This week I talked to not one, not two, but THREE separate writers who were all having the same problem. They were having trouble coming up with a movie idea to write. Movie ideas are probably the most debated aspect of the screenwriting process. Everyone knows when they see a good one. And yet coming up with your own good movie idea remains the most challenging part of the process.
That’s because we don’t judge our ideas the way we judge others. We judge other ideas with objectivity. If it sounds good, we give it the thumbs up. But we create our own ideas out of emotion. There’s an element within the idea – the main character, the subject matter, the theme – that resonates with us on a deeper level. And that’s the problem. That resonance creates rose-tinted glass we see our idea through.
Emotion is not a bad thing, of course. You want emotion when you’re writing a screenplay. But it does get in the way of conceptualizing your idea. You can be so laser-focused on how you’re going to express this element that you can’t see the rest of the idea for what it really is – confusing, or generic, or maybe plain boring. Which is why you always want feedback on your ideas.
But today I want to make the process a little easier for you. What I’m going to do is give you the ten best ways to generate a movie idea. All of these are legitimate approaches to coming up with a good idea. I’m going to start with the worst of these options and move my way up to the best option. Let’s jump into it.
10) Horror and Guns – If you’re really struggling to come up with an idea, write a horror movie or a Guy/Gal with a Gun movie that contains ONE ELEMENT WE HAVEN’T SEEN BEFORE. Like a horror movie where you can’t make a noise (A Quiet Place). These are the two most marketable genres for spec scripts. So when in doubt, write one of these. Because you’ll have the best chance at actually selling them.
9) Follow Your Heart – This is that idea that won’t go away. It’s been sitting in your head for years. It may not be an objectively good idea. HOWEVER. Passion plays a large part in writing a great screenplay. The more passionate you are about something, the more likely you’ll go the extra mile to make it great. So the idea is that you’ll make up for the lack of a big hook by writing something emotionally earth-shattering. That’s how Titanic was written. That’s how Get Out was written. You have to accept that, when you’re finished, you’ll get less script requests. But, hopefully, the people who do request it will be more likely to enjoy it.
8) Update It – If you straight up suck at coming up with ideas, this is a good option. Go back 10, 20, 30 years ago and look for movie types that were popular then. If they were popular once, Hollywood believes they can be popular again. So just bring that genre back with a little modern update if possible. For example, romantic thrillers like Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction were big in the late 80s. Goofy horror movies like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer were big in the 2000s. It doesn’t take a lot imagination to update these genres so it’s an easy way to come up with a marketable concept.
7) Ripped From The Headlines – This is another option for those of you who struggle to come up with your own ideas. Take a hotly debated issue that’s out there in the headlines and build a GENRE movie around it. That last part is key. If you try and build an on-the-nose drama about the issue, we’re going to roll our eyes. Express the execution through a marketable genre. Invisible Man (horror) was about toxic masculinity. Get Out (horror-thriller) was about racism. The Hunt (thriller/satire) was about the political divide. Don’t Worry Darling (Thriller/Sci-Fi) is about toxic masculinity. Right now, this is a great formula for coming up with a sale-able spec.
6) Twist and Shout – Look through all of the time tested movie types out there and see if you can find a way to twist them. So, for example, the buddy cop sub-genre. One of the most reliable formats in movies. “Bright” takes that format and changes one of the parties into an ogre. It was enough to result in a huge spec sale and Netflix’s most watched movie to date. A bigger example would be “It.” A time-tested formula – a young group of friends coming of age during the summer – set in the horror genre.
5) Fascinating True Stories – Find a true story that sounds good and let it do all the work for you. Some writer found a story about JFK saving a dozen people when his boat capsized during World War 2. These days googling, “Great War stories” could find you hundreds of big screen worthy stories that haven’t been told yet. What are you waiting for?
4) An Underdog Story – Underdogs are the most beloved characters in movies. In a medium where writers struggle to come up with heroes audiences give a s@#$ about, underdogs are a cheat code. Forrest Gump. Rocky. Slumdog Millionare. Luke Skywalker. Deadpool. The Mule. The Social Network. Come up with an underdog at the heart of your story and I promise you, your script will be one of the easiest reads of the year.
3) Irony – A good ironic premise instantly separates itself from the pack. Here’s what I wrote in a previous article: “The most basic form of movie irony is to make your hero the opposite of what’s required of him. So you wouldn’t write a story about an atheist who starts his own atheism support group. You’d write a story about an atheist who takes a job as a Christian preacher to make ends meet.” Here’s a whole post about ironic premises.
2) A Fascinating Main Character – This is for writers who are bad at coming up with plots. If your mind doesn’t think that way, do not fear. Instead, come up with a really interesting character then build the bones of the plot around them. Take a look at Arthur Dent (Joker) or Louis Bloom (Nightcrawler) or Max Fischer (Rushmore). In all three of these movies, I’m betting the writers came up with the character first and then formulated the plot pieces around them. The reason you can get away with writing a script that doesn’t have a big plot hook is because everything in this business still comes down to getting bankable actors on board. So if you’re a reader and you see a logline with a really interesting main character, you know if the script turns out to be good you could get a lot of actors interested.
1) High Concept – The biggest, the flashiest, the cleverest, ideas still always win. This is a NUMBERS GAME. That means a certain number of people need to read your script before someone says yes. Therefore, it is in your interest to come up with ideas that get the most people interested in reading your script. The best way to do this is still the high concept idea. How do you come up with a high concept? The best model I know of is the “strange attractor” approach. You must have that thing in your concept that sounds both big and unlike something we’ve seen before. It’s the thing that makes your idea different from everyone else’s. The good news is you can come up with high concept ideas for big movies (The Meg – A group of scientists exploring the Marianas Trench encounter the largest marine predator that has ever existed – the Megalodon shark), medium-sized movies (Split – Three girls are kidnapped by a man with a diagnosed 23 distinct personalities), and small movies (Saw – Two men wake up in a small room chained to the wall with a saw in between them). So you don’t have any excuses. Still the king of the concept creation pack in my opinion.
One of the problems I see writers make is they try to come up with movie ideas out of nothing. They sit at their computer and try to will a good idea into existence. That kind of thing can work under certain conditions. That’s how Bruckheimer and Don Simpson used to come up with ideas. They’d read through the day’s newspapers and magazines until they found a good idea. But that’s generally not how the best ideas emerge. The best ideas come through organic inspiration. You’re out and you see something interesting and your mind goes into, what if that was a movie? You write the idea down and you don’t go back to it. If that idea is still nudging at you three months later, chances are it’s a good idea. Coming up with a good movie idea will always be hard but hopefully this list makes the process a little easier.
Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or $40 for unlimited tweaking. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. They’re extremely popular so if you haven’t tried one out yet, I encourage you to give it a shot. If you’re interested in any consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!
