Five weddings and a funeral

The best advice I got on writing a difficult scene was from Richard Curtis, who wrote Four Weddings and a Funeral. When he has trouble writing a scene, and I guess he uses a typewriter, he takes out five sheets of paper, writes one through five at the top of the sheets, he rolls in the first sheet and writes one possible version of the scene. Then he rolls in the second sheet and writes another version, and so on. He makes himself write five different versions of the same scene and then he sees if any of them are any good or if they can be combined in any way. It’s another way of taking the pressure off yourself. Sometimes, if you’re having trouble, a scene may be misconceived and very frequently, you may not need the scene at all.

—Nicholas Kazan

Nicholas Kazan on outlining from memory

Once the story fleshes out, I start developing an outline until I don’t know what happens next and I stop. I go back to writing notes for a few more weeks until the story becomes clearer and then write another outline without looking at the first one. I start from scratch. If you’ve ever had the experience of losing a document after a computer crash and having to rewrite it without looking at the original, what you often find is that you’ve remembered the best stuff and forgotten what was problematic. That’s why I try to do another outline from memory.

—Nicholas Kazan, in The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters