Screenwriting is both an art and a craft. Interestingly, one can show incredible proficiency at the craft and still fail to succeed on a professional level. Why is that?
You might think I would answer that you have failed at the “art” portion. And to some degree that may be true. Plenty of screenplays fail because they lack artistry. Art to me simply implies a personal, unique approach to craft. However, one can write with both proficiency and a unique style and still fail to sell their script (though they may get hired to write a script on open assignment).
I think most screenplays fail not because of craft or art. They fail because the “idea” isn’t good enough or commercial enough for a studio to invest $80-100 million dollars in it. Today in Hollywood, the idea is king.
So how do you come up with a “good idea” for a movie?
I wish I knew.
One thing I can tell you is how to evaluate the idea before you start investing time and effort into writng it. For years, I instructed my students to write the movie “they would go to see on the day it opened, first show.”
Think about that for a second. It implies that you cannot wait to see it. It’s that unique and good and worth getting off your couch for. Surely, you have gone to see movies on opening day. You probably have gone to the first showing in some instances. Why? Something about that film – most likely the idea behind it – appealed to you more than others.
Now it may just be that you like Tom Hanks. Or Johnny Depp. Or whomever. But surely you’ve seen bombs that those actors have headlined.
No, I think it is idea that brings in the crowds in most instances.
So how do you know your idea will do that? Well, first, it has to do it for you. Unless you are a crazy person who has a love for collecting Hummels and thinks that someone searching for a rare Hummel is spine-tingling stuff, you’re probably like most of the movie-going crowd. If you really like your idea, so will they.
You also have to like it enough that you are willing to spend the next six months or so (depending on what’s going on in the rest of your life) working on that idea, turning it into a story and then a screenplay. You have to stick with it through thick and thin. If you get bored with it early on, it stands no chance.
I hear screenwriting teachers and gurus say to imagine the poster. It’s not bad advice. If you can picture the poster for your film idea, that’s certainly a head start. But it’s not the whole shebang. I can picture the poster for the Hummel hunter, but I doubt I’d ever want to see the movie.
No, there has to be something in the idea that stirs your insides. Makes you want to explore the characters within that story.
So is that all there is to it? Hardly. That’s just where it starts.
Unfortunately, I don’t know where to tell you to go looking for that “idea”. It’s floating around out there. Or more likely, in there – meaning inside you. What’s going to make it come out is anybody’s guess. I only know that sitting in a room and trying to think of an idea for a movie is about the worst way to come up with one. Ideas strike at the strangest times and in the strangest ways. You simply have to be on the lookout for it. Then write it down as soon as possible before it escapes you.
In the next post, I’ll tell you what the best ideas for commercial films all have in common and why.
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