Where Do Babies Come From?
The genesis from idea to full-fledged screenplay (or novel, or short story) is nearly impossible to describe. It happens differently for every person — or, at least, people fall into different groupings in terms of what they do to take an idea from vague concept to finished work. My classic, unmarketable satire about a high school student who joins a Satanic cult when he can’t get a date for the prom came from remarkably simple circumstances: when I was in high school, I had no interest whatsoever in going to the prom, so I waited for the absolute last minute to ask a girl.
I kept seeing the girl I wanted to ask on the day I intended to ask her, but every single time, she was hanging around with one of our assistant principals, making it the epitome of bad timing (or, at least, embarrassing timing if she turned me down flat in front of an adult/authority figure). The third or fourth time I saw her, I started to think it would be funny if she turned me down because she was having an affair with the assistant principal. That’s where the story came from, and I worked my way backwards to how the guy would react upon discovering a girl he has a crush on is dating the dumpy, short, bald assistant principal: join a cult. Oscar, please.
Of course, it took me five years to finally write that thing. Not because it was so arduous or soul-crushing, but because it was one of those ideas that didn’t come out of a box fully-formed. I had to figure out why those two characters were having an affair, why it would crush the prom-asker-outer so much (because in my reality, I didn’t have much of a crush on the girl I intended to ask — we were just halfway decent friends who were single), and what the story is with the cult. It all came together, but it wasn’t like I thought about it every second of every day for five years. It’s one of the scripts where I had the broad strokes in five minutes, but the specific elements came slowly.
The more important thing for the moment is that initial second where the idea forms. Where I’m walking the track with a couple of friends (we had a gym program — apparently unusual — where you picked what you wanted to do, and you had to choose a cardiovascular activity on some days and a lazy, lazy activity, like walking the track at a snail’s pace, on other days), and I see the girl as we round the corner, and then next to her appears the assistant principal. It’s one of those moments where, if it had been a movie, this would have turned into a “jealous rage” scenario. See the girl: happy. Keep rounding the corner until the principal’s in view: WHAT THE FUCK MOTHERFUCKER?!! That’s the moment the seed planted itself in my stupid brain.
If you get an idea like that, the easiest way to handle it is to reverse-engineer: like I said above, you have an idea, so what’s the story? What are the circumstances? Who does it involve, why, and how does it affect them? Not always easy questions to answer, but if you have a germ of an idea that you think has potential, explore it. I took several fiction-writing classes in college, where they used an academic model to “force” us to come up with ideas, on the spot. For me, coming up with the idea was never the hard part — developing it gave me the most challenge, as did figuring out which ideas are worth developing and which aren’t, or combining multiple ideas into one coherent piece.
Pummeling an idea with questions right off the bat helps. If you can’t answer the questions and help yourself develop characters and a story to fit into the idea, chances are it isn’t worth developing. That doesn’t mean throw it away — you might think of something later — but that it shouldn’t take your immediate focus. It’s kind of an aggressive approach, but it works for me. And if it’s a good enough idea, it’ll stick with you until your mind starts shitting out more material to develop it. If it’s not, it’s the kind of thing you might find scrawl in a journal or idea notebook, come back to two years later, and find yourself developing it into a full outline within minutes. That’s the power of the unconscious mind — sometimes, it does the dirty work so you don’t have to.
This method might not work for everyone, but if you’re the type to have a germ of an idea without really knowing what to do with it, give it a try. Ask the journalistic six: who, what, where, when, why, and how?
Posted by Stan on May 10, 2008 11:58 AM | Permalink | Career-Based Rambling, How Not to Write a Screenplay | Digg It
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