The Big Idea

If you’re going to spend several months of your life writing a screenplay, shouldn’t you be sure that the idea that sparks the screenplay is the best it can be? You wouldn’t want to waste all that time on an idea that wasn’t a strong one, would you?

So how do you come up with an idea that’s going to make for a good screenplay? Here are three things to consider to test an idea you think you want to write:

[1] How different is it from what you’ve seen before?

[2] Are you capable of developing this idea?

[3] Does it have legs?

So first, how different is it? If you’ve decided to do a thriller where a spouse plots to kill his/her spouse with the help of the spouse’s lover, how can you make it different from The Postman Always Rings Twice [1946 & 1981] or Double Indemnity [1944] or Body Heat [1981] or To Die For [1995] or many others? Point is, you need to school yourself in the *kind* of movie you’re going for to make sure what you have in mind hasn’t already been done. Personally, I love this part of the process—an excuse to watch movies I haven’t seen before! This gives you a chance to see how this subject has been treated by others and will make you feel more confident that your own twist on this classic idea is new and different.

Second, can you develop this idea into a full-fledged screenplay? Point is, a good idea probably can be developed into a screenplay, but can you do it? If you’re writing that spouse-kills-spouse- with-help-of-lover thriller, are you married? Or have you been in enough relationships to be able to imagine what might make a spouse twisted enough to want to kill his/her partner? If you have the happiest marriage on the planet, will your marriage be affected by you plotting day in and day out about spousal murder? Do you have a suggestible personality—so much so that as you write you start to imagine your own spouse plotting to kill you? Bottom line, is this subject just a bridge too far in terms of you writing it and ending up with the best movie possible?

Third, does your spouse plotting movie have what are called ‘legs’? This means can we expect it to work, to last, to endure? Or is it too lightweight an idea to last for a 90 minute to two-hour film? There’s no point in working on your idea if it’s not going to work as a film—so make sure you can imagine several ways in which the idea could be played out as a feature film…you’ll narrow those down as you write, but before you write you need to be sure you have lots of options for seeing this idea come to fruition.

The four classic movies I mentioned about spouses using lovers to kill their spouse are classics—and each one does something a little different, each one is truly unique. And that’s what you have to strive for—writing your killer spouse movie that will make someone sit up and take notice because you’ve come up with characters or twists that work to make the script one that stands out from the competition.

Copyright © Diane Lake

11Dec16

Email Diane a question to Diane@DianeLake.com