Welcome back everyone it's Robert Macfarlane here and today we're gonna be going through
some techniques I've used before to come up with some brand new story ideas
epiphanies don't kind of come along when you want them to and when you are trying to come up with a
story idea they don't always just go poofy go here's a great idea instead for me anyway i it
always feels like a struggle very similar to um Aaron Sorkin actually he always talks about
having constant writer's block and i think this is something which a lot of people
really struggle through and there's nothing wrong with that i think it's actually just
part and parcel of the writer's journey at some point you will have writer's block so
what can we do about that so much like my previous episode where i looked at some of
the things i was trying to do to come up with a brand new story idea today's episode i'm actually
going to be using some pen and paper methods to see if we can come up with something brand new
and really cool immediately so the first technique we're going to use is the Mind Matrix
now for those of you who don't know what that is it's essentially a big grid with tons of ideas
and then you take a random idea from each column and piece them together in a creative way
what this does is it allows you the chance to at random start to generate connections between
seemingly random concepts ideas objects characters and build stories around them this can be an
amazing way for you to actually come up with truly unique concepts that have still got a lot to do
with you personally because you get to choose everything that actually goes into the matrix
this is not random this is not someone else choosing these things for you this can be
designed around the things that you actually want to talk about already yet it's still random enough
to enable you to develop something creative and unique from it so let's give it a go focus is
looking good we have our blank sheet of potential concepts in front of us first thing we need to do
is turn it into a grid don't worry about being too precious with this this is literally just going
to be for you it's not going to be framed seven columns give myself enough space to write and then
i'm going to create 10 rows the rows are going to constitute each concept or idea that you have
for that particular column wonderful okay so now you're going to headline your columns
now you don't have to follow exactly what i'm doing you might have different ideas
and concepts with this but these are the ones i like to use and i've used in the past
to help jog some inspiration and creativity so first things first let's come up with a character
you know just a generic character then we might come up with a trait for that character
maybe we'll have a location weakness right it doesn't have to necessarily be for the character
but again we're just going to put things down for us to start
pulling ideas and concepts together we're going to have a prop genre the moral
or message this looks great so we're going to come up with 10 different characters now these
characters could be based around maybe you already know you want to do sci-fi and it's got to be a
space horror well in which case you probably want to do characters you expect to see within that
genre such as a doctor or a captain or uh engineer but for our sake i'm gonna go completely random
so we can come up with something totally new so let's start off with maybe a teacher
maybe yeah we'll do an engineer uh a recluse it doesn't always have to be their job but it's still
a particular character we get some idea of what type of overriding characteristics and
traits that they have please please don't worry about your handwriting i'm not a barber a laborer
chat show host i know there's only 10 characters and you could probably think of a million more
characters you could put in but don't forget these things are just a guide to start the process of
creating so let's now move on to the next column now the next column does not have to correlate
with the first column in fact do not consider the first column when you're coming up with your
second column third column fourth column fifth column whatever you've got to be as loose and
free with this as you possibly can so now traits traits could be just defining characteristics like
fastidious maybe they're sarcastic maybe they're humorous conceited frivolous now we get to
locations you don't want to start saying like bedroom or bathroom start to think about a home
or maybe a prison or a restaurant so thinking of the entire location not just the room within it
but a space a space that you can actually travel through and means something for a story a hotel
you see how home and hotel they both have toilets they both have bedrooms they both have kitchens
within they both have utility spaces however they actually denote two totally different things when
it comes to your story also you see here how i put a restaurant and a prison i didn't go hyper
specific about what type of restaurant it could be a fast food restaurant or it could be a chinese
restaurant i was a little more ambiguous so i could be a little more interpretive when i do
actually start to piece these concepts and ideas together i can say oh hang on maybe this teacher
loves chinese food and they end up in a chinese restaurant or maybe this teacher is a vegan and
they end up in a steakhouse well now because i've left that location open a little bit i've already
been able to create a sense of conflict from just those two things you know what i'm going to make a
change to my matrix and you can do that i'm going to get rid of genre because i think i can come up
with genre maybe a little later instead i'm gonna put in here a desire yeah cool let's make sure i
really can't see the word genre don't forget in one of my previous episodes i do talk about
character traits and coming up with thing and coming up with weaknesses
which are actually really true to your character and one of them is actually take a positive trait
too far that's a fantastic way of creating a weakness in your characters and i thoroughly
recommend that whenever you're thinking about how can my character have a really deep seated
flaw or weakness that they find it very difficult to get through go with something positive taken
to an extreme because almost anything taken to an extreme becomes a negative gregarious kindness ocd
attention seeking so we've got some weaknesses and now we're going to move oh hang on one two
three four five six seven eight oh i've only been doing nines well you know what that's
fine if you're gonna only come up with nine or eight or even five this will still work
we've filled out all of the columns we've got
everything in here that we need to come up with a story this is also where you
get the chance to flex your creative muscles create a story from seemingly random elements
that go together to create a film so let's use our Mind Matrix and come up with a story
the chat show host interesting i recently watched the Joker so um i'm thinking
that uh probably shouldn't go too close to that type of chat show uh next random is ah humorous
maybe the chat show host uses humor as a way of keeping themselves uh safe someone who tells
jokes at the expense of someone else to divert attention away from people judging them for their
own actions so that's interesting immediately by just putting humorous there's different versions
of humor that we can attach to the chat show host so let's move on to the next column
prison maybe he runs a chat show from prison he's a a prisoner that's become famous for doing interesting interviews uh
maybe the chat show host has found themselves in prison for something that they've done okay
let's see if some other elements from our matrix can start to fill in those gaps their weakness
they're impatient so maybe their impatience is what got them into
prison maybe they did something because they were looking for
fame and fortune and their impatience forced them to do something that was maybe
risky or illegal to try and achieve that fame and fortune sooner but they didn't get away with it
motorbike ah so maybe it was a motorbike accident that got the chat show host in prison they did a
stunt or they tried to pull a humorous stunt with a motorbike and ended up in a tragedy and then
they are the ones who've ended up in prison okay so you see how each of these elements start to
compound upon each other adding different facets different dimensions to the story that you can
tell their desire fulfillment fulfillment could be an interesting one because if they believe that
fulfillment comes from being recognized and being famous yes that if their desire is fulfillment
they want to be recognized so they want the fame and fortune at whatever cost that's their desire
is to appreciate what you have maybe by the chat show host
realizing how to appreciate what they have they end up finding the fulfillment by
changing the way they make a show and it actually resonating with people on a far deeper level than
the humorous and very shallow show that they were running previously maybe it is the chat show host
starts a show from within the prison and that is how they find their fulfillment they realize that
they can bring so much more to the world than they had before because now they appreciate the other
humans within it the people next to them rather than only thinking of themselves so right there
we have actually a pretty interesting story of redemption from one a4 page of Mind Matrix
i think that was pretty successful so what i've learned from this process of doing a Mind Matrix
yes it was on a random set of various things it's very directable because ultimately you're
drawn towards the things which excite you and if you've already got a few ideas that you know
i want to do something that's on this or has this type of character in it then you can put that into
your Mind Matrix but i do believe that by doing the Mind Matrix first you come up with a far more
holistic far more multifaceted idea than if you are to just think about something and have a cool
kind of vision or or scene that you want to try and work the film towards
i think this is definitely going to be something that i use for my film going forward who knows i
may even make the i may even write the film that i just came up with as well which would be really
cool i've also realized just how important it is in the Mind Matrix and i think if if you're going
to keep any of the columns that i wrote i really think probably the key areas that really pulled
this film idea together was the character weakness and moral message i think once you as long as you
have those three you can add in other elements props locations other characters antagonist
but i think those three should be in any Mind Matrix you do to come up with your next script
thank you so much for joining me today if you enjoyed today's content please hit subscribe smash
the like button send me any comments if you've got any of your own versions or if you actually did
do a Mind Matrix for your own film and check out the links below for even more awesome content as
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