Story Ideas: Having eyes to see and ears to hear
As it turned out, our collective conversation about “Go Into The Story: The Quest” over the last couple of weeks has, I think, sharpened everyone’s awareness about the importance of working with the strongest story ideas possible.
Let me repeat something I can not verify factually, but I know it in my gut to be true: At least 50% of the value of your screenplay to a Hollywood buyer is the story concept.
And that’s why as you all were busily working up your loglines for “The Quest” — all 4000 of them! — I hammered you with a daily series of posts:
Story Ideas: The two most important words are ‘what if’
Story Ideas: Halliwell’s Film Guide
Story Ideas: Think international
Story Ideas: Test your concept
Story Ideas: Challenge yourself
Story Ideas: Get my [bleeping] attention!
So this week, I propose to round out this subject of generating story ideas with five more posts, thus giving you a myriad number of ways to approach this incredibly important aspect of the screenwriting process.
Today: Having eyes to see and ears to hear
Perhaps beyond everything else, what is required of a writer to conjure up story ideas, story concepts, story conceits is this: You have to be mindful of the practice. That means opening your eyes and paying attention with your ears to the world around you.
Everything from news to articles, headlines to conversations, signs to sayings. Any form of external stimulation could carry with it either the actual genesis of a story idea or create the magical set of circumstances in your own life where you suddenly stop and a concept just springs into your head.
My advice: For one month, spend an hour every day pondering story ideas. Any of the techniques noted above. Or as you surf the Web. You are actively searching for story ideas. Do this for a month, then my hunch is you will carry that awareness with you on a parallel track of your consciousness at all times. Make this mindset a part of who you are as a person and a creative being.
I was just having a conversation today with screenwriter and friend Joshua James [@writerjoshjames]. Commenting about how important it is for a writer to generate story ideas, he told me this:
“Let’s say a writer lands a manager. Then what? The manager will say to the writer, ‘Okay, what ideas for stories do you have?’ You may end up sending them 10, 20, 30 or more until they feel like you’ve found one that is good enough to work on.”
That is exactly right. So if you aren’t in the habit of generating story ideas now, you’d better be. And don’t be afraid to come up with crap ideas. Most ideas are crap. But as Linus Pauling, Nobel Prize winning scientist said, “The best way to come up with a good idea is come up with a lot of ideas.”
And the best way to do that: Have eyes to see and ears to hear.
There you have it: About two weeks worth of posts all about generating story ideas. I hope you have enjoyed the series. Now go out there and come up with a million dollar idea!
I’d appreciate your reactions to the series in comments.
Note: Next week, a series on how to read a screenplay.
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