IF YOU HAVE ONE STORY IDEA,
YOU DON’T HAVE ANY;
IF YOU HAVE 100 STORY IDEAS
YOU MAY HAVE ONE GOOD ONE!
Everybody can do brainstorming, but not everybody does it right.
Basic rules:
- Your goal is to provide possibilities (not solve the problem).
- Plan it in advance.
- Invite a diverse group of brain-stormers.
- Make sure that judgment is not brought into the session. - Everybody is equal here.
- FOCUS ON QUANTITY
- DON'T CRITICIZE
- ENCOURAGE 'OUTSIDE THE BOX' THINKING
Let's focus on brainstorming rules you need to use when you are brainstorming ideas for writing your screenplay.
- Never
do brainstorming alone
- Use
ideas, things or people who inspire you or your story
- Write
down all the ideas, not only the “good ones” (you won’t remember them
later)
- Don’t
believe your own judgement whispering “that would never work”
- Create
a long list of ideas: minimum 100
- Use
the question “what if ?” to generate more ideas
- Do
not sort them until you get to the point that you are dead empty
- Only
cross ideas off your list if you have at least 2 or more reasons why it
would not work
- When
you have narrowed down your list to 10 ideas, create a 'pro and con' list
- Never
believe that you have the best idea in the world, be flexible and change
it as new ideas come up
THE SECRET OF THE WRITER:
ASKING
DO YOUR RESEARCH!
- Research
after you know your story but before your start writing it
- Without
research, you will write a cliché
- Do
your changes early in the writing process because if something changes in
the middle of your script, that will make other things change, and you
will need to rewrite your screenplay from scratch
“Four principles I see as important to become a writer:
- - Read widely, not in order to
copy someone else’s style, but to learn to appreciate and recognize good
writing and to see how the best writers have achieved their results.
- - Practice writing in whatever form; the craft
is learned by practicing it, not by talking about it.
- - Increase your vocabulary; the raw material
of the writer is words, and the more we have available and can use effectively
and confidently the better.
- - Welcome
experience. This means going through life with all senses open: observing,
feeling, and relating to other people. Nothing that happens to a writer ever be
lost.”
P.D. James
“Four principles I see as important to become a writer:
- - Read widely, not in order to copy someone else’s style, but to learn to appreciate and recognize good writing and to see how the best writers have achieved their results.
- - Practice writing in whatever form; the craft is learned by practicing it, not by talking about it.
- - Increase your vocabulary; the raw material of the writer is words, and the more we have available and can use effectively and confidently the better.
- - Welcome experience. This means going through life with all senses open: observing, feeling, and relating to other people. Nothing that happens to a writer ever be lost.”
P.D. James
