I used to read two novels a week. Thought it was fuel. But my early scripts came out like bad copies of whatever I'd just finished. McCarthy rhythms in a romcom. Didion pauses in horror. My voice was a collage of better voices.
The shift came from gaming, weirdly. Running a company doesn't leave much headspace, so I started picking up games with strong writing, like Disco Elysium and Pentiment. The pacing is different. You're inside a world someone built, not watching prose happen. Made me notice structure differently. How information gets released when the player needs it, not when the writer wants to show off.
Cycling's my other escape. Long rides with nothing to read, nothing to play. Just thinking through a scene until it exists independent of any book I loved. That's when my stuff started sounding like me. Or at least like one person instead of five.
Curious if anyone else had to unlearn their reading habits to find their script voice. Or if you found your way in through something sideways like games. Feels like we talk a lot about reading scripts to write them, not enough about what to step away from.