Time to Write

Here's a plot to avoid (Promise?)

The “friends making a pact” is a popular plot, especially for screenplays.

You know the type of thing:

• Friends agree not to marry unitl they're a certain age
  
  
• Friends agree that if they’re not married by a certain age they’ll marry each other
  
  
• Friends agree to be celibate for a year

If you are writing a totally silly film, you might get away with it although the concept will still feel stale. However, most of the movies using that kind of premise want to make some kind of serious point about love or friendship later in the story.

That doesn’t work for a simple reason: it doesn’t hold up to logic or rational thought for more than a minute.

Imagine the situation: on some occasion that has involved the consumption of a lot of alcohol (because that’s the only time you’d make such a pact in the first place), you and a couple of single friends pledge that you won’t give up the freedom of the single life until you’re 40. I’m imagining you’re young at this point because that’s also a prerequisite for making this kind of promise.

Then you meet somebody, fall deeply in love and want to marry them. Oh no! There’s a conflict! You promised two drunken friends you wouldn’t do this! Maybe you’d better hide the fact that you’re in love! Maybe you’d better pretend that your beloved is actually your sister/brother, or gay best friend! That might get you through Act II if nobody in the audience has an IQ over 70…no, wait, 60.

The most recent example: That Awkward Moment. One reviewer referred to the movie’s “contrived misunderstandings and cringe-worthy comic set pieces.” That's usually what's required in order to try to keep the premise alive past page 15.

The moral of the story: let’s all make a promise that we won’t write a screenplay based on such a premise. But if you fall deeply in love with such an idea, you have my permission to break the pact.

Creativity: Expanding the Box (and how to do it)

Thinking outside the box suggests going a long way away from the norm, and often that does lead to breakthrough ideas. However, Christian Stadil, CEO of innovative company Thornico, says there’s also a lot to be gained from thinking inside (or at the edges of) the box.

He suggests looking at the edge of what you already do well. That involves playing to your strengths and looking for an improvement of perhaps 10 or 20 percent rather than some radical breakthrough. 

An interesting approach might be to start by thinking, what would a 20% better (name of your product or service) look like, sound like, feel like, be like?

Then take each of the attributes you come up with and brainstorm how you might create it.

You can also apply this to the components of a project. For instance, if you are writing a thriller novel or screenplay, you could brainstorm how to make the opening more of a grabber, how to heighten the tension in key scenes, how to make the protagonist more relatable, and so on, improving each part one by one as part of your rewriting process.

(For friendly guidance in writing your book, see Your Writing Coach, published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

A new 80/20 rule for creativity

I was surprised to read that the final version of the Pixar movie Brave represented only 20% of the scenes that were created. That’s right, 80% of the scenes were deleted in order to create the best movie they could. 

That’s a new version of the 80/20 Rule (that says 20% of what you do gives you 80% of the value, and suggests putting more time and effort into that 20% for exponential rewards).

I don’t know whether those other scenes were fully animated or were just storyboarded; probably some were more fully developed than others before it was decided they didn’t fit. 

The lessons I’d draw from this are:

• Don’t stop at “good,” keep going because you might hit “better” — if you create so much that you can discard 80% and have a great remainder, you’re on a good track
  
  
• Don’t be precious about your ideas or your more finished material
  
  
• Don’t judge material too soon—keep it all and decide later
  
  
• Discarding 80% of what you create can be a strength rather than a weakness

 (For strategies for being more creative, see my book, CREATIVITY NOW, published by Pearson and available from Amazon or your other favorite bookseller.)

The flaw in his Act II (short animation)

Here's another short (under a minute) animation promoting my next screenwriting workshops for Raindance. They start on Monday, March 3 and run for 5 Monday evenings. Here we meet an aspiring scriptwriter who thinks he has Act II all figured out, but there's a flaw in his thinking...

You can get more information about the courses and sign up here: http://www.raindance.org/course/the-script-coach-series/