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Last month in our Cinema Master Class, we studied the complete feature filmography of Ruben Östlund, every fiction film, in order, and I cannot recommend this exercise enough for any serious writer.
One of the great gifts of watching a filmmaker's entire canon in a single month is that you get to witness how a storyteller actually grows. Not the myth of talent. The reality of craft, accumulated one film at a time. Östlund's first feature, The Guitar Mongoloid, immediately signals what will become his signature: he does not rely on plot. Plot is the dominant craft tool of contemporary Western cinema, and Östlund essentially sets it aside. What he gives us instead is world and character. The film moves as a series of vignettes, fragments of a social reality that felt largely invisible to mainstream cinema at the time. You can feel him working to make that world visible, to trust that observation alone can hold an audience. The connections between characters emerge, but quietly. He's not engineering them. He's discovering them. With Involuntary, you can see his craft sharpen. He finds a governing idea that will anchor his work from this point forward: within each vignette, within each character's world, there is an involuntary event, something that happens to them, not chosen, and the drama lives entirely in how they respond. The choices available to these characters are never clean or noble. They are the choices real people actually face: uncomfortable, face-saving, morally compromised. Plot is still not the engine here. Psychology is. He is learning to get inside the human animal in a way that traditional narrative structure doesn't always allow. Play is where you start to see him reach for something new. For the first time in his work, there is a singular, driving plot, a genuine through-line. A secondary plot exists alongside it and the two converge by the end. It's not yet the mastery he'll later achieve, but that's precisely what makes it so instructive to watch. You can see him learning. You can see him layering in a skill he didn't yet have, and doing it carefully, without abandoning everything he'd already built. By the time we reach Force Majeure, the film most audiences know, something has clicked. He has developed the ability to construct cause-and-effect sequencing, the engine of traditional narrative, without sacrificing any of his hard-won sense of world, character, psychology, or consequence. And here his thematic obsessions come fully into focus: social status, saving face, masculinity, the elaborate performances we give each other and ourselves. The tension between those who serve and those who are served, which he will radicalize even further in The Square and Triangle of Sadness, and which I suspect will be central to his forthcoming The Entertainment System Is Down. What This Means for Your Writing Here is what I want every writer in our master class to hold onto: there is no education that could have gotten Östlund to Force Majeure without him first making The Guitar Mongoloid. There is no shortcut through the work. He couldn't write fiction at all in the beginning, so he made a documentary. Before the documentary, he filmed his friends skiing down mountains. That was where he started. Please watch the early work of filmmakers you admire. Watch it without judgment. Watch it asking: where can I see them wrestling with the themes they would later master? How did they pursue those ideas before they had the resources, the collaborators, the budget? And then apply that same grace to yourself. As writers, we have an advantage: we don't need a million-dollar budget to begin. But your early drafts are meant to function exactly the way Östlund's early films did. They are explorations. Your first script, and your second, and your fifth, and your tenth, are not failures waiting to be corrected. They are the mountain slopes. They are the documentary. They are The Guitar Mongoloid. I think of my own drafting process this way now. The first draft is filming friends down the mountain, just getting something moving. The second draft is the documentary, getting the world and characters onto the page, making them real and visible. The third draft is Involuntary territory, where do the events and consequences start to emerge? The fourth draft is where psychology deepens. The fifth is where I begin to shape structure and plot in earnest. You do not have to do all of these things simultaneously. Most writers can't. It is not only acceptable to layer them in, it is, I would argue, the most intelligent way to work. This approach also gives me faster drafts, which matters to me. I am a sprinter, not a marathon runner. I give myself tight deadlines, not because speed is the goal, but because wandering in circles for years does not serve the work. Move through the draft. Get it done. Then get feedback quickly, before you have time to over-attach or over-ruminate. The revision always reveals more than the waiting. Before The Entertainment System Is Down arrives, and I hope it is soon, I encourage you to start from the beginning. A note: Östlund likes to sit in a shot. He will not rush you. If you find yourself getting restless, I'd invite you to replace that judgment with curiosity. Ask yourself what that stillness is doing to you as an audience member, what it is activating, what it is making you feel. It is a genuinely meditative experience, and an excellent antidote to the fragmented pace of the rest of our screen lives. If you'd like support with your own drafting process, learning how to move your creativity onto the page without self-judgment or critical interference, our Meditative Writing class is starting soon. For feedback on a script you're already working on, both our TV Screenplay Alchemy class and our year-long Masterclass offer structured guidance at every stage of the process. The work teaches you. Trust the work. Hey Screenwriters (and TV writers, novelists, memoirists)
If you've found yourself lost in the second act of your screenplay or manuscript, first of all, do not feel bad. Every writer gets lost in the second act. And honestly? It's a good sign. It means you're deep enough into the work that the easy part is behind you. There's actually a term for this feeling from the world of navigation: Dead Reckoning. Before GPS, when sailors were crossing open ocean far enough from Portugal that they'd lost sight of shore, but not yet close enough to see New York, they had to navigate by compass, speed, and trust alone. No landmarks. No confirmation. Just forward motion and faith in the process. That's exactly where you are in your second act. Here are a few ways to navigate through it. 1. Be kind to yourself. Just because it's annoying, scary, and/or hard doesn't mean it’s wrong. Getting lost in the middle is not a sign that you're a bad writer. It's a sign that you are a writer writing something new. If you are writing something original, it will always feel like you are driving in pitch-black darkness with one headlight and can only see two feet in front of you. You are building the road as you are driving on it. If the road were already there, you would be writing something that already exists. 2. Trust that the answer is to keep writing. And don’t be petty about pages. Write through it. Keep going until you can see the shore on the other side. If you're the kind of writer who worries about "wasting pages", pages that won't make the final draft, here's the truth: you have no idea which scenes are going to get you there. You are still writing to discover the story, the characters, the choices, and sequences that will carry you to the end. I've never met a musician who said, "My goal is to play guitar as little as possible while making this album." So accept that you are going to write a whole lot more than 110 pages in order to arrive at the 110-page draft you actually want. Prioritizing the least amount of writing over getting a great draft done will leave you disappointed. Great writers, prolific writers, accept the truth that they might need to rewrite a scene dozens of times to get it to where it needs to be. Just like great athletes practice plays and passes hundreds of thousands of times to compete professionally. How many times do you think a professional pianist rehearses a single song? A LOT! 3. Talk to your characters. They're right there. Sit down and have a conversation with them. Ask: "What are some ways we could get from where we are right now to the end of this story?" “What do I not yet understand about you?” This is something we practice in the Meditative Writing classes, going back into the world of the story and letting the characters lead. If you don’t have much time, this is a great way to connect with your characters and story during your lunch break or on your commute to work. 4. Map out your four possible endings. Every story has four possible outcomes for the protagonist: - They get what they Want and what they Emotionally Need - They get what they Want but not what they Emotionally Need - They don't get what they Want but get what they Emotionally Need - They don't get what they Want and don't get what they Emotionally Need Try writing all four of those endings as rough sketches, then pick the one you're most excited about and write toward it. And when you're choosing how to get there, don't ask: "What's the quickest route?" Ask: "What's the most fun? The most surprising? The most true to my genre? The most thrilling?" Ease and convenience are not the goals. Great art is. 5. Get feedback. Sometimes what gets you to the next shore is another pair of eyes. In a workshop like the TV & Screenplay Alchemy Workshop, you get professional feedback, you hear how other readers are experiencing your work, and you walk away with a clear to-do list for your next draft, a compass to navigate by when the horizon feels blank. You are not lost… at least not forever. Trust your course, keep writing, and the shore will appear. Have you ever wondered any of the following?
Why am I struggling to write? Do I have writer's block? What even is writer's block? Why do I resist writing? I really want to write, but I don't want to sit down and do it. I just stare at the page. Or when you finally sit down to write, you suddenly get up and start doing something else. That sock drawer is suddenly really in need of organization. Here are five important things to understand about writer's block before you give up. 1. Every writer experiences resistance to writing. I've worked with writers who are brand new to writing, and I've worked with Academy Award nominees. So if you're thinking, "I just need an agent, and then the resistance will go away," or "I just need to sell the script, and then I won't have writer's block", I hate to tell you, but that's not going to happen. In fact, the more successful you become, the more stress and pressure you have to perform. It's important to learn how to deal with resistance to writing before you become a professional writer. So practice bravery (which requires fear to be present), and let’s build stronger writing habits. 2. Sometimes it's a deep issue. And sometimes it's not. Writer's block can run deeper than productivity tips can reach. You might be diving into difficult material, and you may benefit from talking with a therapist. Other times, you are giving in to completely irrational fears. We can create a plan for that. 3. Regular writing is the key, and daily writing is easier than you think. It's actually harder to write three times a week than it is to write every day. When you do something every day, you stop negotiating with yourself about whether or not to do it you just accept that it's part of your life. If you can commit to writing every single day, even for just five minutes, you'll find that after about 45 days, it becomes significantly easier, because you've removed the daily internal debate. Remember: If you can't write for five minutes, you can't write for 50. 4. You're probably setting goals that are working against you. Most people don't understand how to set goals in a way that creates the brain chemistry that makes you eager and excited to write. Instead, they're setting goals that release stress hormones, which makes writing feel even harder. Getting your goal-setting right is a game-changer. 5. Treat writing like a meeting with your boss and create a ritual. Block your writing time on your calendar as if it's a non-negotiable appointment. Then build a warm-up ritual for yourself. Here's the truth: it's not always the writing that's hard; it's the starting that trips most writers up. That's why athletes have pre-game routines and dancers have warm-ups. If you make your ritual ridiculously easy, you'll find it much easier to get into your writing. These are some of the things we explore in the Meditative Writing Level One class. Join us for our next round so you can develop a writing process that helps you suffer less, write more, and to make sure your writing is reaching its full creative potential. If you need feedback on your script/manuscript, check out our TV/Screenplay Alchemy Workshop or Mentorship and Consultations. |
Jess HindsCreator of Meditative Writing. 
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