Here are a few quotes from the excellent resource, The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters, on writing first drafts. Since that’s exactly what I’m doing at the moment, I thought I would share.

I especially like writing the first draft, which I blaze through as fast as I can, without even stopping for spell checking or fact-checking that might interrupt the flow. And I liked the editing part of the printed first draft with my trusty red pen, though I hate all the retyping from the edited page into the computer. On the other hand, I never get depressed about what I write, because I know I’m going to rewrite it. I remember seeing an interview with George Lucas where he talks about a trick  he learned from Francis (Coppola), which is not to read what he’s writing until he’s done with it. He writes nonstop, puts the pages in a file, and it’s not until he thinks he’s done with it that he’ll find the nerve to look at his pages.
Steven DeSouza (Die Hard, The Running Man, 48 Hours)

You should be able to write a terrible first draft. I used to think of my first draft as simply laying out the territory, and that all the work was done in rewriting. After finishing my preparatory notes, it would take me 32 days to write a script. I’d do a first draft in 10 days, take a day off, do a second draft in 10 days, take a day off, and then write a third draft in 10 days. This gave the screenplay a sort of velocity, but frequently, it also had built-in plot problems. Now, if I smell a problem, I no longer ignore it. I try to solve it before I go on.
Nicholas Kazan (Fallen, Matilda)

You just write, blindly putting things down on paper. Just put something down, and then put something else down, because it’s a process of thinking through all the choices. You have to be willing to throw it away. If you write something awful, you just say, “Okay, I tried,” and sometimes you make it all the way through to discover it’s not worth it. You’ve got to write. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes.
Jim Kouf (Rush Hour, Operation Dumbo Drop)

Silencing that inner critic is important, at least through the first draft, becasue when will you have another chance to let it all out, if not in the first draft? I try to finish the first draft before rewriting it, and ultimately, I’ll go over it about 10 to 12 times. But I usually go over the first third of the script and rewrite it until it’s good enough because I feel that if it’s launched properly, the rest will fall through.
Tom Schulman (What About Bob?, Dead Poets Society)

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