How to Write a Script: David Lynch

His secret? Seventy three by five inch cards.

Years ago, I read an interview with David Lynch which I featured in the How They Write a Script series in which he talked about his script-writing process.

For seven years I ate at Bob’s Big Boy. I would go at 2:30, after the lunch rush. I ate a chocolate shake and four, five, six, seven cups of coffee — with lots of sugar. And there’s lots of sugar in that chocolate shake. It’s a thick shake. In a silver goblet. I would get a rush from all this sugar, and I would get so many ideas! I would write them on these napkins. It was like I had a desk with paper. All I had to do was remember to bring my pen, but a waitress would give me one if I remembered to return it at the end of my stay. I got a lot of ideas at Bob’s.

I believe that Bob’s Big Boy (featured in the photo above) was located on La Cienega Boulevard south of Pico in Los Angeles (it is no longer there).

So one part in writing a script: Lots and lots of sugar!

The other part he talked about was the use of index cards. This video recently floated across my social media stream:

Here’s a transcript:

I met Frank Daniels at the American Film Institute who was Dean of the School Center for advanced film studies and he taught a way to do it. You get yourself a pack of 3x5 cards and you write a scene on each card and when you have 70 scenes you have a feature film. So on each card, you write the heading of the scene and then the next card, the second scene, the third scene, so you have 70 cards each with the name of the scene. Then you flesh out each of the cards and walk away you’ve got a script.

It’s funny how with all our new technologies, so many Hollywood writers still use 3x5 inch index cards to break a story (I use them).

Of course, the cards are simply tools. The hard work is what goes on the cards and how they are shaped into the story structure. But assuming you do the work, per Lynch: 70 cards x 1 1/2 pages per scene = 105 pages.

Since 105 is the new 120, that numeric magic would appear to work!

For more How They Write a Script articles, go here.