Daydreaming

Writing is a challenge for every writer. No matter how excited we are to write, half the time we sit down to do the work and wind up organizing the post-it notes alphabetically by color rather than actually writing. It’s not just you, this is common.

One of the biggest blocks I’ve run into when writing is simply having nothing to write about - I’ve done the work and I know who is in the scene, where the scene is set, what happens, the emotional beats, risks, escalations, you name it, I’ve got it in an outline. But then it comes time to write it and the content is flat and dead.

It took me a few years, but eventually I realized this happens when I haven’t been daydreaming.

For me at least, writing isn’t the process of choosing the next word and getting it down on the page. The best writing happens when I’ve done all the outline work above, and spent time letting my brain freewheel through the scene. Imagining little details, reversals, and funny quips that might happen. Most of that never makes it into the draft, but if I’ve been daydreaming (long car drives are the best) then I don’t have to force the scene, I just describe what happens in the movie playing in my head, and write it down. It makes for a solid first draft, and can then be refined later and made better.

It doesn’t always work, but I have found that when I haven’t daydreamed about a scene or sequence, writing it is an absolute grind. So give yourself some time to daydream and see what happens.