Hey all,

I'm sure we all have, at one time or another, had a hard time when it comes to getting a basic idea for a screenplay, sometimes your imagination just stops working. I've decided to share a little thing I do to break out of that rut.

A while back I've purchased Jeff Kitchens Writing A Great Movie: Key tools for successful screenwriting, decent book, and in it is a list of 36 dramatic situations... They are

1. Supplication (asking or begging for help)
2. Deliverance (rescued or being rescued)
3. Crime pursued by vengeance
4. Vengeance taken for kindred upon kindred
5. Pursuit
6. Disaster
7. Falling prey to cruelty or misfortune
8. Revolt
9. Daring enterprise
10. Abduction
11. The enigma
12. Obtaining
13. Enmity of kinsmen
14. Rivalry of kinsmen
15. Murderous Adultery
16. Madness
17. Fatal imprudence
18. Involuntary crimes of love
19. Slaying of kinsmen unrecognized
20. self sacrifice for an ideal
21. self sacrifice for kindred
22. All sacrifice for a passion
23. Necessity of sacrificing loved one
24. Rivalry of superior and inferior
25. Adultery
26. Crimes of love
27. discovery of the dishonesty of a loved one
28. Obstacles of love
29. An enemy loved
30. ambition
31. Conflict with God
32. Mistaken jealousy
33. Erroneous judgement
34. Remorse
35. Recovery of a lost one
36. Loss of loved ones.

Whenever my mind is blank I jot them down one bits of paper and a randomly take out 2-4, I then try and develop a story based on what I've taken out. Helps jumpstart my creativity, figured it might help out others.

I've always tried to look at movies I love, and movies/genres I hate, and try to do something better.

I'm inspired by life experience mostly. History is another. I'm rarely inspired by other films. The rest just comes naturally. I try not to think about it.

It's rather the other way around for me. While writing a script, I get so many ideas which distract me from the one script I'm writing right now. I find it hard to keep focused on finishing my current work before drifting into something else.

For me, it's actually the fun part to imagine a story and work it out in my mind, imagine the characters and all that, but the writing part is more or less the 'work' part for me, especially because I'm constantly struggling with my english. I keep rewriting a single page again and again, browsing the web to find better phrasing for what I'm trying to get across. I easily need 1-2 hours to move on from one page to the next, and that's only for a first draft.

My current script went a bit better, I got to page 45 relatively quickly, in about three weeks of writing in the evenings after my day job, but now I'm already stuck there for a week, racking my brain on how to wrap everything up in the final act. If I get stuck it's kind of frustrating and I'm even more intrigued to think of something else.

I do that all the time. I rewrote two old scripts recently after finishing a blockbuster-type feature. I then went on to write the first act of another blockbuster before being drawn to write a comedy I've been thinking about for around two years. I will finish the comedy just to get it out of my system and then go back to the other blockbuster.

Perhaps if you tell yourself that you cannot write anything else until you finish what you're currently writing it may drive you to finish. Besides, simply finishing your first draft is not finishing the script. It is merely the beginning. The real work comes in the rewriting.