I don’t know how many of you are fans of professional wrestling, but I am. I was a kid in the 80s during the Golden Era of Hulk Hogan, Macho Man Randy Savage, and Andre the Giant. Wrestling was perfect for 10-year-old me. Unlike Santa and the Tooth Fairy (who had recently been exposed as shams) these guys were actual human beings. Loud, unnaturally tan, and definitely narcotics-positive, but nonetheless, real dudes. Of course, the question of whether wrestling itself was real or not was a hot topic on the playground. But I didn’t care. I was all in.

But by the time I hit high school, it became pretty clear that the only thing real about wrestling was the piles of cocaine these guys were horking backstage. Weirdly, that didn’t really impact my enjoyment. Why? One word: Kayfabe.

If you're new to this word, let me explain. Kayfabe is the term that describes the shared agreement between the wrestlers and the fans to act as if everything that’s happening is completely legit. Everyone involved knows the outcomes of the matches are pre-determined, but they behave like ANYTHING can happen. A key element of this is commitment. The wrestlers have to go hard, risking life and limb. And so do the fans, pouring their intensity into the proceedings like it’s life or death. In other (fancier) words, the pleasure of professional wrestling lives in the liminal space between reality and artifice. It’s mostly bullshit, but it doesn’t work if you don’t act like you believe. Or even better, put yourself in a temporary state where you actually DO believe.

Cool, cool… but how does this relate to screenwriting? That’s an awfully fair question.

In my classes I spend a lot of time preaching about the power of process. Mainly because taking something from an idea to a finished script is hard and complicated. So many choices. So many ideas. So many avenues one can take. It’s chaotic. And that chaos can be intimidating. So, we have to apply some kind of border around this mess to help contain it and give it shape. And that border is process.

This initially involves breaking the writing into steps. First, a logline, then a story area, and then an outline, adding more and more detail until you have a scene-by-scene blueprint of the script. And there are other frames too, like the three-act structure or the story circle. Or detailed character bios or series bibles. And then there’s the process you use to actually write, like the writing rituals I’ve talked about here. All this is about bringing some order to the chaos so the writer has something to rely on. Especially when the work isn’t going so well.

I don’t know which general said that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy (and I refuse to look it up), but they were spot on. I see this play out with my students time and again as they move from the confidence of their well-crafted outlines to the less certain reality of actually writing those scenes. There’s nothing worse than discovering that your favorite scene doesn’t work when you start adding dialogue. Or that having five characters in a scene is unwieldy. Or after six weeks of hard work and many pages written, you suddenly realize your sidekick is actually the hero! And because I’ve been preaching that process is what they should lean when the road gets foggy, it’s super confusing when I say stuff like, “Maybe this new thing you’ve discovered is better than the outline, and you should explore that—even if it means rewriting everything that came before.”

WTF?! Didn’t I tell them to trust the process? Wasn’t all of that pre-writing meant to prevent this kind of thing? Am I now telling them to abandon all of that and go back into the chaos? If something new can come along that forces you to abandon that structure, then was the process pointless? Of course not! But also, yes.

This is the Kayfabe of creativity. You have to fully commit to the process while being 100% willing to abandon it. With one part of your mind, you have to believe that your pre-writing is perfect. That you have the whole thing figured out, and all you need to do is follow that path to glory. While with another part of your mind, you accept that there are parts of the map that are sketchy and incomplete. And likely, there will come a moment when you might need to abandon it, backtrack, and find a new and better path.

That’s the paradox. The process isn’t the truth. But it’s not a lie either. It’s the thing you need to believe in to get started—your own personal kayfabe. It gives you structure, confidence, and momentum. And then, when the writing starts to reveal what the story actually wants to be, your job isn’t to panic. It’s to pivot. To break kayfabe. To turn heel on your own plan if necessary.

Because here’s the real magic: when you fake it with enough commitment, the shit becomes real. Your limp little placeholder plot twist? Suddenly, it’s rich with meaning. That one-dimensional side character? Turns out they’ve got the most emotional depth. It’s not a betrayal of the process—it is the process. You’re not failing. You’re discovering.

So by all means, make your beat sheets, map your acts, write your series bibles. Build your beautiful fake squared circle of structure and drop an elbow on your ideas like you mean it.

Because in the end, the kayfabe is what gets you to the bell. The structure gives you a place to play, and the commitment lets something real emerge. And when it’s time to throw out the script and hit your story with a folding chair? Do it with flair. That’s the show.

As always, happy scribbling.