Unity hangs on start when finding gameobject

I have spent hours on this problem. I reworked a dialogue script to try and make it accessible from other scripts, but have spent so long working around a myriad of problems. Please help me.

Here is the script with the function:

using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Generic; using UnityEngine; using UnityEngine.UI; using UnityEngine.SceneManagement;

public class textstep : MonoBehaviour { public void TextScroll(string text, float timebetweenletters) { GetComponent().text = text.Substring(0, 0); float timer = timebetweenletters; int letter = 1; while (!Input.GetKeyDown("space")) { timer -= Time.deltaTime; if (timer < 0 && letter != text.Length) { letter += 1; GetComponent().text = text.Substring(0, letter); timer = timebetweenletters; GetComponent().Play(); } } } }

and here is the script calling it:

using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Generic; using UnityEngine; using UnityEngine.UI; using UnityEngine.SceneManagement;

public class textstep : MonoBehaviour { public void TextScroll(string text, float timebetweenletters) { GetComponent().text = text.Substring(0, 0); float timer = timebetweenletters; int letter = 1; while (!Input.GetKeyDown("space")) { timer -= Time.deltaTime; if (timer < 0 && letter != text.Length) { letter += 1; GetComponent().text = text.Substring(0, letter); timer = timebetweenletters; GetComponent().Play(); } } } }

I have both the scripts on a text gameobject and I have the text gameobject on the textstep parameter of the script.