From Fast Company, I got this in my emailbox today:
The Art of the Idea: And How It Can Change Your Life is a collection of Hunt’s insights, along with illustrations by South African painter Sam Nhelengethwa, meant to encourage original thinking that will break you out of the daily grind. Here are some excerpts.
Here are 8 ‘insights’ from the book:
1. You get sunrise or sunset people.2. We are all equal before the idea.3. Trust your instincts or they will go away.4. Expediency is not an idea.5. Embrace diversity, it will hug you back.6. Idea apartheid is dead.7. We don’t know what we don’t know until we do what usually don’t do.8. It’s not the circle of life, it’s the circus of life.
Face it, being a screenwriter, at least one who takes on the challenge of generating original story ideas, is a difficult gig. Every story has seemingly been told before. The studios are currently enslaved to their own idea – that the best and safest way to approach movies is to produce remakes, sequels, or films based on pre-branded brands — so it’s even more of a test to come up with a story concept unique enough to compete with that mindset.
The subtext I pick up from these 8 ‘insights’ is this: Rattle your / my cage. However we’ve been approaching coming up with story concepts, try something new. Force ourselves out of our comfort zone. Push ideas into strange, new territories. And have fun doing it.
We’ve got a little over 3 weeks until the beginning of a new year. What can you and I do in that time to set ourselves up for a fresh approach to generating story ideas, for solving story problems, for bringing a more distinctive approach to our writing?
How to give our creative process a shake, rattle, and roll?
UPDATE: In comments, Tom mentioned this post about “Halliwell’s Film Guide,” which has about 2,4000 movie loglines as part of its film summaries. Great way to jump-start imagination.
Exercise. Exercise your brain as well as your body.
Scott, last year you mentioned Halliwell’s Film Guide. That has become a huge casual idea generator for me. By casual, I mean I’ll just flip through and read the loglines and summaries – and within 15 to twenty minutes, I usually have a minimum of five ideas. I remember hearing that Jerry Seinfeld was asked how he came up with so many good jokes. His answer was that he wrote 99 bad ones and one good one.
Read, read, read and then make a habit of writing down at least one idea per day. If you can do more, then you’ll have that many more ideas. I recommend reading everything you can get your hands on. I like to read internet news channels, both the traditional outlets and those that are geared to a particular discipline, i.e. science or business. Then, I’ll jot down ideas and sift through them. If I see a really good one, I’ll copy the entire article to a Word file.
I also try to use other creative outlets that can change the focus of your thoughts. For me, painting is something I do that relaxes me and allows me to start generating ideas; most of the time I paint while backpacking so I’m pretty free of distractions.
One last thing is that I don’t limit my ideas just too artistic endeavors. I try to think of solutions to problems, come up with new business ideas and generally try to solve the problems of the world. And one of the best ways to do that is to talk with other people in other fields of work and in other stages of life.
I actually just came up with a new method for creating stories recently. It's actually a refined approach.
I do my character and story and then see how I can move it to some exotic or not-so-cliche location.
I actually got the idea from a Black List script – Renko Vega.
It's definitely different but the same.