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We love writing.
It is a fun process.
Yes, it is frustrating at times.
It gets scary at times.
You get stuck.
It doesn't feel like you're ever going to get unstuck sometimes.
But what we try to do with this class is show you our process,
because this is the process that we found,
for us, made the writing process as smooth as possible.
And as fun as possible.
And of course, there are bumps along the way.
We've written outlines that don't work.
We've written scripts that don't work.
But that's okay.
We at least now know when stuff isn't working.
We know how to go about solving those issues.
That makes it a lot less stressful and a lot more--
less pressure on us.
And that allows us to enjoy it a lot more.
In fact, I would say there was a point in our life--
there was, like, a two to four years part of our lives where
writing was really painful and not fun.
It felt like torture.
Pulling teeth.
Yeah, it felt like pulling teeth.
If it's feeling like torture to you,
you may be doing something wrong.
And so that's what we realized.
It was like, it's not that we didn't enjoy writing.
It was that we were approaching it in the wrong way.
So if it is feeling like that to you,
that doesn't mean you're not meant to be
a writer or anything like that.
It just means that your process should probably change.
Hopefully, our process doesn't make it feel like torture.
But if it's not working for you, you
will find, hopefully, your own process that works.
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Before we get into you doing anything writing related,
I think we have to talk about one
of the least fun parts of the process, which
is writing habits.
But I cannot tell you how many people we know,
how many people, aspiring writers or whatever,
this is the downfall in that.
It's so easy to just not write anything.
It's so easy to--
Procrastinate.
--procrastinate, to delay, to stare at a blank page,
to surf the internet.
And before you know it, you've lost two years,
and you have 10 pages.
So it is important to develop something
of a routine for yourself.
It's very, very difficult to focus.
I'll tell you a little bit how Ross and I do it
and how we focus.
We certainly don't stay focused throughout the entire day.
But we do our very best.
We keep each other in check.
That helps.
But if you don't have a writing partner, that's fine, too.
We like to start really early in the morning.
Like, we think-- if I'm not going
right away, if my brain isn't locked into writing mode,
whatever that is, early morning, then I'm going to fall apart.
I'm not going to be able to start mid-afternoon.
I mean, sometimes we'll have stuff
now with "Stranger Things" where we're
trying to start writing at, like, 2:00 PM.
And it's always a disaster.
So we've got to get started right away
with that cup of coffee.
And then we give ourselves a long time to write.
Like, we write from roughly, like, 9:00,
and then we stop around 6:00 or 7:00,
which is a really, really long writing day.
To me, it makes the day less stressful
because I feel like I have a lot of time.
I have a lot of room to make mistakes.
And then if my mind wanders, it's not the end of the world.
And there are other writers--
I always think about Stephen King, right?
I know we all look up to him.
He's one of the most prolific writers in the world.
I think he has a 2,000 words a day goal.
And as soon as he accomplishes that, he's done for the day.
He writes 2,000 words, he's done.
Sometimes he's done by, like, 11:30 AM, sometimes he's
done by 2:00 PM, whenever he hits that goal.
And that really works for him, right?
And then he goes and watches, like, baseball games
or whatever it is.
So everybody has something very different.
Some people like the morning to themselves
without having to think about writing.
So I think the important thing is figuring out
what works for you, but setting goals for yourself, setting up
a routine for yourself.
Try to stay off the internet.
We like working out of our houses.
Some people prefer being in a public space like a coffee
shop, right, because that forces them to focus.
They find it's less distracting.
I find it more distracting.
Whatever it is for you works.
Maybe you have a day job, and you can't do it.
Well, maybe two hours every night when you come home,
and you just sit down and you do it.
And you just find whatever time you have and go,
this is when I'm going to write.
And you spend that time actually writing.
And you try to focus.
You could have the best big idea in the world,
but if you don't have the discipline
to sit down and actually spend the time to write it,
it's just going to sit there.
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Another downfall we see is that people just
get frustrated.
I mean, they are working, and they are putting in the hours,
but then they just get lost.
A script just seems broken.
The script isn't working.
And you just kind of throw it away.
It's so easy to get, like, lost in the woods
is kind of what we call it.
It just feels-- like, 60 pages, 100,
if you're doing a show, 120 pages, roughly,
if you're doing a movie.
It doesn't seem like a lot.
But it's very easy to get lost in there,
lose sight of the bigger picture.
And I think that happens more often than not
to writers, every writer.
It certainly happened to us when we were starting out.
I mean, we toiled around with a script forever.
I mean, we got really lost.
And nothing ever happened.
It just ended up wasting a lot of time.
What we're going to try to do with this class is kind of walk
you through kind of a step-by-step process
that will hopefully allow you to avoid that,
avoid that sense of being completely lost.
When we wrote "Stranger Things," or "Montauk,"
as it was known back then, we wrote it on spec.
And what spec means, if you don't know,
is that we developed it on our own.
There was no one attached.
There was no guarantee of it selling or much less
getting made.
We were just doing it completely on our own, which
is very freeing because we're the only opinions at this stage
that really matter.
It's scary, because you don't know
if you're putting in all this time and it won't go anywhere.
So that's the trade-off.
But we enjoy just developing stuff on our own.
And so that's what we were doing with this.
The other danger, though, of working on spec
is if you're getting paid to write something,
generally you're going to be given deadlines
by that company.
They're going to expect things at a certain date.
If you're writing it on spec, well, there
are no real deadlines unless you create deadlines for yourself.
And I think that that can occasionally
be something that helps people.
Now, I'd be lying to you if I said that Matt and I were
great at hitting deadlines.
We create deadlines for ourselves all the time.
We rarely make them.
But I do think it is important to set goalposts
for yourself and go, okay, well, I'm
going to work on this outline for the next two weeks.
And then I'm hoping that by Saturday, July 13,
I'm going to be moving on into the script stage.
Now, what this does is it gives you some structure.
And I think that that can be helpful
if you're writing it on spec.
The danger of it being, you may be moving onto a stage
before you're ready.
And that's why when I say Matt and I blow past our deadlines
all the time, we do not want to do that.
We have done that in the past, where we jump in the script
or we jump into fleshing out an outline too early.
And then what happens is you end up
wasting additional weeks continuing
to work on something where you've just gone too far ahead.
And like Matt's saying, you get lost in the woods,
and you have to go backwards in time,
throw all that out, and start from scratch.
And that is a much bigger time waster.
Just make sure not to move on to the next stage
until you're feeling very confident,
because, as Matt's saying, it's not like we just
wasted a few weeks on projects.
We wasted at least a year on projects
where the issue was actually all the way back to this big idea.
It was missing some key element.
And maybe we knew it in our gut, but we needed to move on.
We felt we needed to move on to those next stages.
And we just went too early.
So we'd advise you not to do that.
No, it's good to create sort of artificial deadlines
for yourself.
And sometimes, the real world will hit you
with a deadline of its own.
So in the case of "Hidden," I mean,
that happened because we were extremely low on money
at that point.
We were about to run out.
We had about a month?
A month and a half.
A month and a half in order to get this script written.
And it felt like we kind of had a gun to our heads,
that we had to get this script written.
We had to write a script.
We had to sell it.
It felt kind of like an impossible task.
But it gave us this sort of urgency
and adrenaline that we didn't have in some of the earlier
scripts that we had written.
And that really helped us.
The same if you end up working for a studio or whatever,
you're going to have these scary deadlines that you're
going to have to hit.
A little bit of urgency and a little bit of a deadline
is good.
Don't-- I think something we did early on is we just indulged
too much.
We spent too long on stuff.
It's good-- a little bit of speed is good.
A little bit of speed.
A little bit of speed is good.
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One thing that helps us as we're working on ideas
is that we work with each other, so we have a writing partner.
So we're able to bounce ideas off of one another.
We're very honest with each other.
We also grew up, obviously, together,
so we've watched all the same movies and the TV shows.
We have the same references.
We have mostly the same things that we love.
So that helps.
We have, obviously, quite the shorthand.
But I think it can be helpful if you
have a sounding board, someone else that you can bounce ideas
off of.
You go to someone that you trust,
whether it's a friend or family or someone you've
met in school.
And you can go, hey, I have some ideas,
and I want to see how you respond to them.
I think that that's also something that can
work as part of your process.
One thing that helps Ross and I in terms of staying focused
is that we have the other one to check.
So if suddenly I'm on the internet, Ross will go, Matt,
what are you doing?
I don't see you on my Google document with me.
Like, where are you?
Focus back in.
So it does help to have a writing partner.
We know most people don't have a twin,
so we're fortunate in the sense that we have twins.
Oftentimes, we know people who find--
who do have a writing partner who
find someone who shares their sensibilities who
they enjoy working with.
But we also have a lot of friends who write on their own,
and they don't have that partner.
So to sort of refocus them, I think if you're working alone,
then that means it's more important than ever
that you have a routine and structure and deadlines, all
of the stuff that we talked about,
because you don't have someone else checking in with you.
Maybe you're going to say, hey, in two weeks,
I'm going to send this outline to my friend for feedback.
And maybe they'll check in with you in two weeks
and go, hey, how's that outline coming?
That helps.
So there are ways around it.
But whatever you do, and this is very personal,
but come up with a way to give yourself
a little bit of structure.
If you are working with a writing partner,
you may both have your own strengths.
For Matt and I, for instance, I'm
generally trying to keep pushing us forward.
We got to get this done.
We got to write this outline.
We got to get to this script.
Right.
Matt is very good at going, well, wait a minute,
this isn't figured out now.
It's a little bit like checks and balances.
So I think we sort of push and pull each other,
and we find a good balance there where we are making progress.
We're not getting too lost in the woods.
But at the same time, we're making sure
that everything is up to par.
MATT (VOICEOVER): So in this next assignment,
find someone you trust who can serve
as your sounding board for your ideas
or to help keep you accountable to your deadlines.