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Seth Godin’s post “How to read a business book” talks about the difference between business books and other how-to books.
He says:
“The gap is motivation. Gardening books don’t push you to actually do something. Cookbooks don’t spend a lot of time trying to sell you on why making a roast chicken isn’t as risky as you might think.
The stakes are a lot higher when it comes to business.
Wreck a roast chicken and it’s $12 down the drain. Wreck a product launch and there goes your career…”
I think a lot of scriptwriting books miss out. They talk about structure and beats and character arcs. They focus on the recipe but not enough on the motivation. Seth comments that he will “spend 95% of my time persuading people to take action and just 5% of the time on the recipes.”
But this raises another question: What causes this need for motivation? Why are the stakes elevated in writing so high that it causes inaction?
Hypothetically, if you were to write a first draft of a script, it might take you about 15-30 hours of our entire life. Let’s see, that leaves you with 656,970 hours left to come up with excuses why you aren’t doing the work.
And when it’s done, you don’t have to show it to anyone but wouldn’t that be a waste? Finally, I am going to give you my secret recipe for writing a script: Start at page 0 and write until you’re at 120.
Good luck.