it's the classic boring question we get from people who don't work as a creative – it’s also a question some creatives don’t like to examine too closely, for fear of disturbing the mystic process by which their ideas arise
for me, most ideas start with something small – an image, a question, a character, a word – that begins accreting other bits and pieces until there’s the beginning of concept that can be developed into a story – a lot of this happens unconsciously
i know this because when i’m adding yet another small something to my ideas folder, i’ll usually checkout some of the existing ideas to see if they’re still interesting – what i find with those ideas that ARE still interesting, is that they’re often much ’smaller’ than i remember – the ideas have been growing in my head while i’ve been ignoring them – and so i must update the file with all the bits and pieces i thought were already there ... this is often a sign that i may be onto something worth pursuing
recently i was able to observe an idea “happen” in real time
i saw a missing cat poster with the words “for the capture and safe return” – i though the word “capture” was an odd choice and it suggested to me there was more to this cat than its photo suggested
soon after, myself and other family members, were approached by people living nearby who were desperately searching for their parrot which had escaped – we were asked to let them know if we saw it, but to refrain from trying to catch it, as it might spook the bird and chase it further from home
these two ‘grains’ clumped together in my brain, and were joined with my love for Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, Lovecraftian creatures and nostalgia for my youth (when kids roamed free as long as they were home before sunset)
... and now i have a core concept of another screenplay to add to my todo list
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Happy New Year, Robert Bruinewoud! I get ideas from pictures, mashing movies/shows together, research, events, etc.
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Ideas come from any type of stimuli that one encounters during the course of their life. It can be from a dream or a sighting of a bird in a park. The key is to recognize these inspirations when they come to you. You can do a whole story of a guy that keeps missing inspiration because of his own muddled experiences. Every thought in your brain is an idea. How willing are you to push it forward into the light?
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Hi Robert, I been drawing my whole life, I guess being an artist
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There’s honestly almost no rhyme or reason to where my ideas come from lol they typically tend to be born from errant thoughts and emotions. Sometimes I meet the characters first and try to figure out what kind of story they’d call home. My ideas pretty much never come from conscious thought/brainstorming, not unless I’m REALLY lucky.
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My ideas come from trying to learn life lessons from my own experiences, as well as from events in the world around me.
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Writers are mostly solitary types who work on their own, by themselves, in their own space (physically and mentally). Although I have writing credits on four different animated series, I never considered myself a writer. I am an animator. To me, being an animator just means being a complete storyteller, from having an idea, to writing a script, to drawing the characters and painting the backgrounds,, to storyboarding, to animating, to editing and everything in between. That's how it was when I started, before computers came along and changed the animation industry.. The point is, when I learned animation, a part of that was learning how to write and tell a story. But animators are not solitary types, so most of my ideas come from interactions with other people, someone says something that sparks an idea, you make a joke about it, the other person laughs, and the next thing you know, you have a complete concept to pitch. Looking at the dozen or so projects I am pitching, all but one are ideas I developed with another person. When it comes time to write the script, I do that on my own. But developing the project, in my case, is most often a collaborative effort. That includes coming up with the idea, developing the characters, creating the universe, coming up with story ideas, plotting out those story ideas and so on. Once all that is done, the actual writing is the easy part.
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My concepts tend to come from visions. However, my themes come from deep reflection into my life experiences. The former is abstract while the latter is real.
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Hi Robert. As a sci-fi/fantasy guy I think a lot of my ideas for stories spawn from science shows and nature/nature programs. Ideation drives for me can also stem from something as simple as a memory of a childhood Dungeons & Dragons campaign. For short stories I used to think of something and make a note on an electronic device, and now, If I get an idea for a script, I just create a logline, or start a draft in FD and let them marinate in my working projects folder to potentially be harvested for a later date.
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Mine comes from constant grinding.