Film Courage: Shannan, we have a list of 10 ways to generate original movie
ideas. Number one is “Start with personal experiences and emotions.”
Writer/Instructor and Script Consultant Shannan E. Johnson (The Professional Pen): That's a great
place to start. I'd like to open it up even further to say write what you know. A lot of
people say that and you also know what the people around you know. My personal
experiences can also be the experiences that I was exposed to because my mother's an educator
so now like if you think about Abbott Elementary Quinta Brunson said her mom was a teacher. Now
she's grown up to be able to write a show about teaching it's not because she was a teacher it's
because her mother was a teacher. So being able to start from things that or even things that
you like there are some people who are great researchers so if you're a great researcher
you can even start from things that you like things that you're interested in knowing about
and seeing where that can take you as well but starting with things that you already know that
you already have interest in that like for example if one of your parents is a doctor then you might
have information about what it is to be a doctor whether that was because you were there when
they were in medical school because you have heard stories about what happens when they're in surgery
(etcetera). All of those are places where you can draw inspiration from.
Film Courage: Number two is combine two seemingly unrelated concepts or genres?
Shannan: This one's actually my favorite because I say all the time there aren't really very many
unique ideas Ideas so what would happen if you decided to take the protagonist from one thing
and drop it into the world of the other you still don't have your goal yet so you still
have to do some work there just because you took these two things don't mean they automatically
fit together but realizing that you don't have to start from scratch that if you really enjoyed the
grumpy old guy from up what if you put a grumpy old guy in the world of oh my God it's one of my
a quiet place now how does the grumpy old guy survive in a quiet place now I don't know if
that's something anybody wants to see or wants to watch but it's a fun place to start to be
able to take those two things and see what kind of magic you can make if you put them together
number three create a unique world or alternate universe yeah that goes back to like our what if
we were talking about with the Sci-Fi channel so what if we lived in a world that was underwater
now you've got a place to start building from and again all of these that we're talking about are
ideas so always remembering that you still have to build the story the idea is this one element
by itself this world where we're underwater but what we're doing underwater what we're trying to
accomplish or what we're trying to solve that's what our story is the world just gives us a place
to start number four use a familiar story but add a new twist or perspective so I just talked
about Guess Who's Coming to Dinner they've kind of reimagined it with this Netflix show not show
me movie called You People so it's the same thing but it's turned on its head so instead of bringing
a black man home to a white family it's a Jewish family and a Muslim family and they are trying to
figure out if these two can be together so we kind of know it if you want to call it a Trope
now of what it is to bring someone who's different home to meet your parents and what that's going to
do to your relationship so we've seen it before so then you ask yourself well how can I update
how can I make it unique and you might be able to make it unique by using one of the other three
options here like it's something that we've seen before but what if I change the world or what if
I take something from my personal experience and put it into the story and that's the thing that
makes it unique number five think about societal issues and turn them into a story yeah so you can
find a lot of theme there because we're kind of all living through the same kind of stuff so we
all live through a pandemic with that being said you might be able to tell a very nuanced story
about someone's personal experience during that time or even yours something to consider though
is because societal things are kind of happening to us all then that means a lot of people may be
having those same ideas so you still have to figure out well what is going to make my story
unique from the from these other stories how is the dramatic question I'm asking different from
the dramatic question that they're asking but I think that's a great way to figure out themes
number six take inspiration from dreams or nightmares ooh that's good if you can remember
them A lot of people wake up and they go oh my God I had such a good thing and then it's gone
but if nothing else at least for me because I think everybody probably doesn't dream the
same way but I think you can probably come up with a lot of questions from dreams like what
does that even mean and then maybe you're solving that question by writing that story
do you suggest people keep up I mean I don't know how people would do that but write something in
a little notebook and then somehow magically fall back to sleep I don't know how yeah if they could
if they could for me all of my ideas come to me when I'm in the bed and when I'm tired not when
it's like oh I'm just in the bed and I'll just fall asleep whenever when I am ready to go to
sleep that's when all my ideas come and that's where my handy dandy Notes application in my
phone comes from comes into handy because I just keep getting up writing it down and then I try to
go back to sleep and then something else comes in I get up and I write it down and I try to go back
to sleep that might not work for everybody but if you've got a good memory if you think you're going
to still know it the next morning then don't ruin your sleep but if it's gonna leave then you need
something next to your bed a notebook something so you can be able to write it down and capture
that in that moment that's fascinating yeah they say that the moment before you fall asleep is
the most when you're most receptive and a lot of intuitive things come to you so it's fascinating
and I just thought you were talking in your sleep Shannon okay no I guess
it was your you were planning a movie okay number seven use a non-linear or
unconventional narrative structure yeah that's possible I definitely think if you're going to
do it that way you should already know what your story is so you've got the idea or maybe
you don't maybe your idea is that well no I think you got to have something you got
to have something that you're expecting to be non-linear so something already exists for you
which is good like knowing that you're telling a story about whatever and then deciding what's
going to make it different from other things is the order in which I'm gonna I'm gonna tell it
because I do think that that creates something unique but I think if you're going to think
about the format of it first then there has to be an it to format so some kind of idea or story
or something is already present and then you're going to figure out how you're going to present it
and the thing is if someone wants to write like the next Memento just really know like inside and
out I don't think I could ever do something like that because it's so intricate there's just all
these little moving parts and I'm a linear person so I probably couldn't help anybody out when it
comes to figuring that out I would hope and only again because I'm a linear person and a literal
person I would need to write it out linearly first and then move it around like I would have
to understand it and it's full capacity as one story and then start putting it in other places
and for all we know maybe that's what happened I haven't read the moment of script but for all we
know maybe some people do it that way and it isn't until the director or the editor comes in that it
becomes this non-linear thing like who knows but I think it's a great way of telling stories it's
not my way of telling stories but I think it's a great way of telling stories number eight tell a
story from a different point of view yeah that's good too especially when it comes to again going
back to like theme or social or social issues or subject matter if you consider how someone else
views that thing there's definitely a story there it's it's kind of being a journalist about it and
viewing all sides and then being able to say now which side of this story do I want to tell
and seeing what you can learn from there and that's where research will probably have to come
in because you're telling it from a perspective that may not be your own or from a perspective
that we haven't seen very often so you may need to get some research in there but I think that that's
really cool and it really helps with theme because it really makes your question clear if you're
saying hey this is how you usually see it or we as in the world usually see it but what if we looked
at it this way what if someone wants to to take the story from all sides from all parties involved
so there's an inciting incident and now they're going to tell the story from all the different
perspectives yeah I think that's possible again as long as we understand what we're tracking from
each perspective and that it doesn't just become about theme which I think happens often enough I
read enough screenplays where I'm like I know you have something to say but because you're forcing
it down my throat I'm missing the story like at the end of the day I'm here to watch somebody
accomplish something big or small so if I'm going to be seeing the perspective from five different
points of view I also need to be able to say this person's point of view or this person who is in
this point of view is trying to do this and then this person who's in this other point of view is
trying to do this maybe they're all trying to do the same thing I just need to be able to track it
so that I know not what the story is about as in what's the theme because it's obvious that they're
doing it have these different perspectives but I am trying to track what are they doing what's
the goal what's the problem so that I can know that if I can know if they were successful or not
number nine experiment with different time periods settings or cultural backgrounds that's a great
way to do it all of those things are things that I would consider the world and people do it all the
time especially like with older novels that were done in the 1800s people will update them all the
time or people will take a story from now and put it in the future because we don't know what
the future is going to be so you get to make it into something different and create your own rules
or if you take something now and change that cultural background kind of like we talked
with Guess who's coming to dinner now that we have a Muslim family and a Jewish family then
now there are other things to consider outside of race since Guess Who's Coming to Dinner is based
on race now you also have religion to consider which is going to give it a different element so
I think definitely looking at how you can change up the world and change up the backgrounds of your
characters and things like that are going to give you new perspectives maybe for even a day
old story and and also too taking older stories and plugging them into today but also things
around us have changed have changed so there's a lot more maybe we think acceptance maybe there's
not but but things are going to be perceived differently than a story set in the late 60s
or 70s versus now exactly so you have to consider the rules because that's all work that's all the
world means the world gives you new rules time period gives you new rules the location gives
you new rules ethnic background might give you new rules so what I can do in California I can't do in
Texas now in 2023 because the rules are different so just imagine if it's 1923 versus 2023 versus
3023 all of those rules are going to be different and that's the thing that's making your your your
idea unique like what was that Demolition Man I don't know what time it was supposed to be
set in but at the end of the day it was just cops getting a bad guy but it's different because it's
in the future and the rules are different in the future and those rules are the things that are
getting people caught up because our guy is from the present Stallone was from the present and so
he had to learn the rules of the future in order to be able to get the bad guy and that's what made
it a unique story sure sort of like the precogs or whatever different things yeah that's a good
point number 10 look at history or mythology for inspiration and put a modern spin on it yeah so
it's kind of similar to the world thing but take people will often take historical moments and then
change the ethnic background of people and that if they're not doing color blind casting and they're
actually changing the ethnic background then the story is going to change if they're just doing
colorblind casting as in we're just going to cast people it doesn't matter but we're telling the
same story then now it doesn't change it looks cool but it doesn't necessarily change the story
but being able to take something and figuring out how you can update it or like what's that
that that movie on Netflix it's it's got a good school and a bad school you could either be a
princess or you can be a witch but that but that's out now and it's very familiar to us
because we know supposedly all of the fairy tales that we know of come from there so supposedly
Prince Charming came from this school and so all of these people who we have learned about
in other parts of our lives nursery rhymes fairy tales etc all have this common theme of having
gone to this school so the school in itself and these characters are new to us but because they
are using stories that we're familiar with then now we're more open to hearing this story because
we feel like we we're already connected to it so I think that's a great way of looking at it as well
and two maybe I'm not sure which school of Good and Evil sorry oh yeah okay Netflix okay speaking
of Wednesday Addams yeah so that's kind of a a darker twist on an older film and you're taking
basically one character I realize there's ancillary characters but and then giving it
a much more a little more dark sarcasm than right exactly and so like it kind of comes back to the
whole established IP thing if it's something that we are already familiar with then maybe we're more
willing to watch this but then you have to ask yourself but what's making it unique what's making
it different and so with a lot of reimaginations and reboots and remakes happening now that's a
big question like what makes it different are you literally just remaking the exact same movie but
it's 2023 now so you've got new actors and that's the only thing that makes it different or are you
reimagining it by turning it on its head in some way or is this a reboot where it's the
exact same people and we're just continuing on with their lives what I mean where we're where
wherever it is they last they last ended and so trying to figure that out is a little different
these days because we're we're doing a lot of that we're taking established IP and making it making
it into content but looking at books looking at blog articles I mean all kinds of things you can
get ideas from all over the place and obviously if it's already been written before then you have to
figure out how you're going to get the rights to it but those are all great sources to start with.