When Passion Fades: How to Rekindle Your Love for a Script You Once Adored

Reader question: “What about a script you fall out of love with after 2–3 drafts, and just can’t finish? Put it aside for now or just push through?”

This is impossible to answer in the abstract because there are so many different potential meanings to the words “fall out of love.” So let me create three different scenarios, speak to them, and perhaps you fall into one of these categories.

Scenario 1: The writer has fallen out of love with their script… because they have grown tired of it. It’s lost its sheen. Whatever magic the writer felt about it from the point of story conception has waned to the point where they are bored.

Strategies: Whenever I work with writers just starting out with a new idea, I always ask them this: What is your emotional connection to this story? Two reasons why: (1) This is a critical threshold to cross in picking a story to write because if you do not have a strong resonance with the material, it’s like whatever affinity you have for it will wane. If, on the other hand, you DO have a strong connection to the story, the energy deriving from that resonance can help to push you through the writing and rewriting slog. (2) By putting into words your specific connection to the story, you will have in writing something you can refer back to in the event you lose your focus or energy.

Whether you wrote down something about your emotional connection to the story at the beginning of your story-crafting process or not, try to recall that initial association you had with it. Perhaps you can build on that, rekindle your original flames of inspiration, reminding yourself of precisely WHY you were attracted to the story in the first place.

Scenario 2: The writer has fallen out of love with their script… because their attention has been drawn to a different story. This new idea seems full of potential, much cooler than this old idea which now seems rather stale.

Strategies: Situations may arise in which a writer can reasonably make the argument their enthusiasm for a new idea justifies them switching from an old one, at least for the time being. The Coen brothers famously did this when they were stuck writing Miller’s Crossing, then after going to a screening of Baby Boom — of all films! —…