How to Overcome Creative Awe
The more you read, watch, and learn, the more you realize you don't know about screenwriting. This means you're growing! But it can also be demoralizing. Here's how to get through it.
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I offer a comprehensive PDF guide for screenwriters walking them through the process of finding and querying literary managers.
It’s based on my decade of experience working in literary management and receiving thousands of query emails over the years.
When a writer downloads my Guidebook, I send them an email asking about their biggest problem when it comes to achieving their screenwriting goals. I have collected these insights from thousands of hopeful screenwriters over the past year.
This has given me insight into the issues that keep coming up for creatives trying to break into Hollywood.
The deep dives I publish here every Friday are a response to what writers tell me they’re struggling with.
Here’s a recent one that I personally can relate to:
I’ve been learning a lot about screenwriting recently, and there is so much advice out there, so many things you need to achieve to create a compelling story, I think I feel a bit overwhelmed.
I come from a comic book/novel writing background, and I am beginning to understand how different screenwriting is as a visual story.
You have to maintain an audience’s attention visually. You need stakes, conflict, compelling characters, and every moment needs to be sharp and succinct.
I started reading produced screenplays recently, and the writing is on a level of almost mind-boggling skill and mastery. I wonder if I could ever write something that flows that well, is that sharp, focused, minimalistic, yet powerful. Years and years of work went into arriving to the level of writing these screenwriters are at.
I think my worry is I will never be able to write as well as some of these writers. They are true masters of their craft. I feel I have a bunch of ingredients from what I’ve learned, but can I put them together to make a five star dish?
I worry despite my best efforts, I might just always end up with a dry holiday fruitcake.
I am wise enough to see the wide gulf between where I am as a writer and where these produced writers are at, and it feels like I don’t know if I’ll ever become that good of a writer. Not because I totally suck and am incapable but because I am in awe of these writers and how remarkable their writing is.
It seems unobtainable.
I feel like some of these screenplay writers are truly the best writers in the world.
- Jody
First, I will say that Jody here is not alone.
I recently saw a similar complaint in Substack Note (I haven’t been able to find it again) in which an author lamented that she can’t read Toni Morrison while working on her own fiction anymore. The woman is just too brilliant when it comes to storytelling and writing. Witnessing a genius at work stifles all creative motivation.
In the anthology, You’ve Got to Read This, famous American authors select and introduce a short story “that held them in awe.”1
These introductions include a variety of breathless, intimidated compliments like:
“When Molly Giles finished reading ‘Pie Dance,’ I knew without a doubt that I didn’t have all it takes to be a fiction writer. But hearing that story, I also knew—as deeply as you can know something about yourself—that it would be worth a lifetime to try.”
- Amy Tan2
“No one has ever equaled it; it makes those who come after him pause for a minute, in awed gratitude, in discouragement. How can any of us come up to it? Only, perhaps, humbly, indifferently, in its honor and its name, to try. And he did it all when he was twenty-five. The bastard.”
- Mary Gordon on ‘The Dead’ by James Joyce
My own first experience with creative awe was watching Robert Rodriguez’s cinematic masterpiece Sin City (2005) for the first time when I was in high school.
I cried tears. Because I knew that I never would be able to conceive of, write, or shoot a movie that visually creative.
I also feel this intimidation every time I revisit the flawless pilot episode of Cheers (1982), which I recommend to every single aspiring TV comedy writer.
So the good news is that you are not alone.
It’s one of the defining characteristics of an artist: Once we start to appreciate the possibilities within our chosen field, we start to see the techniques leveled by the masters. We are inevitably become intimidated by the scope of what we once foolishly thought we were capable of accomplishing.
The bad news is that you’re right.
You can’t do it.
Those screenwriters that you are in awe of did spend years, maybe decades, honing their craft. What you are reading on the page is a unique combination of experience, study, and insight that cannot be replicated by another human being.
Certainly not you right now at this stage in your journey.
The more you try to learn, the more you will realize you don’t know.
The more you understand about story structure, the more layers you’ll need to peel back. The more mistakes realize you have been making, the more you’ll need to think about in future drafts. The more you understand the matrix, the more you will stress out about having to juggle all its components.
But I have more good news:
Even though you will never achieve perfection or match the writers you admire, the fact that you are aware of the gap is already a huge step in the right direction.
A person who decides to embark on a writing path is an embodiment of The Fool.
We all started this journey without fully realizing how hard it was going to be. This is a good thing. If we knew what was in store for us, we never would have leapt into it.
But we did, and we’re here now, and we’re not going to give it up. (I will not let you. We’re going to get through this overwhelm together).
We know more now than we did when we began.
In the future, we’ll know even more than we do today.
And it’s important to remember that we don’t know what’s going on in other writers’ heads. We only know what is going on in our head.
When you read a finished product, you don’t get access to that screenwriter’s personal neuroses. You don’t get to read their first drafts, you don’t know what notes they received, and you weren’t there with the writer when they wanted to give up.
You are not in that writer’s head.
But believe me, they have felt (probably still feel) exactly what you feel right now.
Even your favorites. Even the Mount Rushmore3 of screenwriters in your mind. The untouchable icons that you are in awe of have Mount Rushmores of their own that always have and always will intimidate and discourage them.
That’s the beauty of humanity. Of art.
We inspire and intimidate one another. And we are intimidated in return. We push through it to learn from each other and build the human artistic canon together.
Each generation raises the standards for the artists who come after us. But we also give them the knowledge and tools that we developed, and we challenge them to outdo us. When they rise to that challenge, they take our species to new intellectual heights.
Creative Awe happens when we engage with art on a level of deeper interaction than the typical consumer does.
The 6 Layers of Interacting with Art
Art is all around us.
It’s in the TV we watch, the food we eat at restaurants, the music we hear, the clothes we wear, the furniture we use, the memes we share, and more. Because there are only so many hours in a day and there is only so much room in our heads, we engage with different art at different levels.
For example, I have a detailed understanding of television structure that allows me to engage with TV on a deeply specific level.
But when it comes to music, I mostly just bounce along and listen to the lyrics.
As an artist, you will have fans at all the different levels.
And as a consumer, you will engage with some art on a shallower level than others.
There’s no value judgment in this. It doesn’t have to do with a person’s intelligence. It’s more about how interested they are in diving deeper and learning more about the craft, ingredients, and techniques that go into the thing that they’re consuming.4
Art is all around you. Here are the different ways in which we can interact with it.
Layer #1: Noticing
This is the most shallow layer of interacting with a piece of art.
It’s passive awareness that something exists without fully engaging in it. When you hear a pop song at the grocery store, smell the food in a restaurant, or see a movie playing in the background at a hipster bar, you are Noticing art.
There are plenty of culturally famous paintings that you would probably recognize but have never actually seen in person, stood in front of, or really taken the time to contemplate.
Art fights for our attention in the jam-packed, distraction-filled world we live in.
Noticing that something is there is the first step before moving into a real interaction.
Layer #2: Consuming
This is when a person consciously and with awareness takes in a piece of art.
When we go see a movie in theaters, when we read a book, when we watch a series on Netflix, when we eat a meal at a restaurant, when we hit play on Spotify, we are Consuming something that someone created.
It’s the intentionality that sets this apart from Layer #1 (Noticing).
Sometimes we don’t go beyond this. That’s okay. It’s all about what someone has the mental bandwidth to bring to an interaction in a given moment.
Sometimes we consume because we need a distraction or we are curious about this thing that everyone is talking about.
But sometimes the thing really speaks to us. This leads us to the next Layer.
Layer #3: Enjoying
The difference between Consuming and Enjoying is having an emotionally moving positive experience with a piece of art.
It’s getting lost in a film. It’s staying up late past your bedtime to finish a book. It’s sitting in the driveway for 20 minutes after you arrived at your destination because you need to know what happens by the end of this podcast episode.
Generally speaking, it’s a Marketer’s job to get a Consumer from Layer #1 (Noticing) to Layer #2 (Consuming).
It’s the Artist’s job to get a Consumer from Layer #2 (Consuming) to Layer #3 (Enjoying).
Layer #4: Appreciating
What is the difference between Enjoying and Appreciating?
I am so glad you asked.
It’s discernment.
For example, when it comes to food, I’ll eat anything. Last night, I ground up tortilla chips to use as the binding for meatballs. They weren’t bad, and I ate the whole thing. But it certainly was not a meal I would ever serve to another human being.
This means when I go to fancy restaurants, I really do love the food. But the chef wouldn’t be complimented by this. I don’t have enough understanding of the art of cooking to appreciate the skill that separates one dish from another. But if a real foodie thought their meal was delicious, that would actually mean something to them.
If it’s the Artist’s job to get a consumer from Layer #2 (Consuming) to Layer #3 (Enjoying), it’s the job of the Consumer to move themselves from Layer #3 (Enjoying) to this Layer #4 (Appreciating)
This is the Layer where Creative Awe starts to become a possibility.
A somewhat embarrassing example in my own life is Lana del Rey’s Born to Die album. It was released in 2011, 14 years ago, when I was a freshman in college.
Singles and remixes from it were the soundtrack to my 20’s. I Noticed her everywhere.
But it wasn’t until literally last year, 2024, when I actually sat down in my apartment, put the album on my speakers, and didn’t do anything else while I listened to it all the way through.
I was blown away by the sound, her songwriting, and how moving the whole experience was.
I, uh, couldn’t exactly bring this up with anyone because what was I going to say? “Hey guys, have you heard of this Lana del Rey?? Turns out she’s pretty good!”
Let’s just say that for all of my Appreciation of movies and TV shows, other areas of my cultural Appreciation are sorely lacking.
My brother, on the other hand, has been doing a music Appreciation exercise for the past year. Every morning he sits down and listens to a vinyl record from beginning to end. It’s a meditative exercise for him. Then he rates it out of five stars and posts a little paragraph review on his Instagram Story.
People have asked him why he does this. He works in tech sales—not the music reviewing industry. He’s not a musician, nor does he have any desire to be one.
He does this because it’s an intellectually engaging exercise that he can complete every day that brings him a deeper appreciation of music.
And I think that’s beautiful.
Layer #5: Analyzing
This is where your interaction with a piece of art becomes more rigorous.
I recently advised you to sit down and actively analyze one script a week. Break a story down until you understand its component parts. Analyzing is when we start looking at what techniques an artist used to get their point across, thinking about what their point really is, and considering how we can use those techniques in our own work.
In Layer #4 (Appreciating) a story, we lose ourselves in it.
In Layer #5 (Analyzing), we regain our awareness and attempt to pull back the curtain. We look at the gears whirring behind the scenes, hoping that in doing so, the artist will reveal to us their craft secrets.
Reading or watching criticism, reviews, and breakdowns of art is a great way to get some help Analyzing it, especially if you’re just getting started.
Some people resist the idea of Analysis. There are so many unfortunate memes on the internet ridiculing English teachers and Film studies professors for going deep into the symbolism of certain story choices.
This is what happens when you try to get a Consumer to Analyze. It won’t work.
Only once someone Appreciates everything that goes into an art form that they can be open to actually Analyzing why a writer or filmmaker would have made the choice that they did.
Because your casual Consumer doesn’t realize how difficult all of this is, they have not internalized the truth that none of these decisions are made arbitrarily.
That’s not how writing works.
If the curtains are blue, they’re blue for a fucking reason.
Sorry, sorry. I digress. Let’s get back to the sixth and final layer.
Layer #6: Understanding
Once you master and internalize the tools of creation for your own purposes, you can start to meet art as a peer, not just a fan.
Two illustrative examples come to mind when I talk about the difference between Analyzing and Understanding.
An Analyst is a Food Critic. They can tell you what works in a dish and what doesn’t. They also have a deep knowledge of cultural and historical context in which to place the cuisine in this meal.
Someone who Understands is like the contestant on Top Chef who, blindfolded, can taste all the spices, identify them by name, and then use them to make a meal.
When I think of Understanding, I think of the iconic cerulean sweater monologue from The Devil Wears Prada (2006). You know the one:
Oh, okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you.
You… go to your closet, and you select… I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back, but what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actually cerulean.
You’re also blithely unaware of the fact that, in 2002, Oscar de la Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns, and then I think it was Yves Saint Laurent, wasn’t it?… who showed cerulean military jackets. (I think we need a jacket here.)
And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of eight different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin.
However, that blue represents millions of dollars of countless jobs, and it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing a sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room… from a pile of ‘stuff.’
In this scene, Andy notices fashion, but Miranda actually Understands it.
In fact, the arc of the film is the journey of Andy’s relationship from Noticing fashion to Appreciating it. She bails on the career before getting to Miranda’s industry titan-level of Understanding.
The more you Understand how screenplay structure works, the more you will be intimidated by the idea of doing it yourself.
But paradoxically, the more you Understand, the more you are capable of pinpointing exactly which tools are being used where.
It is through Analysis that we reach Understanding.
Creative Awe can happen at any of these stages, but it’s strongest at Layer #5 (Analyzing), as we look at the techniques the writer uses to accomplish their storytelling, but we don’t yet know how to wield them ourselves.
It’s through practicing using these tools ourselves that we begin to reach towards the competence that comes from truly Understanding our vocation.
6 Tactics for Overcoming Creative Awe
Now that you know you are not alone, and you have a framework for viewing how you interact with art, here are the actionable techniques you can use to push through the doubt and the intimidation.
Tactic #1: Take it one skill at a time.
The writers you admire have been doing this longer than you.
They did not learn everything quickly or all at once.
Learning screenwriting is learning a new language. It takes time, and there is a lot to learn. When you first get started, this process can be slow and overwhelming.
But the more you do it, the more fluent you will get.
And as you practice, your process will get faster and faster.
Instead of trying to absorb everything all at once, be okay with writing imperfectly. Pick a specific skill and focus your efforts on that. Take classes on it. Read theory about it. Analyze how other writers use it.
And put it to work in your own stories.
Build your toolbox one tool at a time.
You will (and I say this without exaggeration) always feel like you’re failing to measure up to the artist you want to be.
As you continue to improve your skills anyway, you will look back and be astonished at how far you’ve come and embarrassed about your earlier work. But that’s okay! It’s all part of the process.
If you work at this consistently every day, you will get to that point.
Tactic #2: Listen to behind-the-scenes interviews.
Go on YouTube or find podcasts interviewing professional screenwriters.
It can be comforting to hear the people you admire talking about how much they struggled to get where they are today.
You are not in this alone.
The people who are doing what you would kill to be doing are also having a hard time.
Even when you’re the best in the world, there will always be struggle.
If they feel this way and can keep pushing through, so can you.
Tactic #3: Do Inner Critic work.
I have a whole deep dive on this that you can use to work with (rather than trying to silence) your Inner Critic writer voice.
It starts with forgiving yourself and being willing to listen to it.
Love the part of you that is scared.
You have to give them attention, or they are going to get louder. Do some journaling in which you interview that inner voice. Ask about their concerns, their fears, and why they are so afraid for you. Ask what the worst that can happen is. And then what? And then what will happen? Why will that be so bad? Will you die? Are you in danger?
(The answer is “No.”)
Then politely, with love and care, tell that voice that it can go take a nap.
You have writing to do.
Tactic #4: Iterate on a smaller scale.
If writing a full length feature or TV pilot sounds too intimidating, you probably have an accurate understanding of just how complex these stories can be.
That’s more than I can say about most beginner writers.
It’s challenging to accomplish everything that needs to be included in a screenplay. You are not wrong to be overwhelmed.
That’s why movie and TV writers make the big bucks. They are the best in the world.
In the interest of developing your skills in an achievable, scalable way, start small.
You don’t need to write a movie (yet!)
Write a 5-10 page short film.
Write a bunch of short films.
Use what you’ve been learning to tell smaller stories. Once you feel like you’ve mastered writing a short screenplay with a beginning, a middle, and an end, you can start leveling up and making those stories bigger.
Mastery comes from iteration.
Starting a project and seeing it all the way through will give you confidence. You can build your portfolio of short film scripts. You can shoot one or give it to a director friend to shoot.
As you gain confidence and refine your process, you can scale up to feature length screenplays later.
Tactic #5: Teach what you’ve learned.
(Or write about it!)
The best way to learn is to teach. That’s what I’m doing here.
Articulating what you know and explaining your techniques will help you gain more confidence in your ability to leverage these tools yourself. And it will help you combat imposter syndrome. If you’re good enough to teach something, you’re good enough to do it.
And I’m not saying you need to launch a paid online course or get a job as a professor or something (though you can certainly do either of those things).
You can volunteer to teach kids at a non-profit or write your own blog posts outlining the writing tactics you’ve practicing.
You can find a friend, a partner, or a loved one at the Level #4 (Appreciating) stage of movies and explain to them what you’ve been doing.
Speaking your knowledge out loud to a willing student will highlight and emphasize that you know more than you thought you did.
Tactic #6: Read your old work.
If you’ve been taking a class and diligently practicing your skills, it can be fun to go back and see what you wrote just a year ago.
You will cringe at the obvious mistakes that you made. Instead of judging them, celebrate how far you’ve come in just a short amount of time.
A year from now, you’ll be looking back at today from an even better position.
I guarantee it.
Now get out there and spend a little time today developing your next skill. ☺️
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Eudora Welty has the unique honor of appearing in it twice: Once as the introducer and once as the awe-inspiring selection. Which, I mean, just goes to show you.
Correct, yes, Amy Tan, who went on to sell 20 million copies of Joy Luck Club started career thinking that she did not, in fact, have what it takes to become a fiction writer.
To be clear, fuck the actual Mount Rushmore, but it’s a useful shorthand for a cultural concept of fame and recognition that most Americans are familiar with.
I hate using the word “consuming” to talk about art. But it feels efficient here because sometimes we’re reading, sometimes we’re looking at, sometimes we’re listening to, and sometimes we’re tasting. Because these experiences can be so varied, the idea of “consumption” is the word that easiest describes the breadth of versions of the process that is happening.
This is a remarkable post, plain and simple.