“The Art of the Idea”

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:

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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.



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