I guess I’m the wrong guy to ask, “How can I come up with ideas?” Because I’ll tell you – I don’t have any problems coming up with them. They just are there.
For instance, I read a poorly worded blog article last year on how to write screenplays. The blog author suggested writing the loglines for 50 movies. “You’ll understand story when you’re done!”
So I took a couple sheets of legal pad, put one through 50, and began inventing loglines for movies. Not movies I’d seen, but movie ideas. I stopped when I got close to 40, because I realized that the author probably meant for me to write down loglines to movies I’ve seen. I’m guessing, because apparently to write out 38 loglines in one afternoon is something of a herculean effort, judging from the look on everyone’s faces when I tell them that.
[Tweet “Sometimes all you need is to tell a familiar story in a new way. – Nicholas Reicher”]
Right now I’m reading Michael Hauge’s book where he tells you in the first chapter how to come up with movie ideas, which really doesn’t seem to be a lot for me. I can think of a dozen movie ideas or book ideas over morning coffee.
“It’s about a guy who…”
I picture the guy. What does he want? How do I keep him from getting it? That’s your story. It has to be intense enough. Is it a situation, a place, a threat, a goal?
Try that.
- Situation
- place
- goal
- Threat
- Need
- Time running out
- discovery
Tension within time is something I almost can’t take. When I was a little kid and time was running out, and death or discovery was the result, I’d get so frantic I’d have to leave the room and have my parents call me in when that part was over. I just couldn’t watch an episode of Mission: Impossible to save my life when I was 6 years old.
So… a man with a pet aardvark finds out his Aardvark is really king of the aardvarks, and he has only 24 hours to get him to the lost kingdom of Lemuria or the world will end – but a group of adventurers find out the Aardvark kingdom has billions in gold as a reward, and they’re trying to steal the aardvark from him before he can get him there.
There you go – I’ve just written a complete spoof on every action movie, combined with a remake of “It’s a mad mad mad world”.
Now, combine some of these ideas! A situation that has to be rectified or grave harm will result, with a time deadline to do it. A Goal that has to be met, or something drastic will happen – and a threat pursuing. Someone needs to do something, accomplish something, to reach a goal, and avoid discovery!
Now try this – pick a genre (action, drama, crime, comedy, western, thriller, sci-fi, etc) and combine it with another. Dueling cowboys in space (it’s been done, but can you be novel in how you do it?), a crime drama involving the end of the world, a comedy about to buddy undertakers who moonlight as spies for the KGB.
I need to try some of these steps but… I keep coming up with SO MANY ideas that I may literally open up shop and sell concepts to up and coming screenplay writers once I retire from writing! “Here’s thirty loglines I never had time to do anything with.”
