To start on the road to authorship you have to understand a key 
element in the making of a successful writer and this may be a 
novelist, a screenwriter or a playwright. There is no such thing 
as writing badly and whatever you may write, you have to write it 
with pride. The second motto you should condition yourself to 
live by is "it’s not as difficult to apply the pen to the paper, 
as it is to apply your behind to the chair." Indeed, what has 
made great writers out of Cinderella Story’s Akiva Goldsman or 
King Kong’s Peter Jackson is many years of perseverance to become 
the best at what they do. They were not born brilliant artists 
and even today, they admit to still having a lot to learn.

Shervin Youssefian who wrote this year’s acclaimed 
Machiavelli Hangman was told repeatedly that he should stick 
to directing and that he could never become a decent writer. 
After sticking to his passion, eventually, he overcame the traps 
that often cripple beginners: too much exposition, senseless 
talk, no subtext, all characters talk and look alike.

Steven Spielberg who recently finished War of the Worlds said 
that what distinguishes David Koepp from other action-adventure 
writers is that he finds a link to humanity and manages to tell 
the big budget extravaganza through the eyes of an ordinary 
person. This must have been exactly what attracted Tom Cruise to 
the project in the first place. While there may have been a lot 
of explosions and a ton of special effects, the audience was 
still connected to the story because of the characters’ 
relationship to one another.

Every writer knows that the best material comes with inspiration 
but inspiration is only a trigger to release material that has 
been building up inside the writer’s head. You get your material 
through observation, lots of it. And what good is it if you 
observe and you forget… which is why it’s always good to keep 
with you the clichéd writer’s notepad or audio recorder – guess 
what, they do work! You have to sit back and listen instead of 
talking so much and absorb… and every time that something catches 
your attention, let it be a trigger that it would probably 
interest others too. 

The third motto to live by is that we are all alike. As human 
beings, we all experience the same emotions and most often than 
not go through the same life events. For this reason, when you 
write something that has happened to you and means a lot as far 
as your personal experiences go, you can be certain that a lot of 
other people will relate to the material.

So as a recap, you have to sit down and make yourself a writing 
schedule because it’s always better to write badly than to write 
nothing at all. Second, you have to start observing. Third, you 
need to tell your own stories using the screenwriter’s structure 
which we will review next week.

Until then, do your homework and keep writing. 

Aaron Trinidad has worked as a writer 
on various TV sitcoms, he's currently 
taking a class in screenwriting in 
New York. - Machiavelli Hangman: 
http://www.hangmanmovie.com