By Anant Mathur (May 04, 2010)
Often times a screenwriter is stuck trying to find an idea for a story. One way I find helps a great deal in such situation is to brainstorm. By brainstorming I don’t mean to think of the plot or characters or dialogues, but instead let it all go. Just start writing the first thing that comes into your head, don’t worry about grammar, punctuation or if it makes any sense. Write without any comma, periods, question marks or exclamation points. Let it be a large single paragraph of what comes into your head.
Consider the following example, I am trying to think of a story and I have come up with this so far [A divorced mother with a young daughter, is just leaving the home of her husband to start afresh] but now I’m stuck…
So what do I do now?
Well, I brainstorm, here’s how…
the ex-mrs. yadav is leaving the house she has called her home for the last 10 years she has sole custody of her daughter pia and left her drunk wife-beating husband with the bottle to do what it wants to him as she exits the gate of the house it begins to rain heavily a security officer calls a taxi for mrs. yadav and her daughter they swiftly jump into the car and instruct the driver to head to the airport but just as the driver pulls onto the highway they get stuck in a massive traffic jam up-ahead is a large-scale accident involving some 25 vehicles one of those in the accident is mr. rajesh singhania a local business man on his way to collect goods for his business he’ll never make it now the manufacturer closes in 10 minutes he picks up his cell and calls his secretary miss juneja and asks her to call the manufacturer and inform them of the mishap sweating profusely he hears back from miss juneja who informs him that the manufacturer will be at the warehouse for another hour and if he can make it in that time he can have the good today desperate mr. singhania looks for a way to get out of the traffic jam and reach his goods he comes across a taxi and throws the driver out taking over himself he backs the car out through traffic and gets to some local roads where traffic is moving well finally gazing into the rear view mirror singhania notices the yadavs in the back he jams the breaks and the car comes to an abrupt stop pia not wearing a seatbelt flies out of the windshield and lands on the road a few feet ahead.
Well that’s it, this may not be the best paragraph or story ever written, but it does have some potential, I have created a few situations which I may be able to use, the characters are solid and action is fast moving. Plus it may motivate me to come up with a story around the whole idea. That’s pretty much all it takes to get out of a jam when you’re unable to write. This way of brainstorming has helped me on many occasions and I hope it will do the same for you.
Often times a screenwriter is stuck trying to find an idea for a story. One way I find helps a great deal in such situation is to brainstorm. By brainstorming I don’t mean to think of the plot or characters or dialogues, but instead let it all go. Just start writing the first thing that comes into your head, don’t worry about grammar, punctuation or if it makes any sense. Write without any comma, periods, question marks or exclamation points. Let it be a large single paragraph of what comes into your head.
Consider the following example, I am trying to think of a story and I have come up with this so far [A divorced mother with a young daughter, is just leaving the home of her husband to start afresh] but now I’m stuck…
So what do I do now?
Well, I brainstorm, here’s how…
the ex-mrs. yadav is leaving the house she has called her home for the last 10 years she has sole custody of her daughter pia and left her drunk wife-beating husband with the bottle to do what it wants to him as she exits the gate of the house it begins to rain heavily a security officer calls a taxi for mrs. yadav and her daughter they swiftly jump into the car and instruct the driver to head to the airport but just as the driver pulls onto the highway they get stuck in a massive traffic jam up-ahead is a large-scale accident involving some 25 vehicles one of those in the accident is mr. rajesh singhania a local business man on his way to collect goods for his business he’ll never make it now the manufacturer closes in 10 minutes he picks up his cell and calls his secretary miss juneja and asks her to call the manufacturer and inform them of the mishap sweating profusely he hears back from miss juneja who informs him that the manufacturer will be at the warehouse for another hour and if he can make it in that time he can have the good today desperate mr. singhania looks for a way to get out of the traffic jam and reach his goods he comes across a taxi and throws the driver out taking over himself he backs the car out through traffic and gets to some local roads where traffic is moving well finally gazing into the rear view mirror singhania notices the yadavs in the back he jams the breaks and the car comes to an abrupt stop pia not wearing a seatbelt flies out of the windshield and lands on the road a few feet ahead.
Well that’s it, this may not be the best paragraph or story ever written, but it does have some potential, I have created a few situations which I may be able to use, the characters are solid and action is fast moving. Plus it may motivate me to come up with a story around the whole idea. That’s pretty much all it takes to get out of a jam when you’re unable to write. This way of brainstorming has helped me on many occasions and I hope it will do the same for you.
© Anant Mathur. All Rights Reserved.
1 comment:
hi, new to the site, thanks.
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