Wondering if anyone wants to share anything about their process. I'm not talking about inspiration for a story premise, but just for a scene. For example, let's say you reach a point in your script where your notes say the daughter of the protag must die. And you're looking for a setting, or the specifics of her death. Where do you find your ideas?

My last script, I obtained an idea for a key scene when I was glancing through a book of my mother's that showed old pictures from our city. There was a shot from the 50s of a neighborhood that no longer exists, a place that was leveled in the 60s and 70s with urban redevelopment cash. But in this shot in the 50s, it was street level, an old cobblestone street; a neighborhood of close packed tenements, with businesses and shops on the first floor. A couple of bars were on the corner where a side street intersected. There was something inspirational about the image, so I adapted it and used it for an important scene.

I think inspiration can be found everywhere, every time you leave your house. Just wondering if anyone else had any stories from their work, or ideas or suggestions. Since it's so quiet.

I usually don't need separate inspiration for individual scenes, because my method of building a story is to build the complete picture at once. Therefore all the scenes follow each other naturally and the setting is dictated by the action. They say that the previous scene should validate the existence of the current scene and that the current scene should validate the existence of everything that has come before it. I certainly try to fulfil that in my writing, with varying degrees of success.

Then again, the part that I often struggle with the most and may need inspiration for is the key moments of a scene. One line of dialogue or a key action can elude me for a long time. I might know what needs to happen or what the dialogue should contain but the optimal execution is not yet there. Usually that means that I have not achieved to capture the truth and essence of the scene and I'll need to work on it more. Sometimes it means radical rewriting of the outline, but fortunately usually the situation can be rectified with brainstorming.

My solution usually is to take a long walk. That's when my brain seems to work.

Quoted from leitskev Wondering if anyone wants to share anything about their process. I'm not talking about inspiration for a story premise, but just for a scene. For example, let's say you reach a point in your script where your notes say the daughter of the protag must die. And you're looking for a setting, or the specifics of her death. Where do you find your ideas? My last script, I obtained an idea for a key scene when I was glancing through a book of my mother's that showed old pictures from our city. There was a shot from the 50s of a neighborhood that no longer exists, a place that was leveled in the 60s and 70s with urban redevelopment cash. But in this shot in the 50s, it was street level, an old cobblestone street; a neighborhood of close packed tenements, with businesses and shops on the first floor. A couple of bars were on the corner where a side street intersected. There was something inspirational about the image, so I adapted it and used it for an important scene. I think inspiration can be found everywhere, every time you leave your house. Just wondering if anyone else had any stories from their work, or ideas or suggestions. Since it's so quiet.

Oh Lord, Kevin. It's so true. Inspiration I think comes as a bit of a gift after a lot of sweat and blood and fingers that have been worked to the bone. I don't mean just on the keyboard either.

This year, I've made it a point to really do the carpe diem thing. What it means to me is that I let things happen and I don't force things. (Does that make sense?) And that's where I find inspiration. ...and to be honest, it's where I've always found it. But the story? That's another story.  ;) But I'm working on it. (In a non forced way of course.)

Truly, my problem is not with inspiration. Or rather, paradoxically, IT IS INSPIRATION THAT IS THE PROBLEM!!!! I love everything so much I can just as easily do one thing as another. Just as long as I'm working for someone and they can benefit, it's all good to me... and that's a problem.

I said to my husband, "I need to clone myself". I'm sure many of you have felt the same way-- where you have so much to do, but only so much time. That's one of the reasons I'm an anomaly when it comes to studying screenwriting.

What I've discovered is that I love to combine both the "book form", which includes a lot of "non fiction" and "biographies" and science and mystically related sources together with short stories and scripts and poetry.

Although I enjoy movies, I know that I will never watch them to the degree that many SS'rs do. I prefer live theatre and going to a "special movie" that gives me such a... well, special experience. One like "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" comes to mind. That's not to say that I don't like movies like Easy A or Mean Girls, but I can't have a steady diet of that sort of thing, even if it were for the purpose of study. I just can't do it.

Everything is a process of self discovery: To thine own self be true. With that, I come back to last Monday and for me, the best inspiration of all--

To walk together with a group at The Kerry Wood Nature Park Sanctuary for a Harvest Moon Walk (nothing to do with Michael Jackson's famous dance). This was one of the best experiences of my life and it might never make it into a script (or maybe it will), but I think the best inspiration is living your life, not worrying about tomorrow, and just "being present" for those around you.

Thank you for the post,  Kevin. As always, I hold you in great esteem. You are an intelligent and thoughtful person.

Sandra

Thanks for sharing those thoughts. For starters like me I love to hear how others think, how they work and where they find ideas.

As I grow older I seem more interested in people. The world maybe a lovely place but boy do most people have to work hard, make sacrifices, make difficult decisions, cock up etc etc. fascinating stuff.

I love hearing stories of peope lives and then consider the process they can help themselves.

Having reviewed my ideas page, many come from what if's surrounding how problems could be solved. Naturally they have to be rather extreme for this medium but there definitely seems to be a cause and effect process going on.

Cheers. RD

Henrik

That you can imagine a complete picture of your scenes and characters is a true gift. Not something I will ever be able to do. There are quite a few scenes in a feature. And since a movie is by nature a visual experience, sometimes I'm looking for that unique location for a certain scene that will hopefully leave a lasting impression. The story may flow naturally with the action required for that scene, but other aspects, particularly setting, could be open to a variety of solutions.

For example, the Godfather getting shot. That could have happened in various locations. Logically it probably should have happened outside his house, since Paulie called in sick. But they wanted it to happen in the old neighborhood. I think it's the only scene that takes place there, surrounded by fruit sellers. It's the perfect setting for the shooting that leaves a powerful image. But it could have been somewhere else.

Another area where there is room for variability is the secondary characters. These are often not dictated by the story, but the characters that are created and plugged in can be very memorable to us. Like the news stand guy from A Few Good Men, or that Two Times guy from Goodfellas.

My main point is that the inspiration for these things is everywhere. It's just a matter of looking at the world a certain way. I can take a walk downtown and just think about the economy or the NFL. Or I can open my eyes and SEE the world around me. There's potential inspiration for scenes and characters almost everywhere you look.

Another example: No Country for Old Man. A simple stop at a little highway convenience store becomes one of the most memorable scenes of the film. We've all stopped in stores like that and witnessed or participated in a little conversation with some old timer. Especially when traveling a distance where you're in the car alone for a while, stopping and having a few seconds of friendly banter with a stranger has a strangely elevated importance that most people can identify with. But in this scene, the conversation suddenly becomes dark and dangerous. But establishing the random violence and strange internal rules of the killer could have been done in many ways. He could have picked up a hitchhiker.

Sandra

I think I may have left the wrong impression. I am not talking about a struggle for inspiration, like writer's block. My point has been that inspiration is everywhere. You can't hide from it. One opens their eyes, wherever they are, and it's there. This post was just to talk about what other people see, what they draw inspiration from. I think that's why writing is so much fun. One can take inspiration from the most mundane of things.

For example, like a restaurant menu. Let's say a little place opens up and you visit for the first time. From that menu you have a window into the mind of the person who created it. They're telling you not just what they have. You can often see other things. You might see what they're most proud of by the description they put in. Sometimes you can even see that they have strong ideas about what you, the customer, should like. There's a value system. Also, the menu can be kind of social evidence. For example, if we gave you a menu that was from an archive of menus, could you tell by looking at it what period it was from? A menu today looks different from a menu even 10 years ago, in terms of style and emphasis.

We would welcome you to clone yourself! The world needs more Sandras!

I think your approach to writing, synthesizing many forms, is a great way of doing things, a powerful source of creativity. Some of the best music is produced that way too. You draw your inspiration by combining experiences from various intellectual activities, and that's not only effective, but rewarding.

Is that Kerry Wood the ballplayer?

R Dreamer

You bring up an interesting point. There is evidence for choices and decisions people made everywhere you look. We look out our window. The street runs where it does for a reason. There was a series of choices that once upon a time led to that location(unless it was a deer path or something!). You look at your neighbor's house, same thing. It was laid out the way it is for a reason. And you meet a person in the world, and a chain of choices has led them to where they are. It's very interesting to try to figure them out sometimes.

You raise very interesting points and I definitely do not disagree with them. In fact, everything you say is consistent with how I think about it as well. But for me, as I said in the beginning, it's all very natural.

Once I know what the scene is about, I usually know where it's supposed to happen and what the location is. Because for me, it's integrally tied to what the scene is about. Action usually lets you know what is the optimal place for the action to happen. I think it's true in your examples as well.

Godfather is shot in the old neighbourhood. Why? Because, like you said, it's the perfect setting for the shooting that leaves a powerful image. Therefore the action has defined the location as that location presented itself as the optimal dramatic option for the writers. The action, therefore, defined the location.

Why does the conversation happen in a small convenience store and not with a hitchhiker they picked up? Because the scene would be totally different. A convenience store is a public place and that in itself changes the tone of the scene rather than if it was in a private place. Now, I won't even pretend that I'd seen the movie, I have not and therefore I can't venture into deep analysis. But I'd say that from your description, it still seems like the location is vital to the tone of the scene.

Now, I hope you're not getting me wrong. I'm by no means saying that my way is the "right" way or that it's even a good approach. But that's how the process works for me. Figuring out a location has never been an issue for me since it usually presents itself during the plotting. And sure, the location of the scene might change during the outlining process for a variety of reasons, although usually the reason is purely logistical.

I should also probably point out something that might be a contributing factor: I have never written a feature. I write mainly television scripts and a lot of shorts for really cheap productions. Therefore the choice of locations is limited. But I have written a few feature length pilot scripts, so I'd imagine that the process is quite similar. But still, it might be something that does affect my approach and maybe it'd be different if I had started with features. Who knows.

Hey Henrik

I've been writing less than a year, so it's all still a learning process for me. I've written several features, and in each one, there were times where I knew what came next in the story, but had to choose a setting for it. In the scene I mentioned in the post that started this thread, I needed a location for the protag to kill one of the main antagonists. Before I even reached the point where I was writing that scene, I saw a picture in a book that inspired the location. But I could have chosen others. Is it the perfect location? In a way, they always are. Because you use the best one you can think of. It's the perfect location until you think of a better one!

I don't think it's the case that we have different ways of writing, Henrik, I just don't think it's the case that every scene and character fits in some jigsaw kind of way, where each piece was necessary exactly the way it was. Maybe it feels that way to you when you're done, and great work will appear that way to the audience. But ultimately you needed some inspiration for those pieces of the puzzle, and ultimately you made some choices. If you are able to draw everything you need before you start writing, all of your locations and characters, everything from the protag and supporting actors right down to the bar tender who has one line, then that's fantastic. You're lucky. But even if you can do that, you are still making choices when you draw that up. The characters and scenes are not all inevitable.

I think you'll see this when you write a feature. A short is a very different animal. Usually a very limited number of characters and locations.

But I think you'll enjoy the process. The bar tender, the bus driver, the nosy neighbor, the card shark, the mother in law...these are the great random characters with small roles that you discover while writing. You can really have a lot of fun with them. And they are often inspired by things you see in the world, whether that happens before you start writing or during the process.

Of course, obviously I do need inspiration to write, I'm not trying to say that I don't by any means. Inspiration is not a necessity when creating (especially if you're on a deadline), but it sure as heck helps. I do not mean to imply that the entire thing just magically falls right out of my brain in finished form. Quite the opposite, a draft of a script is the result of months of mental massaging and feverish outlining.

What I mean to say is that I do not think of the story scene by scene, but in terms of character and plot. I always begin with the characters and work as long as I need to establish their voices, because I see no point in telling even the most fascinating story if the world is inhabited by empty shells. Then I figure out what I want to say, what the thing is about. And, eventually, I start working on the story and plot. And this can take me months of seeming inactivity, but is actually filled with just letting the thing come alive in my head.

Once the characters have their voices, I know what I want to say and the world breathes, I hatch out the story and start outlining the thing scene by scene. But because by this point the characters, the world and the story have been alive in my head for so long, it is them that dictate the individual scenes almost on their own. And that is why I usually don't have to think about a single scene. It's a part of a larger picture that is already complete.

I don't think that feature writing is all that different from writing a two-hour pilot, because it employs the same kind of freedom and requires the same amount (if not more) original concept work. So I have experience in what you're describing above, since I've written a few of those.

However, nothing in a script is incidental for me. Even the random characters and smallest cameos have a purpose or I don't write them in. A script needs to be lean and mean, everything included should drive the story and strengthen the theme in my humble and subjective opinion. Sure, the purpose of a small moment or a quick character might be something as simple than a joke or establishing colour to the world. But still, they are part of the larger world that often dictates itself to me as much as I dictate it. That's why I don't seek separate inspiration for those seemingly incidental moments as they come with the larger whole.

But again, that's just me. That's the process that I've developed for myself over the last 15 years I've been at this on and off andI think I've only gotten the true hang of in the last year or so.

Quoted from leitskev Sandra Is that Kerry Wood the ballplayer? R Dreamer You bring up an interesting point. There is evidence for choices and decisions people made everywhere you look. We look out our window. The street runs where it does for a reason. There was a series of choices that once upon a time led to that location(unless it was a deer path or something!). You look at your neighbor's house, same thing. It was laid out the way it is for a reason. And you meet a person in the world, and a chain of choices has led them to where they are. It's very interesting to try to figure them out sometimes.

Truthfully, I'm not sure why they named it The Kerry Wood Nature Park. As far as those series of choices that were made regarding anything and how it affects our perception of the world and transfers into our own written word:

How a street is laid out. Why those pictures on the wall? Why that person eats with their right hand if they're left handed? ... This is the kind of stuff I also love. I can't explain it, but I bubble up inside because it feels beyond real. There's something that I can detect in other people's writing that (when it's there) has this "thing" that is living.  When I notice it hereafter, I will now probably make the correlation that they too are opening as if "a portal" to the miniscule but important choices that grow a static piece of sort of dead wood into visceral streams of living water.

Sandra

I'll let it go after this, Henrik, but honestly, I think you're envisioning that every single element in a story fits there as though it was almost predetermined and meant to be there, and I don't see how that can be the case.

In A Few Good Men, you have an older black man that runs the news stand. Are you saying this could not have been a middle aged white woman? I'm not saying that anyone can play that part, but there is a range. And it's the same when writing a script. Some pieces need to be the way they are, but with others there is a range of options. The idea that every single element and detail in a script is exactly as it must be, and the only way it could be...is kind of out there, IMO.

This has nothing to do with something being incidental. But there are still choices. Character A has to die at the end of act two, but there might be a range of possibilities where he dies, or exactly how. It's seldom if ever true that there is only one possible way for this to happen, and that means the writer has to make a choice. The choice has to be consistent with the story, but it's still a choice.

You say you don't have to think about a single scene, but that's not true. You did think about it, when you planned the script. Some people are good at making those choices before they start writing, and it sounds like you are, but you still made those choices from a range of possibilities. The whole thing does not preexist within the logic of the story. Even though it may feel like that, and like I said, hopefully seem like that to the audience.

Quoted from leitskev I'll let it go after this, Henrik, but honestly, I think you're envisioning that every single element in a story fits there as though it was almost predetermined and meant to be there, and I don't see how that can be the case.

I think this is a very interesting discussion, so I don't want to discourage continuing it. However, if you feel that I'm hogging the topic, I understand.

But to your point: I'm not saying I'm there. But that's where I'm aiming to be at some point in my career, hopefully. Watch Pixar. They do it and they do it beautifully. They're just about the only ones who manage to do it consistently too. That's why I count myself as a big fan.

Quoted from leitskev This has nothing to do with something being incidental. But there are still choices.

I think we're circling around the same points, so I'll try to rephrase. Of course there are choices. Every single word is a choice. But I feel that my choices are dictated by the characters, the world and the needs of the plot. It doesn't mean that what I end up with is the only choice, but it usually comes very organically. If the choices present themselves to you without being cliché, then I think you've managed to create a world that really lives.

Quoted from leitskev The idea that every single element and detail in a script is exactly as it must be, and the only way it could be...is kind of out there, IMO.

You've misunderstood me. I don't mean to imply that the choice that ended up in the script is the one and only way to do it. As you said earlier, in a way, there are no wrong choices. But there usually is an optimal one and that's the one that I try to go with and that usually presents itself clearly.

What I mean is: Every choice you make means something. And if I know what you're writing about, I have already made the choice before I ever come to the scene in question.

Saw this thread around 9 this morning and was thinking all day about my individual scene inspiration.

Then, I was at Barnes & Noble this evening and came across a book with an extremely interesting cover.   (Yes, I am shallow, I do choose books based on whether or not I like the cover and/or title.)  'Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children' by Ransom Riggs.  I took a read through the prologue and first chapter and decided I liked it enough already to add it to my own little private collection.

Ransom wrote the novel around creepy pictures of young children that he found in flea markets and swap meets over the past couple years.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/05/miss-peregrines-home-for-peculiar-children-ransom-riggs.html

After hearing that, this thread popped right back into my head.


Me, personally, dialogue is usually what inspires me to write each scene individually.  Nothing gets me going like when a great line pops into my head and the scene builds itself around it.  But also, pictures of settings and/or the actual settings themselves have also driven me to write a particular scene, or change the setting of a scene.

That's why I love writing.  Because I can do whatever I want wherever I want to in a story and nobody else can say anything about it.  (Except my Simplyscript peeps, of course.)

There's inspiration just about everywhere when I'm in the mood to write.

Absolutely, Mark...though don't judge a book by...nevermind.

Yeah, that was my point. There's inspiration in all kinds of places. And I think what you said is true, you're more apt to see those things while you're writing. So writing really opens us to seeing the world differently. Great thought.