Screnzy tips: Don’t bother naming characters, places or anything for that matter

So, you’re thinking about writing a script in a month as part of the month long Script Frenzy (Screnzy) challenge? This sister event from the people behind NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) gives you the chance to challenge yourself to write a 100 page script in 30 days this April. I’m here to try to give you some tips to help you complete this huge goal.

This was my most popular bit of advice from my NaNoWriMo guide so I had to adapt it as a Script Frenzy tip.

I used to waste so much time looking at a baby name site trying to find character names, especially because I wanted them to mean something. Nothing sped up my writing faster than when I stopped naming things. Now, if you have a character name in mind, by all means use it but if it takes more than a few seconds to come up with one, move on.

My stories read like “Well,” said GUARD1 to SLAVE3, “Do you think the SPECIAL ARMY NAME will make it through EVIL SCARY PLACE?” Find and replace will be your friend later when you come up with the names for things but, for now, just give them a placeholder name and move on with the story.

Story is king. The names of places aren’t as important as they feel.

This hold especially true with scripts. Many of the greatest classics of stage and screen have characters in their final draft with names like MAN 1 or THE LADY IN THE RED HAT. Don’t let names slow you down from adding pages to your count.