Perfectionism is one of the fastest ways to shut down creativity. You sit there, frozen, waiting for a brilliant sentence to appear—and it doesn’t. So you delete. You rewrite. You stare. You tell yourself you’re blocked. But here’s a better idea: stop aiming for “good” altogether. Write the worst possible version of your scene, on purpose.
Bad on purpose is freedom. It’s movement. It’s how you get unstuck.
Lower the Stakes
When you give yourself permission to write something terrible, you take the pressure off. You’re not trying to impress anyone. You’re not even trying to impress yourself. You’re just getting words on the page.
The worst version is allowed to be cringey, overwritten, melodramatic, cliché. It’s allowed to make no sense. You can fix it later—but first, you have to write it.
Instead of thinking “I have to write something great,” think: What’s the messiest, clumsiest, most over-the-top way I could write this scene?
Let it be bad. And weird. And indulgent. That’s how the good stuff finds its way through.
Bad Writing Has Momentum
When you stop filtering every line through “is this good enough?”, you start to move faster. And that speed matters. Momentum gets you through the fear. It helps you outrun the self-doubt.
Try writing as fast as you can for 10 minutes. No backspacing. No thinking. Just pure chaos. You’ll be shocked by how much gets down—and how often, hidden inside the mess, there’s a sentence or idea worth keeping.
And even if the whole thing is terrible? You’ve got raw material now. You’re no longer stuck.
Your Brain Needs to Warm Up
Sometimes the “stuck” feeling is just your brain not being ready yet. You can’t expect it to go from zero to brilliance without some warmup.
The worst version is your warmup. It’s the sketch before the painting. The ugly first pancake. You write badly so you can start. And once you’ve started, your brain kicks in.
That’s when rhythm returns. That’s when clarity sharpens. But you can’t get there without letting it be rough first.
Lean Into the Bad
If your character is being dramatic, let them be ridiculously dramatic. If a line feels like something out of a soap opera, double down on it. Make it even more absurd.
It’s counterintuitive, but leaning into the worst version often loosens you up enough to find the real version underneath.
You’re not going to accidentally ruin your story. Writing a bad draft isn’t permanent—it’s part of the process. You’re giving yourself permission to be free, playful, wrong. That’s where discovery happens.
Editing Is Where the Magic Happens
No one sees your bad version but you. The magic comes in the edit. But you can’t edit a blank page. You can’t shape a story that doesn’t exist.
Once you’ve got a terrible version of the scene, you can start asking:
- What’s actually working here?
- What am I trying to say?
- What feels surprisingly honest underneath the noise?
Often, the worst version helps you find the core of the moment—the emotional truth hiding under the clutter.
You don’t have to start with clarity. You just have to start.
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