Sunday, March 19, 2006

Ideas

Where do I get my ideas? Let me follow the same thread as last post, and look at my last three features.

"101" is obvious. That story has been my hobby since 1998. "Sheep's End" grew out of an adventure I created for some role-playing friends. "By the Book" comes, in theme, from something I wanted to say. The plot is nothing special: a family breaking up.

Find a conflict and build around it. That's the basics.

Keep a journal or at least a pen on you at all times. I have notes on notepaper, checkbooks, (paper) napkins, etc. You're bound to think up a decent idea at some point, even if it's only a seed that leads to a much different idea.

Not feeling creative? There are stories all around you. Pick up a newspaper and mine it for ideas. Try your hand at your own version of Shakespeare or Jules Verne or myth or fairy tale. I bet I would run out of fingers as I count film adaptations of "King Lear".

Some writers are bursting with ideas, fraught with so many ideas that there's no way they can use all of them. Others only come up with enough to match their needs.

Yet others go into a little bunker, sit down, hand over a credit card, jack themselves in, collect free-roaming particles of noetic thought, then go home and write it down.

The trick is not in the ideas, the trick lies in the execution.

Bonus moment of comedy for the day:

Q: What do you get when you cross a grade-school production of "Grease", wireless microphones, and an incompetent soundboard operator?

A: Over the speaker system, you hear a cast member go to the bathroom during act two.

2 Comments:

Blogger Naila J. said...

ROFL!!

And thanks :)

Now I need to get cracking. After the homework, that is...

March 20, 2006 3:28 PM  
Blogger Elvi said...

Sadly, they seem to have improved teh sound so we didn't get to laugh at the toilet flushing at tonight's performance. And they managed to get the car off the stage before the dance-off scene, so we didn't get to see the principal pushing at it ineffectually....
It was still a funny show, though.

March 20, 2006 9:39 PM  

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