Another installment in the 10-part series "How I Write A Script."
PART 2: BRAINSTORMING
Once I find a story concept I think might make a good movie, I create a Word file in my computer and start brainstorming ideas into that file. I can not emphasize enough how important brainstorming is. To begin with, this is where I discover if my concept is, indeed, good enough – if ideas for the plot and characters leap into my imagination, there’s a pretty good chance I’ve got a strong concept.
Also, when I brainstorm, I start to ‘see’ the movie. Key scenes emerge, characters morph into being, I hear bits of dialogue. Of course, that all represents potential story stuff, but more than that, ‘seeing’ these elements fuels my passion... which drives me deeper into brainstorming... which gives me more story stuff... which gets me more excited. And so on.
Finally, and most importantly, if I do enough brainstorming and the creative stars align, this is where I uncover gold, those fantastic bits of story business that appear as if from nowhere, totally unexpected, surprising ideas and beats. The key to doing it right: no prejudgment. All ideas go into the master brainstorming file. Upon further reflection, I may choose to toss them aside - fine. But any image, scene, line of dialogue, action, or theme I have as I brainstorm goes into the file. I find this process frees up that special part of my consciousness so that those wondrous gold story nuggets can reveal themselves.
I spend days, even weeks brainstorming (in connection with research, our next subject). The process is a lot like wallowing in a sea of ideas, but again, this is where a majority of the story ‘stuff’ emerges and, more often than not, the Plotline and sub-plots start to show themselves, too.
Many aspiring screenwriters do not spend enough time brainstorming, their impatience getting the better of them. That will almost always come back to bite you in the ass. You’ll either get stuck in the writing because you didn’t ‘find’ your story or your story will have little, if anything special about it because you didn’t brainstorm enough to surface the gold.
Next time, we look at another important part of the script-writing process: research.
Friday, June 6, 2008
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13 comments:
Scott:
Do you remember when and where an idea hit you for one of your scripts?
Scott,
Great advice about the nightstand. It seems my best ideas come when I'm just falling to sleep or waking up. Probably something to do with brainwaves.
Another tip if you experience a flash of brilliance (or so you believe) and find yourself unarmed without a pocket recorder: call your answering machine and leave the gold nugget there.
justwrite7, I call my answering machine a lot with ideas, so as we say in my family, "Great minds think alike!"
Tom, I remember a number of times when inspiration hit. I'll go through my list of writing gigs and post where the original projects (not assignments) came from.
BTW, I find that single thing -- the moment when inspiration hits -- to be a truly fascinating subject. And it doesn't have to be about writing or it doesn't have to be about something all that significant. I mean, somebody said, "Hm, what about pet rocks?" That is inspired thinking.
Remember the movie Night Shift? Michael Keaton's character with the tape recorder? Always reciting these 'brilliant' ideas into it? "What if you mix the mayonnaise in the can, WITH the tuna fish?"
Seriously, those "Aha!" moments never cease to amaze me.
Scott -
It is great advice about the nightstand paper and pen. Like justwrite7 noted, my best ideas come from dreams - normally around 4 am.
The answering machine is a great idea. Upon Scott's advice I also started a script diary to keep ideas organized.
Scott,
That moment of inspiration likewise fascinates me. And not just how the brain can produce that "Aha" moment seemingly out of thin air, but also how an immense surge of confidence in the viability of the idea accompanies that moment.
That is a great point, Tom, not only the moment of inspiration / idea itself, but the accompanying "surge of confidence."
I don't know how that works. Sometimes the idea matches up with the confidence. Oftentimes it doesn't.
That's one of the reasons I track buying and marketing trends in Hwood, to have something against which to assess ideas.
That said, at the end of the day, it's about a writer having passion for an idea and writing the hell out of that story.
Way back when, Burg & Myers met with Tom Hanks' 'people.' This was around the time Tom was still doing comedies like The Burbs. His main development person said that Tom wasn't anything like the low-brow comedy type he was portraying in movies, he had depth, was interested in lots of ideas.
She went on to describe this story he was fascinated with -- about a guy who grew up in the South in the 60s, played football at U. of Alabama, went off to Vietnam, played ping pong in China, jogged across the country, and so on.
I walked out of that meeting, turned to Andy, and said, "What the hell is that all about?"
Yes, I had just dumped on what would become Forrest Gump.
We study it, try to break it down, figure out the angles. But both the beauty and curse of stories is that we simply can't quantify their value. We find an idea, we choose to write it or not.
One thing is for sure: if we don't write it, it will never have a chance to see the light of day.
I keep hearing odd stories about meetings with execs and producers similar to yours. A writer who lives in my neighborhood (though I haven't met him yet) has a blog, and his latest entry was about a meeting he just had concerning "Superbad". It's at easyfiend.blogspot.com.
These meetings sound like fun.
Tom, Denis Faye's blog is a hoot. Is he a neighbor bec don't you live in RB? Also, a nice list of interviews with screenwriters that Denis wrote. Thanks for the heads-up!
He does volunteer work with my sister, so she's going to introduce us sometime soon. And yeah, he's written a number of interviews for the WGA. But his observations on the business side of writing can be side-splitting. Not literally, of course.
By the way, that VW idea sounds better the more I think of it. The basic plot is fascinating, and it sounds like the emotional story -- without knowing many details -- could be a bonanza. Bombed out people. Destitute. In need of awakening to reality. Young enemy soldier in charge. Had to carry a gun. Pessimism, and rightly so, everywhere.
There's a lot to change and grow from this scenario. And when that soldier finally lays down his sidearm could be quite poignant.
The commercial potential still feels a little small domestically, though internationally it could be quite big, what with the fondly remembered, ubiquitous Bug in every corner of the world. Though with the right tone, the something from nothing story could play well in the States. Maybe a British production could nail it. Plenty of moth-balled, dilapidated factories that could be decorated up as start-ups abound. And hopefully plenty of photos and newsreel footage of Bugs ending up everywhere could stand in for too-expensive recreations.
Just mental blathering on my part, but man, that basic story is killer. At worst, it's "Tucker" with world-wide recognition.
Thanks, Tom, for your feedback re the VW story. You point out one of the issues I've alway had with it as a movie -- tonally, it feels very much like a European film, that combination of drama and comedy they can pull off so well, but does not usually translate into big box office domestically. Combine that with the costs related to producing a period piece, especially one of this scope, and I'm beginning to track my rationale for reasons against writing it.
Still, I was struck by this one-man Marshall Plan movie idea from the very moment I read the chap's obituary in the NY Times. I'll keep mulling it over and welcome comments from other folks.
BTW, obits are a great source of story ideas.
Except in the case of autobiographies.
Scott,
I just found your blog and I'm loving it. It's great how you have all the lists posted so I can just go back through them and find great posts like these!
I am a novelist and a screenwriter and I also have ADD so I'm always trying to find little tricks to keep myself from getting distracted. I do find that some of the best ideas happen just as I'm falling asleep or waking up but even tho I try to always remember to have a notebook by the bed, I still find that sometimes I won't even roll over to jot things down in the morning and I always regret it. Because once I get up there are 10 other things I'm going to do before I start writing and one of them is get online, the biggest time suck known to man.
But this morning, I was in that half-awake state, thinking about a new script idea I just had the other day, one I was excited about, and I grabbed the notebook and couldn't stop writing. I never got out of bed. And I've made a promise to myself that I'm always going to go to the notebook when I get a fleeting idea because that's what usually happens. Connections are made -- while writing these scenes, 2 major plot points came to me -- and the writing takes place effortlessly.
I've also found that scribbling in a notebook does wonders. I'm in Miami a lot and started doing that when I'd go to the beach. Writing in the notebook keeps me from trying to edit myself and being a perfectionist. I don't worry about punctuation or spelling or formatting, I'll scribble in the margins... On my computer, I'm always tempted to delete something and make it better (so I think) instead of just letting it flow. I also can't be one click away from getting online. It's like no matter how "in flow" you are with the writing, that firefox icon is a little devil on your shoulder.
And since getting started is always the hardest thing for me, writing by hand gives me a big chunk of material to "warm me up" when I do decide to transfer it to the computer. It's much easier to sit down when I tell myself I'm just typing in what I already have done than looking at a blank page. But once I get going, I always KEEP going.
Have you read anything by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow psychology?
The anecdote about writing your idea down at night reminds me of a similar incident. Rather, I had woken up one night having discovered "the meaning of life" in my dream. As I quickly jotted it down, I was becoming a little more conscious and thought my answer didn't quite make sense BUT I could see the logic in it.
The next morning I rushed to the piece of paper to reveal life's mystery to the entire world. Alas, it read "Life = Bruce Springsteen".
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