Ideas: Part 02

Ideas: Part 02

So once you have some ideas (discussed in part 01) - you need to figure out which ideas have the best story in them.

The best way of doing this is to just turn them into stories.   Generally when looking for a story, you're going to look for the problem and the urgency.  

Any of idea that I wrote or that any of the commenters wrote could become a story - so I'll just take my last one and begin to work with it.

"A teddy bear is being chased by a fan.  The fan is jealous that the teddy bear gets all the attention."

Out of habit, in this one I had actually already started turning it into a story.  The idea was that a teddy bear is being chased by a fan.  The fact that the fan is jealous is a story element because we're starting to explore motivations.  The trick is simply to ask the question:  Why?  Why?  because the fan is jealous?  Why?  Because the teddy bear gets all the attention?  Why?  Because the Teddy bear is cute and cuddly and the fan is just used functionally.  Why?  Well... 'cause it's a fan.  That's probably enough why's to start with.

So we understand the fan who is our antagonist.  This is a great thing.  Understanding the antagonist (i.e. the problem) is better than understanding the protagonist (hero) when writing a story because it makes finding your hero easier.

If you think about it, in life, heroes arise from a situation.  If you had no situations, you'd have no heros.  So - in reality - the problem finds the hero - NOT the other way around.  If the hero is looking for a problem, that's an interesting character, but a very specific vigilante type of character who most people don't identify with.

We need to understand our fan.  He spends all day in the summers cooling everyone off.  He gives so much loving care to this family - yet the bear who does NOTHING gets all the love and cuddling.  No cuddling for the fan because he's dangerous.  But he's worthless without what makes him dangerous.  He'd just stop fanning altogether, but he knows he'd just head for the trash bin.

Let's start asking "How?"  How does the fan terrorize the bear.  Well, it's got these big fans and when everyone leaves, it starts chasing the bear around (because, as anyone knows, everything comes to life when you're not around).  So it chases the bear and tries to chop it up.

So - the bear needs to do something before he gets chopped up into bits!

So the bear has to become a hero.... or... maybe... maybe there is another character who is the hero and who must come to save the bear.

Maybe the bear is just an innocent lamb who continually hops around and is about to get chopped up by the fan - but this other character must save the bear.  See - the bear knows nothing about evil and anger and jealousy - it only knows love and cuddles, so it has no concept that the fan wants to get it.

This helps because now the bear has a cute reason for always getting near the fan.  He's not stupid as much as he's just so loving and cute.

So the cat who loves the family too must constantly save the bear from the fan.  

We've found our hero.

A cat MUST save the bear from the fan BEFORE it gets chopped to bits.

Ladies and Gentlemen - we have a story!

Now... the first thing I look for to expand the story is what is the added conflict for the hero.  What is the first problem the hero has in order to accomplish his or her goal.  You need to find it inside of the actions which tell the story.  So imagine the sequence... Fan chases bear, bear is innocent, cat comes by and grabs it in it's mouth and moves it to a safer place out of reach of the fan.

The cat has to bite down on the bear to save him from the fan and take him else where, so when the people get home, they're always angry with the cat because he's been chewing on the bear again!  

The family doesn't realize he has been saving the bear from the fan.

So now the cat is oscillating between making the family happy by letting them keep their bear - or - letting the bear get chopped to pieces to save himself.

Now - that is where the crux of the story is.  This is the point of oscillation of the movie.  The movie is therefore about how we express our love for others.  Everything else developed for this film will be about this point.

I actually am writing a movie about a teddy bear and I think I will include this, I sort of like these characters and conflicts.  

I hope reading this process has been of some interest and I hope it helps to figure out the kinds of things to try to extract from your ideas to turn them into stories.