The Idea Journal

Once you begin to open yourself up to new ideas that could be the fodder for a screenplay, you need to start keeping track. At first it may seem like pulling teeth to come up with even one decent new idea. But as you start observing the world and forcing yourself into new situations, your idea production will increase and, believe me, if you don’t start writing down your ideas, you’ll forget them. This is why I advocate an idea journal.

There are two basic forms your journal can take—oral and written. An oral journal can be as simple as carrying your iPhone everywhere [which you’re probably doing anyway, right?] and using the voice memo function on the phone to record your ideas. Whenever an idea strikes you, just hit the voice memo app and speak into your phone to record your idea. After you’ve recorded it you can give it a title so you can find the idea when you want to review your ideas and think about which ones to write.

A written journal is probably best done by using a small notebook—one you can fit into a pocket. You can carry it around in your purse or backpack, but on those occasions when you’re out running or taking a walk in the woods or whatever, you can fit it into a pocket—thus making sure you have it at the ready when that idea strikes.

Whichever method you chose, you should think about transcribing those ideas onto a file in your computer. Once you get a few voice memos or a few pocket journal entries, you’re not going to remember them all unless you have one place where you can go to remind yourself of what it was you thought of, say, on that day you were at the beach and saw the stray cat…. Most of us write on our computer, so that’s the place you need to be able to go to when you’re trying to remember a thought you had.

As you’re keeping your idea journal, don’t let it be a haphazard kind of thing—make rules that you can follow. Here are three important ones:

[1] In the beginning, tell yourself you have to come up with one idea per day—every day, no exceptions. This will make sure that some part of your brain is always working on coming up with ideas. And at this stage, don’t censor yourself—throw anything at all into your journal—this is not the time to decide whether an idea is good or bad, this is just the time to maximize idea production.

[2] Review your ideas once a week. Don’t review them every day or every other day—this could make you too critical and reduce the flow of ideas during the week. But every weekend, say, sit down and transcribe your ideas into the computer and give them a good look. Maybe all you’ll do at this point is place an asterisk next to a promising idea so that you can come back to it later.

[3] After a month, sit down with all the ideas you’ve placed asterisks next to and see what you see. Do your best ideas fall into one genre? Do your ideas feature men or women as the lead character in the story? Which ideas do you think would be most fun to write?

An idea journal: this could be your first step to coming up with that unique idea that leads to a screenplay unlike any other.

Copyright © Diane Lake

04Dec16

Email Diane a question to Diane@DianeLake.com