​I've been stuck on a not-a-scene for my novel. The overall story is written, and I'm in the midst of rewrites. This particular chapter, however, feels very thin. It does exactly what it's supposed to and little else. I wanted to explore it a bit more...to up the tension and flesh out the creepiness.

The characters are the ghost of a bitter old woman who wants the family gone from her house, and a hippie mom who recently moved in and who doesn't sense the spirit. What makes it a not-a-scene is the fact that they don't interact in any meaningful way. The monster in the house is largely impotent and the human is simply oblivious.

As it is written, the mom goes about her day, tired from the move, frustrated with her pre-teen daughter, and wanting some time alone. And she has no idea that her alone time is anything but.

So I got to thinking...let's explore this from the perspective of the ghost. One hundred percent, write it from her point of view. Explore her hatred for the mom. Why does she want this woman and her family out of her house so bad? How frustrating must it be to be doing the Beetlejuice thing and not only not succeeding in scaring the person away, but for the victim of her taunts to simply carry on as if the ghost weren't there.

Feeling invisible.

That's something just about anyone can relate to.

​Where have I been? My goal was to publish a newsletter monthly, but I ran out of steam back in March.

But that doesn't mean I haven't been writing. It's just...I'm primarily a screenwriter who also writes novels and short stories, and it's a bit difficult to craft a newsletter around screenplays...unless, I would imagine, your newsletter is about screenwriting. The most interest for my books span the months of October through March, so it kind of makes sense that would focus on those months for the newsletter.

​I have been doing a ton of work on the screenplay version of Bad Elf and The Krampus--promoting, connecting with industry insiders, and taking home a trophy for Best Holiday Feature Script at Show Low Film Festival. I met the most amazingly creative people at the festival that I hope continue to be friends inside and outside of my writing career. If you haven't yet read the novel, check out the review by Book for Every Season podcast--it's a short listen (2 minutes), and my favorite line is how the cheerful ending makes you forget all the things you've just witnessed.

Okay, so if you did each of the three concept generating exercises—Netflix, CSI, and What If?—and did each one daily for a week each, you should have anywhere from 21 – 210 concepts. If you did the bonus AI round, and were able to get decent results, you might have 28 – 280 concepts. That, in itself, is awesome. But we’re not done yet.
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For this next exercise, scroll through your existing concepts and apply the Netflix strategy. Pick three random concepts and combine their elements to see if they inspire a new concept. For example, below are three concepts from my Netflix post:

1. When Armageddon strikes during their after-school detention, a gang of mismatched teens rely on one another’s strengths to defend the school so that they can survive.
2. When a famous actress returns to her alma mater to give a speech during Homecoming, the current Homecoming Queen plots to have her kidnapped for stealing her thunder.
3. Everyone in the world wakes to discover Armageddon happened while they were sleeping…twenty years ago. Can the survivors pick up the pieces and reclaim a world that’s been overrun by mother nature?

 
And here are some new concepts that I see:

• When the entire boarding school mysteriously passes out and wakes during the Homecoming dance, they are convinced that they are subjects of the Homecoming Court. When the queen kills her king to claim the throne for her own, the lower classmen rally for a coup.
• When a famous actress is hired for a feature film on a princess, largely chosen for similar looks, the two women meet, and the princess goes missing. Or is the princess merely pretending to be her doppelganger so that she can get a break from the royal life?

I’m calling this one a bonus round because, for right now, it’s more nerdy fun than it is useful. But just as this isn’t the stage to be censoring your ideas, the crazy ideas that you might get out of this process can probably be mined into gold.

If you haven’t yet given Chat GPT a try, you definitely should. Imagine Tony Stark, interacting with his AI computer to build the latest Iron Man suit. Using Chat GPT is kinda like that, if you squint just right. When you do a Google search, the algorithm scans the database and gives you links to articles and pages that might be what you’re looking for, and might not. You then click through the ads and hyperlinks to hopefully find what you need.

Chat GPT is a different kind of beast. You can ask it the same question as you did Google, and it reads the articles and summarizes the search findings for you. And if the information isn’t quite what you’re looking for, you can ask it to try again with tweaks—it learns what information is relevant to you. Its data is not current, however, so you shouldn’t attempt to use it for picking stocks.

So, how can you use this to generate movie ideas? Visit chat.openai.com, login, and just ask. The trick to getting good results is to tweak the wording of your question to get useful results. I went back to my “CSI Strategy” post and fed the listed headlines as prompts and asked for a high concept movie idea.

The AI spat out something like “Big Bird mourns the loss of an original ‘Sesame Street’ character.”

​After a couple more tries, I landed on the following prompt:

What if?

Really, what it all comes down to when writing is the writer asking themselves this question. What if a tornado carried a runaway teen over the rainbow to a magical land of Munchkins, wizards and witches? What if an orphaned boy who was forced to sleep under the stairs suddenly discovered he is a powerful wizard and gets invited to study magic in a castle school? What if a wolf’s bite cursed you into turning into a wolf every full moon?

What if? coupled with And then what? Over and over again…that’s where a story develops. And most writers probably do this subconsciously as they go about their day. The trick for generating concepts doesn’t need the And then what? Just the What if? And the trick is to make it a conscious exercise.
​

• What if the barista poisoned my Mocha Latte? Why would she do that? Was she targeting me, specifically? How could I survive?
• What if my house was burning down and I called 911, and when the firemen arrived they refused to get out of the truck? Why would they do that? Is my house really on fire? Am I hallucinating a fire? Maybe it’s a premonition.
• What if the morning radio host began speaking directly to me? And he could hear me talk back? Could everyone hear our conversation? What would we talk about? What would be so important to trigger this phenomenon?
• What if my dog swallowed my cat whole? What would the cat do?
• What if my daughter was an elf at the North Pole who hated making toys? How would the other elves treat her? What would she rather do than make toys?
• What if I was secretly running from a demon who expected my daughter as payment for a debt incurred when I, myself was just a child?
• What if that Nigerian prince really did give me a fortune?

​This could be more appropriately called the “torn from the headlines” strategy, but calling “CSI” is a great reminder that, sometimes, facts make great fiction.

With this approach, scroll through the headlines of a news website and see what the headlines trigger in your imagination. There are a few ways to do this:

• Apply the Netflix strategy to multiple headlines
  • Combine the elements of two or more headlines
• Write the story
  • Write a "big" story that fits the headline
• Intentionally misunderstand the headline
  • As I’m writing, one headline reads “Original ‘Sesame Street’ Character Dies.” I know they’re talking about one of the humans (Bob McGrath), but my writer brain immediately goes “Oh, no! What happened to Kermit?” And that joke can lead to all sorts of story ideas.
• Visit the other side of the argument
  • It used to be that news was merely facts with an editorial sprinkled here and there. Nowadays, most news outlets seem to be all editorial disguised as fact. Even when there is true news being reported, an outlet may have a bias—they only report news in such a way that promotes a certain view. They can’t even be registered as a news outlet, but as entertainment. This is a shame in the bigger scheme of things, but for this exercise, it can be quite helpful.
  • If you lean left/liberal, scan the headlines on some outlet that leans right/conservative, and vice versa.
  • Why is this helpful? Because reading an alternative bias against what you typically resonate with is likely to spark something unsettling within you, and that angst can drive creativity.

Remember, the vast majority of the concepts you generate will suck. And that is okay. You need to give yourself permission to be crazy, stupid, out there, and messy when you’re trying to figure out what to write. Don’t edit yourself. The goal is to just have fun with this and generate as many ideas as you can. You’ll then review the concepts and see which ones get your attention, which ones can be tweaked into a better concept, and hone in on the marketable ones.

Always remember, “Sharknado” is a thing. It’s not only ridiculously dumb, but was ridiculously successful. Just have fun with this.

​This first “Netflix” strategy was once my favorite, but the Netflix interface is no longer compatible—especially the way it auto-plays previews. It used to show a grid of movies, where each row more or less contained a different genre…and scrolling through that grid was what helped me generate ideas.
​
Luckily, Google offers a great alternative. Search “movies on Netflix,” and results show up in a grid as shown here.

​And here comes the fun. Pick two movies in the same genre, and a third from a different genre or category and try to get yourself to see something by combining the three. 

This question is not asking what it probably seems to be asking.

When I was studying for my MFA, one professor asked the class to write essays on this very topic. I don’t remember my essay. But I do remember the gist of an essay written by a young woman who said that if her writing touches just one person, then she would be a successful writer.

Young and ambitious, I commented that if my writing touches only one person then I would be a horrible failure. And that is true. For me. But obviously not for this other writer.
​
Recently, I see writers stating on social media something similar…that they write “for passion, not profit.” And being a bit older, I understand their point of view. But I just don’t see passion and profit as being mutually exclusive. Why not write for both passion and profit?

I have been produced on stage and in film, have contributed to numerous projects, been published in magazines, newspapers, and have published a couple books.

Yet I still don’t feel successful. Why? Because my dreams are frighteningly huge. I don’t want to touch just one person, or a few. I want the world to laugh with me, cry with me, feel affected by my stories the same way they affect me. I want my name in the credits. I want to walk the red carpet. I want financial success. There is so much I need to do and my time on this planet is waning. As a popular meme asks: Why aren’t we all chasing after our dreams like we’re going to die tomorrow?

We’re going to briefly jump ahead in the process and then revisit this topic later more in depth when it comes time to planning an actual project.

But, sometimes, what inspires you can help you conjure up your what-to-write. And if you’re truly inspired with the project, that inspiration will carry you to The End or Fade Out. (Again…maybe both!)

When I sat down to write Bad Elf and The Krampus, I had many concepts to choose from—thrillers, comedies, rom-coms, paranormal horror. Wonderful concepts. Bad Elf bubbled to the top of my attention for a few reasons.

​I had recently finished and marketed a Christmas screenplay--Joyous Noel. It’s about a misunderstood, semi-orphaned boy who does all the wrong things in order to do something 

Before diving into what-to-write, take a moment to explore what kinds of stories, writers, songs, artwork, and movies that get you excited.

Why?

Because a story that you write that is pulled from these influences is likely going to keep you excited, spark your creativity, and carry you to The End or Fade Out. Maybe both!

You might also see a theme you’ve not ever necessarily noticed before that can spark story ideas near and dear to you. You might even notice where your writer’s voice comes from.

For me, stories that influence my writing include:

• The Wizard of Oz (film)
• Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Gene Wilder)
• Star Wars (A New Hope)
• Harry Potter (Sorcerer’s Stone)
• The Hobbit

Every one of these stories has something similar—the hero’s world becomes much bigger in a fantastic way. We learn along with Dorothy about a land over the rainbow, and Munchkins, flying monkeys, a flawed wizard, the witches, etc. We learn along with Charlie of this crazy candy maker, Oompa Loompas, Schozzberries, etc. We experience Luke being drawn into the world of The Force, saving the Princess, Wookies, Darth Vader, taking on the Empire. And we celebrate with Harry when he’s taken from his room under the stairs and learns he’s a powerful wizard, goes to Gringott’s, and Hogwarts. We take that first step with Bilbo out from his Hobbit hole and into a world of Orcs, Wizards, Elves, Dwarves, magic rings, and dragons. We learn, with the hero, that their world isn’t just what it has always been.

Now, you can easily argue that any good story does that…and any good story should. But for my list, they all have an element of the fantastical, adventure in a world where any surprising thing just might jump out at us from some place we just weren’t looking. For the Harry Potter series, it's Harry's introduction into the magical realm that grabs my excitement. I enjoy all the Harry Potter novels, but the first has that element I enjoy most. I’m not particularly a fan of fantasy, but stories that bring the hero into the fantastical…kicks me right in the feels.