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What do you do when you don’t have anything to write about?
Simple: sit and think. The answers—and inspirations—are all
there: in your mind.
I teach scriptwriting every semester at the
University of the Philippines and I always remind my students that
their memory is their number one source of inspiration, concepts and
material for future screenplays. I point out that a movie runs for
about two hours, and I ask them to calculate how many hours they
have been alive on this earth. If a film could run for two hours,
imagine the tons of concepts and storylines one could cull from
being alive for more than 8,760 hours! That’s just one year, or as
that song in the musical Rent calculated, that’s just 525,600
minutes. I mean, if one doesn’t get any material from one’s own
life as inspiration for a concept, then one may not be thinking too
hard.
Memories are always good to start with when
writing. An interesting conversation with a friend in a coffee shop
or a chance encounter with a celebrity could be a jumping off point
to a good story. The inspiration could be as simple as seeing a
rainbow while raining and the sun also shining, or as complex as
being the victim of a petty crime. Inspiration could come from
one’s daily routine or any interruption from that routine.
For those with a bolder streak, inspiration
could be pursued. People could opt to take a break from their habits
and pursue something they never thought they would do in their life.
Again, it could be as simple as taking a detour before going home to
try/discover new routes or as complex as signing up for bungee
jumping or eating 10 different flavors of ice cream at a given time.
People have different notions of what constitutes an adventure, and
we should all respect that difference, for this difference will be
the stuff that future stories would be made of. Plurality of ideas
never hurt the arts, our culture, and our humanity, in general—as
long as those ideas benefit us for the greater good, of course.
Way back when we were the students in film
school, my friends and I adapted this stance that whatever happens
in our lives—the sad ones, the trials and tribulations, the hurts
and the pain—all happen for a reason. The psychologically positive
answer to that is that it happens because it makes us stronger and
more mature. But our artistic answer to that is, those bad or
traumatic things that happen to us could be sources of infinite
movie material. Yes, my friends and I have some strange way of
coping, I guess. Well, at least we turn tragedy into art. I mean,
who hasn’t?
So the next time you get stuck thinking of a new
concept for a story, all you have to do is mine your memories, for
concepts are awaiting there to be discovered.
Comments? Suggestions? E-mail libay.scribevibe@gmail.com
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