Wide-Ruled Paper

I was writing a story overview and happened to be using a composition notebook. I don't generally like to use them - they're small, I don't like the binding, they all look the same - but it was there and I'm not terribly picky (especially when I don't have an option).

The overview was for a short film, intended to be under 5 minutes in length. Unsurprisingly, there was not a whole lot to put in there. With a film being so short, describing the action and bits of dialogue still doesn't take a lot of words. The nice thing, though, was that it did take up a lot of space.

I filled up one and a third pages of that composition notebook. It does not sound like a lot by any means, but if I had typed the whole thing out, it would probably take only a quarter of that much space. So when I had filled up an entire page and still had more to go, I felt very accomplished. It was a good start to the project; it had substance.

This is a nice little trick to get you started. Use any kind of wide-ruled paper. It fills up faster, but you feel just as accomplished for filling the street. And if that trick doesn't work because you know it's a trick, then the only way you'll ever be satisfied is to fill college-ruled paper and to fill up a lot of it, so this post isn't about you.