Happy to say I completed the pitching draft of my final screenplay (The Linebreakers) of the year. For the last 18 months I have dedicated one to two hours every night to screenwriting, including writing, editing, pitching, maintaining a website, entering contests, attending festivals, and networking. In that time I have completed six screenplays. Not bragging, just showing it is possible.
I am really proud of this one because it is the first screenplay that truly fought me during the writing process, and I still managed to wrangle it into shape after several drafts. I approached it as a contained, dialog driven horror story with low budget in mind about how broken family bonds can be generational, and how sometimes water is thicker than blood.
Finishing it and thinking about where the idea came from (a scary childhood misunderstanding of what “petrified” meant) got me reflecting on the old question: Where do your ideas come from? For me it is a lifetime of overactive imagination and things that blur the line between reality and could be reality. Most of my projects are set in a normal world with one supernatural twist.
So I pose the question to all of you: Where do your ideas come from? Have you developed an idea into a screenplay that you were especially excited about?
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Congratulations on finishing The Linebreakers, Patrick Koepke! I get ideas from movies, shows, pictures, real life, social media, and combining two movies, shows, etc. I'm outlining a script I'm really excited about!
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I love the idea of combining two shows/movies/concepts as well! A little over a decade ago I wrote a novel that I pitched at a writer's conference as "Jason Bourne meets The Lord of the Rings." I bet you have some pretty good combos Maurice Vaughan !
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Thanks, Patrick Koepke. I'd read that novel! I'd watch that movie too!
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Congratulations Patrick, sounds like you have your discipline down. Ideas can come from anywhere, for me it can be an extreme extrapolation from a personal event, from another unrelated event or from influences. Right now I’m completing a series from one Character I had included in a feature I had written. I’m very excited about it and that’s why I turned my attention to it before I finished rewriting the feature. Good luck in your next stages.
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Great stuff! My ideas are random. For my current manuscript, for example, I had an image of a little boy, alone, a suitcase by his side. Then I sat down, thought about the picture in my mind, and set to spinning a yarn.
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Kevin La-Rose thank you! I find it very motivating when I key onto a specific project or character like you have and focus energy towards it like a laser. I'll look forward to seeing how it turns out with that character.
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@Alex Hunter that is a great approach! And in my opinion the world can use more yarn spinning.
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Patrick Koepke always! The world needs stories and people to write them.