Story Ideas: Test your concept
First an update on “Go Into The Story: The Quest”:
Number of individual submissions up to the time of this post: 690.
Number of loglines: 850+ [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 5 more days to enter.
This weekend, I worked my way through about 300 loglines. A handful of them have potential [we will see if they pass the Producer Scott sniff test after he gets back from his week frolicking in Palm Springs]. Most of them didn’t click for me and some of them were wide of the mark in terms of what constitutes a logline.
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
All this to underscore how critically important a story idea is to the success of your script.
Today let me continue that conversation with this excerpt from the Core I: Concept course, Lecture 6 — Testing Your Story Concept:
Now that you have several tools to help you generate story concepts, you need a way to assess them. Here are five questions you can ask about any idea you come up with to help determine if it’s something worth pursuing as a script.
Does the concept have a grab?
The concept should have significant narrative elements that “grab” a reader’s imagination, elicit curiosity, and arouse an emotional response.
These elements may include the core conceit, key characters such as Protagonist and Nemesis, the central conflict, themes, where the story fits into its genre, and so on.
Does the concept have an indicator?
The concept should “indicate” to a reader the general direction the narrative will take, and that it promises to be an entertaining ride.
When any studio executive, producer, manager or agent hears a story concept, they want to be able to see the overall contour of the plot and what is compelling about it.
Does the concept have an audience?
The concept should conjure up a distinct “audience,” one a reader can readily match to a targeted, demographic group.
Anyone who is in a position to buy a script when hearing a story concept for the first time will immediately think, “Who will want to see this movie?”
Is the concept big enough to be a movie?
The concept should feel “big,” something that could sustain the interest of a script reader (and eventually a moviegoer) for up to two hours.
From a buyer’s standpoint, this question is directly related to the previous one: “Will the experience of watching this movie satisfy the viewer who spent $10 to see it?”
I have framed these four questions from a script reader and buyer’s perspective, however they work at the level of a writer thinking about the story strictly as a writing project:
* Does the concept have enough of a grab to give me confidence I can write a fully fleshed-out and entertaining story?
* Does the concept have a clear enough indicator to suggest a strong Plotline and Themeline leading to a satisfying resolution?
* Does the concept have a specific enough audience so I know for whom I am writing the story?
* Does the story feel big enough for me to find the narrative elements I need to write an engaging story of one hundred pages or more?
If those questions don’t speak directly enough to your writer’s soul about a story concept, this one surely will:
Does the story resonate with me on a personal level?
You may have stumbled upon the greatest high concept of all time, but if you don’t connect with it, if you don’t sense much in the way of enthusiasm for its narrative possibilities, and/or if the story doesn’t play to your writing strengths, it’s probably not a good idea to write that story.
You need to have some sort of personal connection with a story to find its emotional core and imbue its characters with life.
You need to have a passion for a story to keep luring you back to the writing and push you to FADE OUT. Writing is hard work. Writing something for which you do not much enthusiasm is really hard work.
With any story concept or logline you consider writing, you should ask yourself each of these questions seriously and honestly. As I suggested before, there is little point writing a spec script based on a story concept that has no chance of selling. Other than writing pages, which of course is valuable, writing a spec script based on a mediocre or inferior story concept is finally an exercise in futility.
Think about it this way: When you talk about trying to become a Hollywood screenwriter [or equivalent in your country outside the U.S.], you are not competing against your neighbors or friends or anonymous writers in a miscellaneous screenplay contest, you are going up against the best of the best, working writers who know the craft. That is your competition. And the first test of whether you can compete with Hollywood screenwriters is your story concept.
Can your story concept compete against Snow White and the Huntsman? Can your story concept compete against Bridesmaids? Can your story concept compete against Taken?
For purposes of these next five days during which you may submit loglines for “The Quest,” I suggest you focus your attention on this question: Does my story concept have a grab? Your story may have a nuclear bomb threat or be set in a post-apocalyptic world or involve a zombie infestation, and you may think that translates into a grab. Think again. Hollywood players and buyers have seen everything. Nuclear, post-apocalyptic, zombies, they’ve seen dozens and dozens of stories involving all of those ideas, and every other idea under the sun. That is not going to grab them in and of itself. What can grab them is what is unique about your take, what specific distinctive hook you have about nuclear, post-apocalypse, zombies or whatever else that stands out. What makes your story concept a movie that create its own niche in a crowded entertainment marketplace in 2013 or 2014?
Five days. That’s what you have left to submit a logline for “Go Into The Story: The Quest.” I am encouraging you to raise your game. You have everything you need right now to come up with a great story concept, just review all those links to GITS posts I embedded above, then push yourself to generate a totally kick-ass story idea that has a grab. Any idea, before you work it up into a logline and send it to me, put it to the test by going through the five questions listed here.
Action. Comedy. Thriller. Great story concept. That represents your best shot, not just with me, but with most Hollywood buyers. But above all, a great story idea.
Good luck!
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