Use a Placeholder in Your Email to Avoid Getting Stuck
Sometimes the hardest part of writing is not finding ideas or knowing how to get started, but keeping the flow so you really finish what you started. This is not a block enough, just a writer since you are already on the go, but a writer road block if you will. This trick, used by the staff writers of Star Trek: The Next Generation, can help you get on with your journey .
The TNG writers were great at coming up with interesting storylines for the Enterprise’s crew, but they weren’t real scientists or experts in space travel. So when things like this came up in the script, they often used the placeholder word to refer to scientific things and worried about fixing it later. Screenwriter Ron Moore explains the process to Syfy :
We had scientific consultants who just came up with words for us, and we just wrote “technology” in the script. You know, Picard would say, “Commander La Forge, develop warp drive technology.” I’m serious. If you look at these scripts, you will see this.
Why stop your writing stream to come up with a bunch of believable technology in a 24th century spaceship? It’s a waste of time at this point in the writing process! The dark truth about writing is that it is about 90% of the revisions. So, focus on telling the story on the page, and take care of adding all the small, irrelevant details later.
Of course, this trick works for all types of writing, not just science fiction or even fiction. Journalists often use “TK” as placeholder, fantasy writers can use “magic that” or “magic that”, and I even started using it for my scripts and horror scripts. I just write “SCARE” when I know that a scene needs a push at a certain moment. Use placeholders, learn to love revision, and you’re guaranteed to finally finish what you write.
Ron Moore calls Star Trek technology “pointless” | Syfy via Medium