IDEATOBER
I've admitted it before, but it bears repeating: I love coming up with new story ideas and developing them. Basically everything prior to actually writing the script. I love writing as well, but once a project gets to the script, its a commitment and while there's still room for some exploration, the outline is pretty much set.
But with developing an idea, there's infinite room for exploration and research. A fledgling idea can be anything and everything before it's eventually trimmed down. There's joy in letting your mind go wild.
Comic book writer Justin Jordan has been promoting an Inktober kind of prompt-a-day for writers. He calls it Ideatober. Each day for the month of October, you come up with an idea based on the day's prompt. And so far, it's been a blast.
This is what I do, so you can play along at home. The prompts are at the end fo this post. I write the prompt of the day at the top of a piece of paper. Then I give myself 10 minutes to write a premise for a story based on that prompt. The premise is more than just a single sentence log line. It's at most 5 sentences describing the basics of the plot, setting, and characters. Enough information that, if I forget about these notes and rediscover them later, I have a solid re-launching point to develop the story even further.
IDEATOBER PROMPTS (the numbers below correspond with the date, so prompt 1 was for October 1st and prompt 31 will be for October 31st. But don't feel confined by the one-a-day structure).
- PUG
- WHALE
- FRAUDULENT
- ONOMATOPOEIA
- JETPACK
- UNICORN
- SUBLIME
- VORTEX
- DECISION
- EVISCERATE
- RECURSION
- SANITATION
- HAMMER
- SPATULA
- PARADOX
- GENERATE
- EYES
- STAR
- CONTORTIONIST
- STRINGS
- FALL
- CHONK
- SERENDIPITY
- SALT
- PENGUIN
- SOCIAL
- SENESCENCE
- DECADENT
- ALBATROSS
- PARANOIA
- GOSPEL