best?....Do you read your work out loud....or silently?

I realize everyone is different and no one method or habit fits all.......But for all the members and guests that read IndieTalk, many may benefit from knowing what successful, professional writers (and there are many here) actually do to help them simply write better or with more creativity, even if it's only a personal habit (good or bad).....I know your time is valuable, so thanks in advance for your replies.
 
There's a lot of answers to this question, and the quality of the same answers will vary from one recipient to another, but here's a few things that I've personally found effective.

1. To answer your basic question, to cite a simple environment that helps, take a long hot bath until you are fully relaxed. Listen to music that works with the theme of your writing. This is helpful during the raw creation stage. Coming up with concepts, twists, etc. Basically being creative works best when relaxed, and free from distraction. For me personally, music always plays a big role in how scenes are written, I'm sure some prefer silence.

2. For the actual writing process, just anywhere that you are comfortable, and not distracted. Some people go write in public, I have not found that to be helpful. Something that I found helped more than expected was a mechanical keyboard. They cost about 130 dollars, and just make typing all day a lot more comfortable.

3. The more valid advice is to create a writing schedule, to begin training yourself to be creative whether you feel like it or not. Most professional authors will tell you that they set aside a certain number of hours a day, and stick to that. One of the ways that this is effective is that some days you will sit down at your allotted time and find you have nothing to write, no ideas, etc. Stick to your schedule. What happens is that if you sit there for a while, you eventually get bored and start writing "something" just to entertain yourself. Often as that is happening, you develop some idea that is actually interesting, and then that pulls you back into the rhythm.

4. General physical health is significant to writing. The best results come from days when you feel calm and energetic, with some optimism about your work. Those days are more frequent if you pay some attention to diet and exercise. Very generic advice, I know, but relevant in the long haul.

5. When creatively stalled, try this exercise. Find a film or book similar to what you envision, and begin watching or reading it. During major events in the story, pause, and imagine that one thing in the scene had gone differently. Now write that story in your head. What if that bullet that whizzed harmlessly by the hero's head had hit, what then? Where would this story be headed if the orphanage didn't get burned down. How would the detective have solved the case if the killer didn't leave behind that matchbook. During this process, you will find innumerable plot ideas, easily adapted into original work.
 
I write comedies, and I have a hard time sitting at a computer trying to be funny. The thing that has helped me, is that I essentially sit outside with something recording me while I talk. I might be with a friend, or by myself. I just keep spewing out incoherent garbage that I think is funny. Then, at a different time when I'm feeling more analytic, I will listen to the audio and write it into an outline of good bits. Then script, then hone the script, etc...

I don't know if any of that is helpful at all to different styles of filmmaking besides comedy, but it helped me a lot.
 
I am finally putting my story together and one of the most invaluable tools I have is using a notepad (I bought mine from hide and drink, which is leather )

Leather Journal Cover for Field Notes, Notebook Cover for Moleskine Cahier, Handmade Vintage Leather Cover for 3.5" x 5.5" Notebooks, Brown​

with a field note pad (Elan publishing) on the inside. There is something about it that inspires me to write ideas and then revisit the notebook to transfer to my iPad. I do not get the same effect writing notes into my phone, the phone feels like a task if that makes sense, and writing in the notepad feels organic and creative. I absolutely cannot sit at a computer and be creative, the ideas have to come as I go about other tasks or simply taking a walk.

Another method is letting my brain work in diffuse mode when I sleep, so before I sleep I will think of an idea and when I wake up my brain has been working on the idea and story in the background and the idea is usually very detailed and structured when I wake, very trippy shit lol

I am an amateur at this, but those two methods have really made things work great for me in story building.

I also have a tackboard that I am going to be using to post multiple pages (and color code) to visually see how the story flows together without scrolling or page turning.

Once I actually start writing the script on my qwerky writer typewriter (in theory will help with creative dialogue) I will post again what inspires me to finish building the story and creating the script formally.

These are just my tools and methods which, to me is the only way I can even create a story, I need muliple resources, tools and methods to make the story build, and it takes a lot of time, with many short revisions.
 
Last edited:
Another method is letting my brain work in diffuse mode when I sleep, so before I sleep I will think of an idea

Believe it or not, I do the same thing at night before I sleep....and it does work (at least for me).

Also, when I drive home late at night (2-4am) with little or no traffic, during my 25 minute commute with the right songs playing on the radio, my story ideas just seem to come automatically without even trying.

I've been doing this about 5 years now and this summer I hope to have most if not all of my story completed.....at least the first draft.
 
Back
Top