4) Visual Stimuli- Anything happened the
last time you looked at a photograph or a painting ?? Any idea crossed your
mind? For eg. Look at this photograph. It was published in a newspaper. What
moves you/intrigues you about it? Can you create a new backstory (everything
that happened up to the moment this shot was taken? How did this person reach
there? What happened after this photograph was taken?
5) Forced Connection- As the name
suggests, take two props or two characters or two locations exactly opposite to
each other or having no obvious connection and then create a connection between
them. For eg., pen and paper is an obvious connection but what about pen and
money or paper and sunglasses? Or write a story about a chance encounter of an
industrialist with a rag-picker, etc.
6) Shoebox- Next time, if you buy a nice
pair of shoes or any other footwear, do not throw away the shoebox. Rather,
just wrap the opening lid with the base by a cellotape and make a small
horizontal cut at the top. What next? Well, jot down on a piece of paper whatever
crap comes into your mind, put it inside this shoebox and forget about it. Next
time, repeat the same process. After a few weeks, when you feel you have put
enough material inside the box, open the lid and take out all the papers. Open
and read all of them, try shuffling them or re-ordering them, you will get
something to work with for your next film.
7) Brainstorming- This is a technique
which is used in advertising. Try picking up a subject and list down a free
association of thoughts and feelings that come to you. For eg., a wife getting
ready for office is searching for her pen drive, which contains an important
presentation, drives to office and gives the presentation. Now this scene has
no conflict or problem. Keeping PCR (Problem-Complicate-Resolution) theory in
mind, we have to create a problem first. We can start with a problem that she
is unable to find her pen drive and time is running out for her. She finally
gets her pendrive. She starts to drive (may be the tyre gets punctured and she
takes a lift which leads her to even more troubles) OR she reaches office in
time only to find that she carried a wrong pen drive. So, try to complicate a
problem thereby providing a final resolution.
8) “What if”- Always ask yourself- “What
would happen if this happens??” For eg., you get up one fine morning to find
that you are inside a coffin, alive. Or what if you found out that the world
will end in 24 hours, what would you do? Or what if you realize that you can
read anyone’s mind? Most stories start this way. You will end up getting
challenging situations leading to new twists.
9) Dreams- Make sure to keep a diary or a
note book along your bedside to immediately write whatever you dreamt last night.
It could be not so interesting but you will definitely get a starting point.
10) Mind Mapping- Write a key idea on the
centre of a page. Then write
associated ideas in bubbles around that centre idea, with a line linking
each one to your core idea. Then draw bubbles of associated ideas and so on
until you create an information web on that page.
These are some of the ways to generate ideas.
Essentially screenwriting is divided into 3 parts:
1) Pre-writing
(65% of total writing)
2) Actual
writing (5% of total writing)
3) Re-writing
(30% of total writing)
The more you work on pre-writing, the better
outcome you will get. Don’t just start writing your first draft. Pre-writing cannot be ignored.
It is very nice concept regarding techniques of screen writing and mentioned very easily way.
ReplyDeleteThanks
DeleteJust want clear my query. There are some differences in Inductively way, brain storming way and mind mapping on upper layer but is there's any difference between all of these in deep layers because all the ideas and connections which we get is come through individual experiences and circles.
ReplyDeleteJust want to clear my query. There are some differences in Inductively way, brain storming way and mind mapping on upper layers but is there's any difference between all of these in deep layers because all the ideas and connections which we get is come through individual experiences and circles.
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