A Screenwriter's Journey 1: Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

Okay, where to start?

I think that's the first question with any writing project. How do you get started?

The question that most writers hate the most is "where do you get your ideas?" The reason the question is so hated is because there isn't any secret answer to it. Everybody gets ideas from the same place. Everywhere.

Anything can be an idea. Anything can be useful in the write writing context. What can be useful down the road might not even be on your mind yet. And that great idea that you had yesterday might not find a home for a decade. Or ever.

All writing comes from ideas. But keeping track of ideas until you need them is a challenge.

Luckily for me, I've had a simple system for idea generation and storage that I've used for a long time now. It's so easy anyone can do it:

1. Train your mind to think of new ideas. The easiest way to do this is to write. Any time you write something, it generates new ideas. You can also train yourself when you are watching (or more importantly, re-watching) movies, TV, etc. that you like. Ask yourself, how did they do that? How did they achieve that feeling in the viewer? And what is another way that kind of feeling could be developed? Idea generation begats idea generation.

2. Write all ideas down. All of them. Good ones and bad ones. When it comes to writing, quantity is the primary pathway to quality. You will not use everything you write down. You will also not use everything the way you originally conceived it. What was a brilliant idea when you thought of it may lose all value later and vice versa.

3. When you get stuck on an idea, scan through your old ideas list and see what pops out. See what you can combine. See what creates new ideas.

That's really it. I've been writing down these little ideas, whether it be a character, a plot point, a secret reveal, a title, an ending, a scene, whatever, for as long as I can remember. That leaves me with a book of ideas, some of which can generate new things, some of which can be added to other things and many of which are useless.

So what's the idea for this next screenplay?

Well, it started with a scanning of what producers are looking for. My primary method of pitching screenplays so far (which has led to at least three sales so far) is a website called VirtualPitchFest. Through this site, for a small fee (currently $20), you can buy a "pitch." This pitch gives you guaranteed access to a producer or agent. You send them an e-mail pitch of your story and they have to respond within a week. The responses are basically "yes, I like that pitch, send me the script" or some variation on "no." If you send them the script and they like it, then you move into the negotiation phase.

But before that, you have to figure out what to pitch. For this screenplay, I wanted to basically write in a genre that I haven't done before. By genre here, I'm going more targeted than just "horror" or "comedy." Everything I write has elements of both of those, so I'm think more a specific type of horror movie in this case. From looking at the VirtualPitchFest requests from all the various producers and agents, I found that one of the most in-demand types of screenplays are low-budget, high fun horror movies like those made by Blumhouse (one of the most popular and profitable studios of the last decade, so movies like Paranormal Activity, Sinister, Insidious, The Purge, Get Out, Happy Death Day, etc.). I like a lot of these movies, even if I don't love them, and the best of them are among the best movies made today (Get Out, Us).

I haven't written a low-budget horror film like this yet, but I've written quite a bit of horror. So this type of movie will be what I write. Something I like plus something that is easy to produce plus something that the market is good for.

Next step is to go into the idea book and I came up really quickly with an idea. The first step in this case was the title: "Beware the Dortches."

Crazy title, yes, but crazy titles get read more than boring ones.

Here's where this one came from... I drive I-95 from D.C. to Fla several times a year. Somewhere along that road, probably in the Carolina/lower Virginia area, in the median of the split highway is a sign that says "The Dortches." That caught my attention. Particularly since one of these times it was dark out and that sign sat in front of a really dark grove of trees and was spooky. My brain immediately did a creepy voice and said "Beware the Dortches."

So then I had to think of what in the world that phrase meant. I immediately thought of one of those community haunted houses. You know, the kind that are put together in someone's yard or in a neighborhood park or whatever? Not officially sanctioned by the city, not commercial, just a family and neighbors having fun for the holiday. so it became that the Dortches were the family that put on one of these haunted houses. And that immediately brought to mind several influences and prior texts that would inform this film. Obviously the other Blumhouse-style movies are an impact, but this also traces back to the "we've turn off the main road and have found the really scary people's house and they're going to kill us now" films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and it's infinite children.

So that's the basic premise, but that's far from a movie or a plot. I looked at the rest of the notes and really only had these notes:

-Beware the Dortches
-Dortches are a family
-Do a haunted house
-Live off the beaten track
-annual haunted house for four years
-locals being rude dismissive
-not that good a house
-come back next year for the anniversary
-fifth year, everybody comes back for the big surprise
-Two big giant male family members
-Fifth year, everybody dies because it's all real
-Girl who had bad experience in a haunted house as a kid

And that's it. That's all I have as of today. This is where it starts.

(That's it for this time. Next time will pick up with the next steps after the basic premise).