First of all I wish you all enjoy a great weekend. Second of all I have a general question: How do you people get the ideas you need to start writing a story? You may think I'm up to something but I just wanna share this amazing feeling with you and that question is only an ornament for the topic. Have you ever been somewhere totally irrelevant to what you're looking for and suddenly out of nowhere you get this amazing idea to start a new story? It is awesome or maybe it's just the way I feel it because I'm always looking for new stories to tell. And I'm actually stuck with too many right now that I don't even know which one to write after my current project!!! I'm not sure about you but for me and today was to dropping by this bar and have a drink then eventually a chit chat with a middle aged man that gave me a quite new idea for a fiction story. It was just like the scene I was going through and all of a sudden... Wow, this could be a story. You might be curious what I've got from a chit chat in a bar but it wasn't all the requirements that gave me the idea. It's actually the mood! Depending on the mood I can get ideas out of everything and anything. Relevant, irrelevant, sad, joyful, a moment of solitude, at work, at home, in a bar, while walking down the street and etc. There's no limit. And it's not just the idea but I turn that moment into the whole perfect story, from the beginning to the end with all the characterization in about three minutes. I'm not saying that I'm capable of something exclusively mine or I'm specialized in writing but as I mentioned, I just wanted to share.
Screenwriting : Where's the source? by Allen R. Nelson
Other topics in Screenwriting:
Check out Trending Discussions
Register / Log In
The way you've described it, a chit chat in a bar combined with the mood you're in at that moment, it's possible but the trick is; the moment you get home, you have to write down everything you remember or simply, take notes,, similar to a beat sheet, locations, what that person did, how did he react...etc. Sometimes, you will read a newspaper and a single article can also trigger the story concept in your head or let's say, you are watching a movie and some scene triggers the idea which takes you in completely different direction then the story in the movie, you start daydreaming and the concept is partly or completely created but you have to write it all down, ASAP. It happened to me a few times but then again, maybe there are other people here with the similar experience.
Let's not complicate theses two. Writing is easy, thinking is hard. Thinking about the location, characters and dialogues in that scene is hard but as soon as you got them all together then you can write it down easily. For me the hardest thing is the mood. Sometimes I can't even write a single page just because I don't feel like it but otherwise when I'm in the mood, also depending on the story, I write about fifty pages. Sometimes even listening to a song can help. I actually got some ideas by listening to some songs. They can be turned into specific stories alone or compare them to what I already have in mind, I can create new scenes to push the story forward. And these making ups of stories and scenes all together depend on what you have in your mind about the same idea.
Very nice Mrs. Brown! Thank you for sharing. Your post made me think about this idea I've got today to somehow compare it with another idea I have to create something with a stronger and better storyline and I just got it right now. What I had in mind was just going to be a copy of Matrix trilogy but nite I have something unique. Thank you!!! You saved me from crumbling my mind.
1 person likes this
We sometimes get inspiration from the most unusal people or places. I usually start with the outline of the story and then develope the characters, which forces me to edit the story and make it better. Then I would start writtimg the script. I too have tons of ideas for scripts so I start with the most relivant one . I believe that timing is everything when telling a good story.
2 people like this
I'm inspired by the Bible and life happenstances on many levels/genres. To hold on to the concept, an outline is created first. On the open road, there have been 'too" many times I've been overwhelmed with scenery/dialogue and began carrying a recorder for convenience.