Anyone who has stared at a blank screen or struggled to fill an empty page can relate: Writing is not easy. But the panelists on Saturday at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s Writers Panel offered intimate insights, unedited observations, and quite a few laughs for budding screenwriters and anyone who wrestles with the written word. 

All six screenwriters are Oscar-nominated this year, but their writing processes are varied and their backgrounds diverse.

Four of the panelists’ screenplays are also nominated for Best Picture (“Bugonia,” “Frankenstein,” “Marty Supreme,” “Train Dreams”), one for Best International Feature Film (“It Was Just an Accident”), and another is nominated for both (“Sentimental Value”). It’s not uncommon for a film to have both nominations, but only 2019’s “Parasite” has won both.

This was the 16th year for Anne Thompson, an editor-at-large at IndieWire, as moderator for the popular panel. 

Thompson welcomed Clint Bentley, a panelist last year for “Sing Sing,” who is again nominated with writing partner Greg Kewdar for Best Adapted Screenplay for “Train Dreams.”

“I started making short films with friends,” Bentley said. “We jotted ideas on napkins and pushed them across the table. Then I met (Kewdar), and he had an idea for a film, but we had no idea how to write one. We learned by reading other people’s screenplays.”

He now writes every day, even if just a little.

“I treat it as a craft, and might throw it out, but I’m trying to get better,” he said. “I might have inspiration just one out of every 20 days. I’m not that bright, so I try to trick myself by outlining.”

Thompson asked about writing for the taciturn leading character, played by Joel Edgerton.

“A voiceover helps,” Bentley replied. “But during shooting, Joel was communicating was more interesting than the s*** that Greg and I had written a year before. So, I stripped away a lot of voiceover.”

Ron Bronstein has worked with partner Josh Safdie on four films, including “Uncut Gems” and this year’s “Marty Supreme,” which received three Oscar nods. 

“We want a film to feel like it is being written while it is unreeling on the projector,” he said. “We avoid writing dialogue, but we have to write fake dialogue for pitches. We got better at it to the point where the actors didn’t want us to throw it away. That’s how we became screenwriters.” 

Bronstein’s droll humor and deadpan delivery were popular with the audience. 

“Writing a screenplay is brutal,” he said. “Each idea has to be broken down and conveyed to Josh. Then he takes the idea, ties it to a chair, beats it up, questions it, and tries to find its weaknesses. And sometimes I join in.”

The film’s success, he said, “is like pushing a great boulder to the top of the hill, tipping it and watching it go down, with people jumping out of the way. But you don’t have to join it.”

Norwegian director and screenwriter Eskil Vogt fell in love with cinema as a child watching Swedish television. 

His six screenplays with writing partner and director Joachim Trier have all been produced, including “The Worst Person in the World,” which earned them an original screenplay Oscar nomination. 

“We started by drawing storyboards, not scripts. It was an organic process,” said Vogt. “We don’t focus on plot. Instead, first we find ideas and characters and settings, and only bits of the plot. That took 10 months for ‘Sentimental Value.’”

The central idea for the film was of sisters growing up in the same house with the same parents, but having different experiences, he reported. 

“The next two months were spent typing,” he said. “It’s the part that I love, when the screenplay comes alive from the beginning to the end. It’s like the first time you’re watching the film.”

Will Tracy was the editor of The Onion, won an Emmy for “Last Week Tonight,” and three more in succession for the hit show “Succession.” He’s a first-time Oscar nominee for “Bugonia,” and was also nominated by the Writers Guild, BAFTA, and Critics Choice. 

He downplayed these accomplishments.

“I went to work for a late-night TV show, and I was just terrible at it. I had no strong opinions. It was like geometry class every day,” he said. “I wanted to write stories and characters, so I got a job on a funny drama show and learned to write. A colleague told me to find funny and interesting situations, to play them straight, then have the actors play them straight.” 

He said that he works extra hard on the beginning section of a screenplay. 

“Some people only read the first 10 to 15 pages of a script, so we rewrite that part over and over again,” he said. “Then I sometimes become ambivalent because I have so many possible paths ahead, and could go in many directions. I’m not going to be pleasant if I don’t figure it out, and I might snap when I’m making the rice for dinner.” 

Guillermo del Toro agreed. “’In Pan’s Labyrinth,’ I spent six months on the opening to get it right, and then wrote the rest of the script in three weeks,” he said.  

The celebrated filmmaker has received Oscars for original screenplay (“Pan’s Labyrinth”), both director and best picture (“The Shape of Water”), and for animated feature (“Pinocchio”). “Frankenstein” has nine Academy Award nominations.

“I’ve always loved monsters, and as a child, I committed to making monster melodramas, like sad vampires in middle-class families. All my movies are family melodramas,” he said, defining melodrama as “when internal forces are against you.”

He has since written 42 screenplays and directed 13 movies. 

“At 60, I’m now sharing my experience, not wisdom, as it is more painful and truthful. I write for myself, rarely for others,” he said. “I finally ached enough to make ‘Frankenstein.’ I didn’t write it (originally), but this one’s on me. I wanted to make an opera, to make it big. Or I wouldn’t f—ing do it.”

His laugh was infectious, and the audience responded with applause. 

Jafar Panahi, one of Iran’s leading directors, often uses his films to criticize the current regime. Arrested in 2022, he served seven months in detention. 

“It Was Just an Accident” was shot in secret despite government restrictions. It has won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or and the Golden Globe Awards for screenwriting and directing.  

“Everything in the script was real for my friends or me,” he said to the rapt audience through an interpreter, Sheida Dayani. “I wrote with my friend (Mehdi Mahmoudian) who had been in prison for nine years. Two weeks ago, he was arrested and is back in prison. These films are risky and not supposed to be made while a regime is in power. But I felt I couldn’t wait.”

Mahmoudian and Panahi were among 17 dissidents who signed a public statement condemning Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for the recent massacres of protestors, which could top 30,000 dead, according to news reports. Panahi faces a year in prison when he returns to his homeland – and he plans to.

“Why am I going back? My existence is shared with my family, my colleagues, and my friends. That’s half of me. If I don’t go back, I leave them alone. I turn my back on them. That half of me wins over my advantages.”

The audience offered sustained applause for this act of bravery. It could make a good plot for a screenplay.