Unless you're David Berkowitz, listen to the voice inside your head

I've been trying to plot out my new romantic comedy for more than a week now. You know you're in bad shape when you can't even get to the midpoint. I took piano lessons for several years and I learned that sometimes, you really need to just go as fast as you can and power through a song. Amazingly, I was surprised with how many f-ing Bach Inventions I could make it through just by going fast. When I slowed down to think about it, my fingers would go all finale to Greatest Show on Earth. Derailed.

So why haven't I tried to power through my latest pain in the ass? Part of me says I can do it. I'm fairly happy with the first act I've plotted out. I've done it before. Just sit down and start writing.

But I can't. A little voice in my head is saying, "Dude, you don't have a story yet!" And that little voice is right. I don't have much of a plot. I don't have much conflict or antagonizing force. There's no finale. There's practically nothing!

Can I power my way through all that? Certainly. But I would still have nothing at the end of the day.

The point is that my story does not yet exist. And there's only one way around it - create it. And by "create" I mean the pain-staking labor of staring at a white board for hours if not days. I mean having it consume all my thoughts. I mean the agony of sitting around the apartment watching my life click away as no writing gets done.

Stories don't create themselves. They don't just happen. You can't power your way through a concept and into a story.

I feel this is one of the reasons that many terrible scripts circulate this town every year. People ignore that little voice in their head that says, "It's not ready." Instead, they think, "I'm a writer! I'll let my characters invent the story as they go." Or they think, "I'm a writer! I can't just be sitting here doing nothing. I need to be productive!"

The end result is that they bang out a concept without a story. Their rewrites are attempts to graft a story onto their bare-bones concept. Finally, they have a bad script and they don't know why.

Don't be a light-weight on the prewriting. Throw all of your ideas into it and see which ones stick. Be honest with yourself on what the problems with your script are.

And don't worry, the first draft will still suck. There will still be plenty of exploring, rewriting, and unmanageable storylines.