Story Ideas: Challenge yourself!
First an update on “Go Into The Story: The Quest”:
Number of individual submissions up to the time of this post: 755.
Number of loglines: 950+ [estimated].
For background on “The Quest,” the opportunity for up to four writers to do a 24-week Screenwriting Master Class workshop with me for free, go here.
You may email me loglines per these submission guidelines through Friday, June 8, 11:59PM Eastern Daylight Time [U.S.]. So you have 4 more days to enter.
Going into this project, I wanted to create a process whereby everyone would benefit, even if they didn’t get selected for “The Quest.” That was the reasoning behind my decision to give each person who submits a logline the opportunity to take a free 1-week Core or Craft course with me through Screenwriting Master Class.
In addition, I figured we could engage in a conversation during the submission period about story concepts and loglines. That’s why I have posted these:
“The Quest”: Why is story concept critical to your success?
“The Quest”: Why do you need to think in terms of genre?
“The Quest”: Why is your passion for your story important?
“The Quest”: How should you write a logline?
And that’s why I have been posting this series:
Story Ideas: The two most important words are ‘what if’
Story Ideas: Halliwell’s Film Guide
Story Ideas: Test your concept
All this to underscore how critically important a story idea is to the success of your script.
Today I want to share a story from this 1990 NYT article about the spec script boom of that time:
Brian Helgeland and Manny Coto conceived ‘’The Ticking Man’’ in a telephone conversation after Mr. Helgeland joked, ‘’Let’s not hang up the phone until we come up with an idea we can sell for a million dollars.’’
Says Mr. Helgeland: ‘’We started throwing bad ideas at each other. Then Manny said, ‘What if a nuclear bomb becomes sentient?’ Within minutes we had our robot.’’
I’m not going to say you will come up with a million dollar script idea like that, but the fact is Helgeland and Coto did. Ironically that script, which did sell for a million dollars, never got produced, but Brian Helgeland has gone on to have a long screenwriting and directing career with 22 writing credits and Manny Coto has done well, too, on the TV side of things with series such as “24” and “Dexter.”
So I think it’s safe to say that one instant of creative insight — What if a nuclear bomb became sentient — not only resulted in several hundred thousand dollars being deposited into each of their bank accounts, that spec script jump-started their respective careers.
Of course, you will notice the presence of those two magic words: What if?
Takeaway: Challenge yourself! Challenge yourself to come up with a killer story concept. Set a timer. Lock yourself in a room with no distractions. Go away for the weekend. Pitch ideas back and forth with a writing friend. Do whatever it takes, but push, push, push yourself and your creativity.
Sometimes pressure is a good thing, indeed, the best thing for the creative process. It can force your brain to use different synapses, make you think outside the box. And just like Helgeland & Coto, it can happen in a moment.
You have about 4 days left to the end of “The Quest” submission period. Challenge yourself right now to come up with a truly great story concept. Like this:
Grim Night: Once a year globally, people lock themselves at home and fend off the senseless and random attacks by Grims. Tonight’s that night.
Or this:
Cardiac: A father has six hours to find the criminals that have stolen a heart intended for his daughter’s transplant surgery.
Or this:
Dear Satan: A 7-year-old girl accidentally misspells “Santa” and instead invites Satan to bring her a toy for Christmas — and he does.
By the way, Producer Scott dropped by the office. Having spent the weekend “canoodling” [his word] in Palm Springs, he was in a pretty dapper mood. Then he started to go through the loglines. Now he’s out getting drunk. Maybe there’s a connection… maybe not. But he did say he would drop by tomorrow to deliver — and I quote — “a few fucking words of inspi-goddammed-ration” to you all. So you have that to look forward (?) to.
In the meantime, challenge yourself to come up with an awesome story concept!
Good luck!
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