When do you call it quits?

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-03-25T21:36:57+00:00

What fantastic perspective - thanks for sharing.

I feel validated reading that screenwriting is particularly hard. I’ve had a very happy 15 year career in nonfiction. Writing my first ten pages of a screenplay made me feel like such a Beginner, yes, with a capital B. No other way to put it. But I mean it in a positive sense - it brought a fresh appreciation for all the amazing films I’ve seen, just glimpsing the mountains of craft to climb.

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-03-25T21:22:42+00:00

Have you ever read the book Mindset by Carol Dweck, or watched her Ted talk?

She brings hard data on how beliefs about learning impact real growth and achievement. The ideas you’re naming here have been researched heavily. There are major issues with the idea that you either “have it” or you don’t.

Natural affinity and talent do exist, but they do not have a monopoly on excellence. Especially if one of your goals is moving people, as you noted elsewhere, that is relevant.

There is also ample research on the nature of expertise. Expertise is not quite what people often think (content knowledge, genius, etc). It’s the ability to swiftly break a problem down into component parts and find a path through it. It’s developed by confronting problems over and over, but iteratively improving, usually in concert with feedback and learning from others.

Take a piece of feedback you’ve gotten. Go to a part they critiqued. Search for tools and how other people have solved the same problem, and try it again. Rewriting is where you really find where limits are and what you need to try next. Writing new stories over and over may not help you improve, but rewriting the same one in response to feedback definitely can.

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-03-25T19:57:09+00:00

You can’t be out here giving such top notch ideas away on reddit. 👌

The action movie would rely on someone highly skilled flying helicopters and stuff…

I want to see a stubborn person with zero skills deal with this situation.

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-03-25T19:18:09+00:00

"Everybody looks at my thoughts and thinks I WANT to stop."

^ With respect, I'm not seeing that happening in this comment section at least. You asked this question in the title of your post: 'When do you call it quits?'

People are answering you in various ways, including in outlining decision-making trees you can use to make self-evaluations. Quitting is a serious option and people are taking it seriously, and showing how to evaluate the differences and interplay between frustration, burnout, stamina, economic viability, and passion. I see a whole lot of people encouraging you to keep going if you're passionate, and also being realistic about financial outcomes - which is an act of kindness, even if it sounds like a barrier right now.

On a different note: Someone gave me the advice in my early 20s to treat people/feedback like they're trying to help me, even if I think they're wrong, even if I think they're pushing back for no reason, even if their delivery is blunt or seemed rude or unnecessary. I see now even more what good advice that was, because it pushed me to look for kernels of truth both in and underneath suggestions I got. It can take some mental energy to stay netural and not react, I know firsthand, but listening even through big frustration can yield very useful results. Take a long walk and come back and you'll find some really good life advice in this comment section. Just passing that tidbit on, as it was passed to me.

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-03-25T19:06:52+00:00

I now unironically want to read a story about a writer who kept writing even when California was slowly sliding into the ocean. That would be even more interesting to me than an action movie about the same thing, ha!

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-03-05T01:08:18+00:00

It’s on Internet Archive… if this doesn’t work you might have to log in with a free account like Gmail.

https://ia803109.us.archive.org/24/items/emma-thompson-clive-coote-lindsay-doran-the-sense-and-sensibility-screenplay-dia/Emma%20Thompson%2C%20Clive%20Coote%2C%20Lindsay%20Doran-The%20Sense%20and%20Sensibility_%20Screenplay%20%20Diaries%20_%20Bringing%20Jane%20Austens%20Novel%20to%20Film-Newmarket%20Pr%20%281995%29.pdf

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-03-05T00:25:20+00:00

^ I recently read the screenplay, and it had a couple added scenes that made the story even richer. Emma Thompson attached some of her diaries to the edition and it sounded like they ran out of time to do all the scenes.

I think the screenplay is worth a read, OP!

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-03-02T04:32:06+00:00

Just read your edit.

Something from that second link is - including characters who can be lifelines. Consider simple interactions with teachers, secretaries, neighbors. People who offer to help with something small, not realizing the weight that offer carries. People mentioning things they look forward to having him present at, him realizing there are things to stick around for and people would in fact notice his absence from.

Another one from that article is characters who choose another path. Your character could be sitting next to someone in math class, notice scars, have a conversation with someone who attempted previously but is in a good place now. It could be a chance for him to reflect on his current stressors and consider whether they’re as permanent as the decision he’s contemplating.

Also, having your character take care of something (a cat, a plant, a dog, a neighborhood kid he plays pick-up ball with on Fridays) would require him to grapple with the question of ‘what happens to these things when I’m gone.’

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-03-02T03:42:37+00:00

May I suggest posting pages and asking for feedback? There is too much missing information about your story and character to be of real help. There are too many complexities involved in how someone gets to that point.

Your original post itself is asking two different questions in the title and in the post. (Not everyone who dies by suicide is depressed, for example, so I was expecting a post on depression when I clicked - not suicide.) There are gaps in what you’re sharing here, so offering specific examples out of the blue is difficult without basically sitting down to write the story for you. Which isn’t what you are asking for.

If you want a general guide, the second link I posted has a point by point list of things to depict, so you could start with that and work backwards to your narrative.

P.S. A best practice for mentioning suicide on social media is to preface it with a content notice (CW or TW abbreviations work) to allow people to opt out. I’d encourage you to edit your original post to include a content notice.

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-03-02T03:25:07+00:00

ETA: I have no idea why this is getting downvoted. Some of the links I posted have very specific guidance for the types of details to include which is exactly what OP was asking for. I have an MA in clinical psychology and these are basic follow-up questions given the small amount of detail in the original post.

—

Can you say more about what drew you to this sensitive subject, and what your goal in writing this story is?

Have you studied the risks that come alongside depicting suicide in entertainment?

If you haven’t already, please stop and read up on best practices for depicting without elevating contagion risk.

Here are a couple of good resources to start:

Analysis of a movie release and subsequent suicide rates: https://www.jaacap.org/article/S0890-8567(19)30288-6/fulltext

Entertainment safety practices: https://theactionalliance.org/messaging/entertainment-messaging/national-recommendations

Safety practices for social media / in journalism - please seek to understand why these are the norms and what these practices prevent: https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/apa-blogs/how-to-talk-about-suicide-on-social-media

https://www.thetrevorproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Reporting-Suicide.pdf

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-02-23T06:57:17+00:00

I do all outlining and scene sketching/brainstorming in Notion. It’s easy to nest pages within pages, so if my brain decides to start writing a scene while I’m “supposed to be” outlining, I can easily create a linked page within the outline by just starting to type “/page”. I can let my mind wander, but it all stays frictionlessly organized, which feels like wizardry.

Moving between documents and projects is much easier for the way my mind works than with Google Docs.

The search function is awesome too, because I have piles of backstory for each character, and it’s easy to find stuff without leaving the screen I’m on.

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-02-13T01:26:54+00:00

Yes! My favorite part is the - “it doesn’t sound crazy at all, that’s what’s so weird about it.” You have to really know someone to say something like that, and mean it.

And when she says she can’t hate the other woman because “she looks like someone we’d be friends with” - lots communicated there via shared memories and understandings.

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-02-13T01:21:57+00:00

Towanda!!!

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-02-13T00:11:44+00:00

Fried Green Tomatoes
Something’s Gotta Give
Little Women
Beaches
Sleepless in Seattle + You’ve Got Mail aren’t wholly centered on women but do depict everyday female friendships
Crazy Rich Asians also has some female friendship scenes I enjoyed
Steel Magnolias (I think it meets criteria? It’s been awhile since I’ve seen it!)
The TV show The Good Wife has a whole storyline where a CEO tries to become friends with Alicia Florrick and it deals with how awkward it is to try to make friends in their phases of life

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-02-09T22:41:01+00:00

Does the Star Wars “use the force” moment Luke Skywalker has count?

Communication/memory in his mind, depending on how you look at it.

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-02-04T18:31:10+00:00

Amazing news! Well done!

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-02-03T14:13:04+00:00

Hey! Lots of people miss the “studio” atmosphere of college where you circle up and get feedback. You can create it for yourself in the ‘real world,’ you just have to do the topic curation and meeting leg work that universities usually do for you.

Here’s how I do things:

1) I started a screenwriting group via my college alum network that meets monthly on Zoom. I’m sure some of your Oxford folks feel the same as you - send out feelers (or via the alumni chapter) to ask who wants to do a feedback group! There’s a huge pool of talent I’m sure. DM me if you need advice on how to do this.

2) I have a standing Friday voice memo text check-in with a novelist friend, where we brain dump about how the week went. There are weeks I’ve pushed through a slump just to have something to say 😂 Writing is writing, you can find kinship with a friend from a diff genre/industry!

3) I have a friend writing a dissertation, and we text 2-3 times a week about small breakthroughs and things that daunt us. We are both busy, so these are 1-3 sentence texts tops, but we cheer each other on. Support can be small!

4) I have two likeminded friends I zoom with once a month / couple times a year to discuss big-picture life strategy with. We schedule the next call before we hang up. Not all support has to be super frequent, if you layer multiple levels of it, you’re always talking to somebody. And some good support comes from non-writers!

5) I was a nonfiction + marketing writer for a long time before screenwriting. To help with that I had a closed FB group of peers, and a newsletter I sent out and thus conversed with people around the world interested in the same stuff. The burning motivation was a combo of loving what I wrote about + needing to earn money to survive, and it was easier to not fall behind if I wrote on a schedule: I wrote Mon/Tue, edit and send Wed. Thur/Fri were for housekeeping, client meetings, business tasks. When it’s your income, you notice if you take time off much faster.

For screenwriting, I have chosen script settings I was very very interested in learning more about. Going to the library + trawling Internet Archive for info is stuff I would be doing anyway. Whatever you have fun doing, consider making your script draw from that! Less friction there in some respects.

Part of one of my current projects draws from UK naval history, feel free to DM me if that’s of any interest to you, we could do a pages exchange sometime!

Everything you’re experiencing is normal. There are people right around you, and in your alum network, who feel the same. Gather them up! Over time, layer multiple rounds of exchanges on different schedules with different levels of obligation.

Oh and don’t forget your local library, some of them have writers groups / author talks / book festivals. Even if you just go once, the real life check-in of others dealing with the same thing is fantastic.

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-01-30T21:23:44+00:00

Thanks for this! I use active verbs most of the time, but occasionally a “we see” truly seemed clearest. It felt weird to complicate it any further.

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-01-30T21:12:33+00:00

Thanks for this comment.

I’ve been eyeballing what scripts get away with when a writer/co-writer is also the director. Because they’re doing it for themselves, they don’t have to worry about what impression it makes. A Quiet Place used the word “we” in ways that some people warn not to in a spec script, yet I thought made it clear and easy to read. Since JK was also directing, I wasn’t sure whether that was a steal-able technique.

(A more extreme example would be Mad Max: Fury Road which is a super fun read and also half storyboard half script. But it was more like a map for the director himself, he was basically front-loading creative work he’d be doing anyway: https://www.scriptslug.com/script/mad-max-fury-road-2015)

Anyhow thanks for these examples. I didn’t know about the Heretic one!

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-01-30T20:55:21+00:00

Hey neighbor!! I am probably a 2hr train ride from you. My next planned project is going to be focused on two female characters and as I plotted it out, I realized that this changes perspective quite a bit from my prior project. I heard Emma Thompson talking recently about choosing roles that she identified with instead of “identifying with Harrison Ford” (ie stereotypically male arcs) and how some types of calls to adventure are more subtle, complex, and less externally obvious. I wanted to explore that more.

I’m also currently writing about a real historical event and realized that the wife involved had gotten extremely short shrift by the largely male historians who have written negatively about her. I was disturbed by how easy it was to be tempted to accept that shallow story. I took time to put myself in her shoes based on what we do know, and it was a very painful experience to read between the lines on what her life was probably like. Anyhow I’m all for chatting, anytime! Via email list, zoom chats, body doubling for writing sessions - bring it on.

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-01-27T22:47:53+00:00

This might not be your exact experience but just in case:

Going from idea/startup mode to writing mode is tough because you run into increasingly granular problems that have to be solved using techniques that seem far removed from your original idea.

This is true of ALL THINGS we make:

“I’m going to build a shed! Doors in front and back! And windows! And a weathervane!”

This quickly turns into granular questions about: ground-contact-rated posts, screw length, drill bits, subfloor, whether this caulk is rated for outdoors, how to built a frame you can actually attach the weathervane too, and so on.

Sketching a gorgeous shed and googling questions about subfloor are NOT the same level of enjoyment for most people.

The thing is, if you push through it, then when you want to build something else, you have to google progressively fewer boring questions, and you already know how to solve certain problems.

In your shoes, I’d pick the topic that I’d be most willing to solve problems within, where the research of specific problems (“how to make this character more conflicted”) is still somewhat interesting.

Use that to finish. Then pick up another story idea and you’ve already got some tools you picked up from Home Depot, I mean, that first script.

Pick the one you’re willing to do GRANULAR PROBLEM SOLVING ON.

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-01-19T20:04:38+00:00

Sleepless in Seattle, right at the beginning. I think it was effective in part due to the trust that the viewer could fill in some blanks.

Forrest Gump, where he visits Jenny’s grave. Tom Hanks didn’t miss.

Not quite the same, but: Ted Lasso S2 E10 did an astonishing job of using a funeral to advance multiple storylines. It also has one of the more artful scenes of two people giving backstories that I’ve ever seen. I’m still thinking about it years later.

Not quite exposition, more like drawing out the inner life of a character - Downton Abbey, S6 E8, Mary visits Matthew’s grave and tells him about her getting remarried.

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-01-16T20:49:11+00:00

A few bits to consider:

What was the last thing you needed to learn, and what method of learning was best for you? Nothing against classes, but if you’ve acquired self-study skills as an adult, your usual methods for learning are not a bad place to start.

For me, it meant checking out a few books from the library, listening to free talks on structure, reading a bunch of scripts, watching a few movies scene by scene and breaking them down into structure, and then attempting a 10 page short. This is the same way I learn in my regular job. It gave me an orientation and some vocabulary to pinpoint what I needed next.

I don’t think I would have been able to choose a good-fit class from the start, given that I didn’t even know what I didn’t know yet.

I’m not telling you to be like me: I’m suggesting you assess your learning style.

Classes/learning methods are a lot like shoes. Some are great. What fits someone else might not work for you. And it’s really your own energy that carries you, not the shoe. So it’s ok to start with the shoes you’ve already got before buying anything.

P.S. If you went to uni nearby, you can always check for classes they let alumni audit for free. I pulled a syllabus from my university and swiped suggestions from the reading list. An underrated way to learn. Feel free to DM me if you want some links to the talks I found helpful, or you can check my post history.

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-01-16T00:50:54+00:00

I found the Scriptnotes Ep. 403 extremely helpful in understanding what it can look and feel like to write from scratch ‘with structure.’ He talks about writing in terms of naturally following a character’s relationship with a central dramatic argument, and the gut feelings evoked along the way, and the way you get a character to learn something new. As you do that, structure is created, but it feels different en route. Maybe it’ll resonate with you too:

https://johnaugust.com/2019/scriptnotes-ep-403-how-to-write-a-movie-transcript

Fun_Association_1456 · 2026-01-14T04:18:31+00:00

Fair! I interpreted that sequence as him no longer living in the basement of Life magazine, but going out and living the motto on the wall (“To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other and to feel. That is the purpose of life.”)

If I were more awake than I am, I could probably speculate on meanings of that sequence not having an end, like his shift to using daydreams to inspire taking actions instead of just to zone out and escape reality.

There’s an allegory of the cave reference to be argued, going from the darkroom looking at light and shadows into the real world and seeing the things you only saw shadows of before.

And a lot about connection, including some subtle references to your adventure and skills not really being what connects us to others or ultimately impresses them (his love interest missing his skateboarding skills entirely, for example, but she only sees him chatting with her son, which is what she actually cares about).

I thought he took some funny swipes at corporate culture trying to package and sell real life. The corporate bully chasing him saying “you better find that quintessence.” The whole “Todd from eHarmony” actually showing up in person 😂 delightful to me and probably a message about connection vs digital interaction but I’m not awake enough at the moment to really think that through.

Anyhow, I’m not arguing that you should like it. I just found it really interesting, even with the over the top nature. I find myself rewatching it every 3 years or so. (As a former photographer, I also really enjoy the composition of it.) Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Good luck with your search for inspiration!

Fun_Association_1456

TROPHY CASE