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We’ve already spent a few weeks in the New Year,
and most of us have given up on our diets by now. So here are five alternative resolutions, all
of which should be easier than consuming less food.
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1. Take Your Stress Out On Your Characters
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We’ve all got stress, but instead of yelling at
your family members try sticking it to one of your characters. Choose one of your fictional chums and make
that character’s life ten times harder in your story.
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You’ll blow off some steam and improve the
conflict level in your script.
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2. Put Your Script On A Diet
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Instead of dieting yourself put your latest
screenplay on a diet.
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Vow to cut 3 to 5 pages of fat from your
story. Unless your screenplay is already
at the minimum suggested page count, I’m 99% certain you can cut that much
without losing any narrative muscle.
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3. Watch More Movies
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Resolutions don’t get much easier than this for
movie buffs, but the truth is we all need to watch more movies in order to improve
our writing and stay ahead of a constantly changing curve.
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You’ll need some popcorn of course while doing
this mandatory work.
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4. Consume Less Unconstructive Feedback
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Every writer gets some now and then – unsubstantiated
negative feedback. It’ll always be a
part of the screenwriting biz. Resolve not
to give it your time or energy.
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Feedback is crucial. We all need to learn everything we can from
it. But it’s so important to tell the
good constructive feedback from the other kind.
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5. Take More Risks
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Risky writing is much more fun than safe
writing. By risky writing I mean the more
original stuff – the stuff that’s more likely to fail.
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Sometimes you need to go for that quirky
high-risk personal story. If you can
make it work, it’s actually got a much better chance of helping new writers
break in than more straightforward fare.
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That’s it for now. All this resolution talk is making me hungry.
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