At least once a month, I get the same call from my father. It goes basically like this:
Dad: “I was (insert place here) and I saw (insert thing here) and it gave me a great idea for a show (insert high-concept show here). What do you think?”
Me: “Well, that’s great, but what’s the show about? Like what happens from week to week? What am I to expect out of this as a series (or movie)? Who do you see this appealing to? What’s the format you anticipate? Is it a serialized show or is it episodic?”
Dad: “I don’t know. I’m not a writer. Hey, so can you write me up a couple ‘a pages on that? K, thanks. Love you, bye!”
And so of course I mull over his high-concept idea and see if it has legs. Can it stand up week after week? Is there enough action and drama to further the story along to make it consistently compelling? Will the characters be rich enough with multi-dimensional pathos to sustain multiple seasons, if we’re even given such an amazing opportunity? And sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t, but what never changes is that I always have to ask all the questions of his notion to make sure that it will stand up to the inevitable scrutiny.
A notion is really only that, a flicker of an idea. It is the genesis of the story. So, for example, if I suddenly decided I wanted a popsicle, which is a very likely occurrence, that’s a notion. But thinking about the basic steps it’s going to take me to get that delicious popsicle out of its wrapper and into my mouth, is turning it into a concept. Thinking through each step more deeply, thinking of the challenges I might face, what if I’m out of popsicles, what if I die between the bedroom and the kitchen, what if scary ninjas with silver throwing stars, break in and toss them at me, anchoring me, immobile, to a wall mere inches away from the freezer? What then? Well, that’s an idea.
In screenwriting, a fact my father refuses to acknowledge, you need to know where you’re going at all times. You need to know where the character is going, because you’re their tour guide. You wouldn’t follow me with no supplies into the Amazon jungle merely because I said, “I think The Banana Republic Outlet is to the left.” You’d want to know my plan. What is my agenda? How will I accomplish my goal? What are you to expect from the journey? Taking your notion and developing it into a solid idea takes planning and plotting.
So starting with your notion, we’ll go through the steps about how to take your flicker of an idea and turn it into an actual idea. I’ll use a story I’ve previously used as an example “The taxi driver on his way to his daughter’s recital when he gets sidetracked by the mob. Will he make it to the recital by 3?” That’s its official working title. Catchy, no?
When I wrote this story for the first article, all I had was an image of a white, mid-40’s man (really the way I see Bruce Willis in my mind when I close my eyes and look at him through my heart) driving a taxi backwards through an alley at high speeds, a key of coke sliding around his back seat, covered in blood, and a dead mobster in the back. So I thought, hmm, a movie about a taxi driver, that isn’t Taxi Driver. Okay. But that’s it. That’s all I had. I had a key of coke, a dead mobster, a taxi driver and a backwards car chase through an alley. That’s more of a notion than my father has ever given me.
As I continued to write the article, I needed more details to illustrate another point. So, I went for it. I fleshed out my notion into a concept. I gave him a mission, I gave him obstacles, I gave him a ticking clock to build in suspense, I gave him peripheral characters to make his life more-well rounded. I gave him some depth. And it became this concept: “A taxi driver is on the run from the mob, after one mobster is whacked in his cab, but when he tries to return the drugs and it all goes wrong, it seems like he’s never going to make it to his daughter’s recital on time.”
Well, this was a long article, “The Three-Act Structure and You,” and of course I had to wrap it up to show why being structured is so important. So, I turned my concept into an idea. I had a plan. I knew who this character was, who his antagonists were, I gave him love, and life, and death and pain, and complications and misery but ultimately satisfaction and resolution. When my husband read the article he sad “Hmm, you should write this movie. You’ve already done all the work.” And to some degree he was right. And to some degree he was very wrong.
Taking your idea, the briefest road map to your story and turning that into a script is almost the same as turning a concept into an idea, only times that by 10. As you take your idea and break it down into acts, the taxi driver character set up, the inciting event, the mobster, being chased, having to get to his daughter etc, you discover that while you have the broad strokes of what happens, your paragraph idea isn’t enough to rest an outline on.
So each element of your idea needs to be fleshed out. It’s like your idea is a Gremlin and you just splashed it with water. You need loads of Gremlins to make it fun but you need just a little bit of food after midnight in order to make it dramatic!
There’s a line in Annie Hall that really sums it up. “Right now it’s only a notion, but I think I can get money to make a concept and then later I can turn it into an idea.” It’s funny because it’s true, on both levels. It’s a valid and amusing commentary on Hollywood’s shtick through Woody’s eyes. But more importantly, it’s funny because it honestly shows the development required to take my dad’s high-concept notion and turn it into a viable property. It does take time. It does require steps. But that is also the craft of writing.
So, what’s my prescription for that notion that’s plaguing you? Day dream in a hammock, vacuum, like my husband does, watch your movie in your mind while you float in a pool. I often joke that 90% of writing is napping, but in this case, taking a notion and turning it into an idea, requires as much time as it takes for you to figure out the whole story. No more and no less. And the best part of this plan, if you don’t get it right the first time, you can always nap again tomorrow.