This is beyond a doubt the best video you have. Talking about how a script needs to have elements that you can relate to in order for you to be able to write it is something *all* Hollywood screenwriters should be listening to. This is why there are so many terrible Hollywood movies. Producers tell screenwriters to put A, B, and C in it and then screenwriters come back with some Frankenstein's monster of a movie that they have no connection with just because they were only "doing a job" instead of making something they care about and poured their heart into.
A single mom with 250k$ debt to some sharkloan caught her rebellious teenage son brought back home a bag containing 500k$ in a small town in michigan. One would expect the owner of the bag would search for this bag and that they're not ordinary people.
Here's mine: A life threatening dare sends a mismatched pair of detectives through a small town in MI to capture a killer simply described as "The man with a checkered coat". I wasn't timing it, but I'd say about 5-6 minutes.
Now this is a useful video! If you could post more writing challenges that would be awesome. The Q&A's with writers are great but as soon as I finished this video I was ready to binge more writing challenges but found none 😅 more please!
A young single mother from a small town in Michigan leaves her daughters at home, so she can relive a rambunctious life by falling for the travelling salesman in a checkered coat. Awesome video with great insights! I love the interactivity in this one!
It takes me a week to create a logline that I wanna write the screenplay for… …it takes me 15mins to write a logline that I don’t wanna write the screenplay for.
"When her estranged best friend mistakes a hitman's payment for her signature yellow luggage, a divorcee must protect her kids and her former maid of honor from a wayward criminal and a pair of oddball private eyes." About five minutes. This was a super fun exercise, thanks so much.
Nice. Mine was: "After two struggling single moms who haven't seen in each other in 20 years wake up in an abandoned castle with no memory of how they got there, they are sent to complete a series of life-threatening dares for $500k each to give to their families. The catch? They can't make any noise."
Really enjoyed this video. Coming from a non-writer, non-film student, I love listening to, and understanding the creative processes in writing, film, and acting. Thank you
After a life-threatening dare from an old friend who hasn't met for years, a single mom wakes up with 500k in a yellow bag without any memory from the night before and she's being targeted by a man with a checkered coat.
I know sounds terrible, and you'll probably hate it but here's what I got: With $500K on the line, two childhood friends separated by 20 years now find themselves facing eachother in an underground fighting tournament held in an abandoned castle by a reclusive benefactor.
Like the way his mind works, pragmatic, fast connections, and how he owns the story by diving in and making it personal, like creating an emotional coziness for himself. That also helps a lot with the voice, the perspective. From the get-go you can tell what a good writer is. Very practical video!
This video was one of the inspirations for our podcast, we try and come up with orginal movie ideas from random words. Doing the exercise regularly picking really helps generate more ideas. Thanks, film courage!
After a life threatening dare, two goofy detectives are sent to a small town of Michigan to face their fear of horror and unraveled the mystery behind the worst massacre in american history. Took me 15 minutes, now I want to write that story lol
After an encounter with an old friend, a struggling single mom gets a letter of instructions revealing the hiding place of 500k in cash. There's just one rule, she must find her friend's body first. 5:57. A struggling single mom battles for dominance at a baking competition with a 500k price. There's no room for weakness, except maybe for the overly nice and handsome, but yet suspicious unnamed man in the checkered coat. 6:00. Heaven has begun to burn like hell and two souls of old medieval saints must search for the path to rebirth. 3:00. Put them in the wrong thread before. 😑
@Andreas Maybe at the middle point, she repents for being so rude to him, but then in some way realizes his niceness is a facade, and they both go "total war" on each other.
Interesting exercise and its interesting to see what other folks in the comments come up with. However, there is a critical component of building an effective logline - the reader must have a clear sense of who the protagonist is and what the central conflict is. Many of the loglines in these comments are missing one of these elements, many seem to have multiple protagonists. A good way to structure a logline is using the following: A BLANK when BLANK but BLANK - The first Blank is your protagonist, the second Blank is your hook/inciting incident and the third and final blank is the central conflict. For example, "A suburban teenager must find his way home when a time traveling DeLorean leaves him stuck in the 1950s. But to prevent himself from being erased from existence he must ensure his future parents meet and fall in love".
OMG. I love it. I follow your format but change it a little like this Protagonist -> Inciting incident -> Conflict -> Consequences A … when … But … or else … For your example: [A] suburban teenager must find his way home [when] a time traveling DeLorean leaves him stuck in the 1950s. [But] he must ensure his future parents meet and fall in love [or else] he will be erased from existence. It stays the same, but I just expand it a bit. Hope you don't mind
A man with a checkered coat joins a meeting in a room which he wasn’t invited to, when he walks out a few minutes later, the room is empty-- and no one else was seen leaving.
Andy and Barney are a two man police force in the farming community of Booker, Michigan. Barney's friend Nancy Blake vanished five years ago. They have one clue: a bright yellow patent leather purse found in a field containing a VHS video tape. The tape and purse belonged to Nancy-- maybe. But who is the old woman on the tape, sitting quietly, talking about men in checkered coats and stroking a familiar-looking cat? "They have no idea how powerful I am," she says," and in spite of common sense and all that is holy and unholy, Andy cannot stop thinking about how much that old woman resembles Nancy-- who was twenty three when she disappeared.
Life gets a little more chaotic for a single mom in small town MI, when two detectives arrive to investigate a train wreck involving a get-away car, a dead ex-husband, a missing $500k, and more questions than answers.
“2 long lost friends must fight rival gangs to repair a 20-year wound and save their city from financial ruin.” Uses 7 of those idea fragments. That along with exposition, inciting incident, PoNR, 3 pre-climaxes/revelations, all hope is lost, and final climax within 16 minutes. I took each idea fragment and wrote down what story came to mind when I heard each one. Then, I matched up all the ones that seemed related in triplets. The first 3-4 triplets were triplets, but the last one ended up with 7. So I used that and deleted everything else.
"When two estranged friends, one cop and one crook, meet on a train, they team up to steal $500k hidden inside the abandoned castle full of memory-consuming creatures. " Brooks's version is interesting and captivating, but I needed to add some of my own creepy ideas at the end. Maybe one of them loses his memory in the castle during the action and while encountering the creature, and that enacts the past unresolved problems between them. They begin realizing that they were never that close as friends. ... It reminds me a bit of the Netflix "Red Notice" with differences in the main goal. Cleopatra's third egg vs $500k.
A claustrophobic thriller on a train, about a single mom and her deaf son, who find and take a yellow bag with 500K, that a mismatched pair of detectives and a man in checked coat are looking for. about 15 minutes
A life threatening dare leads to the discovery of a yellow bag buried beneath a pier in small town Michigan. Expecting to find money, two friends who have just recently connected after a 20 year hiatus, find something more sinister, a note with what seems to be an encrypted message “they don’t realise how powerful I am” and a set of directions, that takes them on an unexpected train ride to an abandoned castle and a night they didn’t prepare for. 3-5 minutes in between sets at the gym.
A man walks into a train yard with a yellow bag, looking around concerned, until he sees a strange creature. Handing him the bag, an object is taken out transforming the creature. "They don't know how powerful I am" says the man. He marvels at the other's power of silence, then aggrieved as the creature remakes the man's world into a better place.
A paranoid single mom subjected to memory loss waits for a train to leave a small town in Michigan while she holds a yellow bag containing 500k. The only thought racing through her head is they don't know how powerful I am. [ time 10-12 min ]
As an avid reader who is starting to get into writing, I value good stories above all else. I’ve never once read a story with a good character and double checked the back cover to see if the author is allowed to create a good story.
3rd generation national spelling bee champion from Chicago goes on vacation with his mother during the summer before freshmen year of HS. They are neighbors to a daughter and widow of a wealthy man who recently passed. Both of the mothers have a history that goes back 20 years, to ease tension both the son and daughter plan a beach day to sort out differences, but after returning from the beach day, 500,000 is stolen from the widow's safe whos to blame? (about 40 minutes)
Mentioning the conflict will make it far more compelling, yes. But that conflict is only sometimes personified as an antagonist, other times it's inner-conflict or perhaps environmental conflict like a volcano eruption.
A single mom with memory loss accepts a life-threatening dare from a strange man in a checkered coat while on a train ride to visit her best friend of 20 years in her old hometown of Jackpot,MI.
Trying my long logline: 😅 Olivia, a single mom, on her way meet an old friend, aboard a train but train crashes in a small town in Michigan leaving her as the only survivor. In an effort to find out what really happened, a mismatched pair of detectives, a mysterious man in a checkered coat, are chasing her believing she is more than just a survivor as she was found in the crash site with a yellow bag containing 500k, a photo of an abandoned castle, and a note saying 'they dont know how powerful I am'.
Margie is a single mom from a small town in Michigan who inherited 500k and wants to purchase an abandoned castle, she has been eyeing for some time, but a man with a checkered coat and a yellow bag swept in and nabbed it before she could. In a rage Margie vowed revenge and pays a homeless deafmute to kill the man on a pricey dare. Turns out the buyer was an estranged friend from 20 years hence who had done well and had bought the castle for her as a gift, but had not told anyone. The negative power of silence. So the castle remains without an owner, and people say it has a life of its own. In the final scene, we zoom in on a sign on the castle forestep that says “See how powerful I am!”.
A single mom needs to rescue her mischievous son after being trapped in a mysterious abandoned castle by passing a series of life-threatening dares or he will suffer from a complete memory loss.
After an accident, a single mum wakes up in hospital with memory loss, cerebellar mutism, and a pair of mismatched detectives at her bedside that inform, her adolescent son is missing--regaining her memories might be the only hope she has to find her lost child. [30 minutes]
A single mom suffering from a recent memory loss is reintroduced to her friend of 20 years she hasn’t seen in that time. A mismatched pair of detectives try to locate a single mom suffering from memory loss A man with a checkered coat takes on a life-threatening dare for $500K in an abandoned castle 3 minutes to come up with
A great video. To add more depth to the logline, I would have added at the end something like "just for the fun of it" or "in memory of all the crazy things they did together". That way, they would compete and challenge each other in a playful way that is reminiscent of their youth and the good time they had.
After a horrific train crash, a struggling single mother emerges from an amnesiac episode to discover that she can claim an abandoned castle and all its treasures if she can outmaneuver a menacing pair of detectives who claim the castle actually belongs to them.
Single mother loses her memory and after trying everything she takes a vow of silence that ends when she recovers her first memory in 20 years upon seeing an old friend. The 2 friends work together like a pair of detectives to try and recover her memories and discover who she was. They don't know how powerful she really is.
A man in a checkered coat walks through a busy school yard, yet no one seems to notice him. He approaches a group of kids screaming and sees that there are two children fighting. The man pulls out a gun and fires it in the air, but again no one notices, no one reacts .... except one child. With gun in hand, the man walks over to the child, smiles and says, "It's been 20 years old friend, we have some catching up to do."
Two friends reunite after a 20 year absence and reminisce about their love of train surfing. One of the friends has taken out a life insurance policy for 500k, and is trying to convince the other to stage his elaborate death utilising the train as a death mechanism. The insurance money will help his single mom parent to afford her cancer drugs.
A goofy single mom so nervous over a 20 year reunion with an old friend, misses their train when her misplaced yellow bag is found moments later with 500 thousand dollars in it.
I'm at 0:55 and if this is set anywhere other than Hell or Christmas, I am going to be very disappointed. Edited to add: A single mom must travel from Hell to Christmas to deliver $500k, though she can't remember why; meanwhile an FBI agent and a State Police detective investigate a kidnapping. Took one to ten minutes, depending on how you're counting. I'm crippled with ADHD; I spent about ten minutes daydreaming, looking up _logline_ because I forgot what it meant, and jumping between browser tabs while the idea bounced around my head. Note that the drive from Hell to Christmas takes about six hours. (I just checked.) So that's a pretty tight time frame to give us a fast-paced thriller. LAST EDIT (I promise): From Christmas to Hell would be a better direction symbolically, but the Mackinaw Bridge is in the perfect location for the character transformation -- maybe about four hours into a six-hour trip. Since it's a choke point, it forces a decision. Symbolically it tie together the trip and the story thematically, I think. (What the heck do I know?! LOL) Took me a half-hour to figure that out.
A single mom calls upon an old lover who is a detective, to investigate strange events where foreign people are found in her small town in Michigan with no memories and empty yellow bags. All the while a man in a checkered coat appears to her son in a dream and invites him to a mysterious dark castle.
5 min with AI. A single mom's discovery of a yellow bag with $500k awakens her latent powers. Teaming up with an old friend, they are pursued by unknown agents, all unaware of the impending, unimaginable consequences. - I think it's better!
In a small town MI, The Checkered Man and The Striped Man (once great friends) reluctantly co-operate to investigate the suspicious suicide of a hooker they both frequented, and in the process, manage to unveil the secrets she kept of them, alongsides the tragic reason why they could never co-exist again.
Two friends, on very different paths in life, reunite twenty years after having made a childhood dare to put on a grand battle of deduction and wit that will see them hustle a train, blow up a castle and gamble with the lives of a mother and her son, all for a bag with 500K$.
I took the ones that seemed more like catalysts for event to occur and tried to expand on those. After a life threatening dare drove them apart, two friends who haven't seen each other in 20 years, are reunited by chance and walk through the trauma the dare caused. A single mom with memory loss must navigate the web of lies her child weave An FBI agent has tracked a serial killer to a small town in Michigan where he encounters the enigmatic man in a checkered coat who may or may not be involved in the case
What If the killer and the FBI agent are long-term frenemies and the killer settled in the small town and has a loved family who doesn't know his past life (which the killer is trying to amend)? Will the FBI agent choose law above the guy's family? Will he chose is long life obsession or forgiveness?
He jumps over the drain rail… she jumps the rail rail… he jumps it again… they high -five… she attempts to jump back over to him… her heel hits the top of the reel … and she falls face first… onto her yellow bag… that has her traveling pillow… but enough damage was done… she would have to postpone her trip back to her life in Lancaster, California…. Old loves…. But he’s married
Logline: Caroline, a mute woman and single mother from small town Michigan, holds nothing but a yellow bag with $500K in it as she takes a tense train trip to meet a "friend" she hasn’t seen for 20 years. When the train crashes, Caroline, now suffering amnesia, and saddled only with the yellow money bag, must figure out why she’s suddenly on an empty steam engine in the middle of a forest near an abandoned castle, her only company a strange man in a checkered coat who watches from afar. Time taken to complete: 10 - 15 minutes Full story: Caroline, a mute woman and single mother from small town Michigan, holds nothing but a yellow bag with $500K in it as she takes a very tense and nervous train trip to meet up with a friend she hasn’t seen in 20 years. She keeps checking a letter from said friend: “I can help. She doesn’t have to die. Bring the money.” On the way, the train crashes. When Caroline wakes up, she’s sustained memory loss, and has no idea why she’s suddenly on a now empty train in the middle of a forest near an abandoned castle, her only possession the yellow bag filled with money. Wanting answers, and having no where else to go, she makes her way to the castle, the only living being in sight a man with a checkered coat, always following her, but never approaching. The castle, which has a voice of its own, promises her freedom from delusion if she solves various life-threatening challenges, with the threat that if she loses at any point, she will not only be stuck in this world forever, but also has to give up the money. However, the more tasks she completes correctly, the more the man in the coat, who ends up sneakily assisting her with the challenges, suffers pain. At the last, she has to make a choice between saving herself or saving the man. Her final decision has consequences, revealing her reason for being trapped and what each element of the nightmare represented. Time taken to complete: Around 25 minutes ----- This was a great challenge! Thanks! :)
When a single mom awakes on a train headed for Battle Creek, MI, she finds her son missing along with her hearing. In his place, a yellow bag containing $500,000 and a ransom note that informs her to meet at an abandoned castle north of the city. With the help of two FBI agents, she races to piece together her past before they reach the end of the line.
A struggling single mother excepts a facebook invite from an old friend to enter a dangerous reality TV contest with a prize of $500K. After their train to the event in a remote part of Siberia tragically crashes during a blizzard, they find shelter in an abandoned haunted castle only to find themselves in a real-life survival situation.
My logline: A single mom has a really sick kid and needs to pay the medical bill of a whoping $500K, but she needs to make the money in a short space of time. In this same week, her boss is going away for this time and needs to leave her in charge of running things. So, in this week she does some side deals/dodgy deals with some other "business men" under the guise of her boss's company to make this money quick. However, turns out the "business men" are actually mobsters and she's made some dodgy money so she has to deal with the criminal element now, while keeping it all quiet or she loses her job and her son can't get his treatment.... eeek. :P
The Ultimate Life Form runs away to a small town in MI upon witnessing a gruesome sight that he didn’t even do, but a pair of mismatched detectives are on the hunt for him. Upon seeing what this town’s sheriff had been doing to the townsfolk and discovering what he’d agreed to, he’ll do what he can to protect the place and its citizens all the while trying to hide something within him. It took me awhile to write this, but I hope you like it.
Are we allowed to reference past mysterie novels such as Twelve Little Indians by Agatha Christie to form our own narrative, or is that cut off? I will.of course make few sub versions as I possible, but ultimately I want my story to be told without being able to see into the minds of the individuals
I would make the train cost the protagonist (entrepreneur) $500K, which means it would have to take place in past (probably the 1800s or earlier). He's from a cold city and so he wears a checked coat, and the yellow bag is his Santa's bag. The protagonist has to drive his newly made train to deliver a gift to a single mother in a far away city. The two supporting casts are two business people who have been sent to inspect the train, due to some false rumor (hence they are detectives). At some point, they meet each other and conclude that the train is fine and because they are long lost friends, they decide that they would make a good team, thus they choose to help the conductor to get the package delivered.
A mismatch pair of detectives took on a life threathening dare to solve a case that involves a single mom who suffer memory a loss after meeting a man with a checkered coat that carries a 500k worth of cash on a train ride to small town Mi
I really wanted this to be live, and suggest: it was the crook's girlfriend, and the cop married her, and he needs the money because she's got cancer. I guess that gave me a zing :-)
In 20 mins I came up with these 4 longlines: 1) When losing in the playoffs a Saints player must come up with $500,000 or his wife will become a single mom. 2) When losing his CDL, an anxious man on a train must overcome memory loss if he wishes to fulfill his dreams. 3) When moving to a small Michigan town a young lady must use the power of silence if she wishes to be freed from control. 4) When being stood up at church and meeting a weird man with a checkered coat, a drug addict has to find the yellow bag to survive.
I decided that I wanted to finish this whole list but only came up with 1 longline the 2nd round of 20 mins: 1) In order to escape being bullied by ghost, two friends who haven't seen each other in 20 years needs to find a way to escape an abandoned castle.
For the 3rd round I put the timer 20 mins once again and in about 16 mins I finished the list with 2 longlines: 1) Facing a life threatening dare an inspirational teacher cooperating with a mismatched pair of detectives must convince an overwhelmed writer to not quit if they wish to solve a murder. 2) Facing hunger, a starving kid with a selfish family hiding food from him needs to apply lessons from best-selling book, "They Don't Realize How Powerful I Am" to experience rebirth.
Great to see you having fun with this exercise Isaac! Love to see you come up with so many ideas! We have another video like this going up tomorrow at 5pm PST.
Okay, I stopped at the writing prompt, I haven't seen anything that happens after this point so don't judge me 😂😆 *Prompt _6: Power of silence* Prop: A dedicated nun wants to glorify God and keep her life-long vow of silence for life. Opp: A malevolent spirit wants to burn down the church and kill everyone in it. Comp: As the sole survivor of the fire, authorities want the nun to tell them who started the fire. Esc: The daughter that was taken away from the nun 12 years ago by CPS wants to talk to her. Reso question: Will the nun betray her sacred vow to service man's need for answers or will she keep her vow and bear the punishment herself? Logline: 1st Draft A nun survives a mysterious fire at her church and as the sole survivor the authorities want answers. With a checkered past, will she be able to keep her vows or give in to man. 2nd Draft *After a mysterious church fire, authorities zero-in on the sole-survivor: a nun who has taken a vow of silence. As the DA mounts a compelling case against her and investigators uncover her secret past, will she use her voice to save her life or remain silent no matter what?*
Well, that´s fun. 20 minutes. I decided to use as much as possible and still find something in it. So it comes to a story about sorrow and loss and new hope, about two woman of different age reconnect wrapped in a Miss Marple like situation. It´s too long because of the decision to use so much of the stuff. But I really like the idea of the two unlikely detectives. I would cut it down a bit: An old woman and her godchild meet again after 20 years both travelling in a train home to michigan. After the death of her husband, the old woman is loosing her memory, but she knows exactly how she and her goddaughter solved small local town problems together. Now there is a man in a checkered coat on the train, clutching a yellow bag. They discover, it's 500k in this bag, when the train suddenly stopps nowhere. Man and bag vanish but no door is opened. The mismatches detectives set out, to find out what happend and on their soon lifethreatening quest the old woman realizes her intellectual abilities are coming back to her. Or: Meeting after 20 years an old woman and her goddaughter confronted with a mysterious incident in the train on their way home, reconnect over the attempt to solve the riddle and the old woman gets invigorated.
When human remains turn up in a small MI town, a solitary and retiring sheriff stumbles upon an unsolved cold case. The lead of that case, a single mom and detective from the city, might be the only hope to close it. With her only leads coming from a homeless old friend from 20 years ago suffering from memory loss, it seems like it will never be solved. Sometimes it’s not what a person says that solves the crime. Sometimes it’s what they don’t say. “The Power Of Silence”
Two friends reunite in a small Michigan town twenty years later after a life-threatening dare tore them apart. With a pair of detectives intent on unraveling a town secret, will they reconcile and finish what they started and win the hidden money or lose it all?
The power of silence rarely shows it's influence, until a pair of mismatched detectives, estranged friends for 20 years, accept a life threatening dare. Not great. But I timed myself. (2m31s) pretty proud of the time I guess.
A single mom, suffering from progressive memory loss, stumbles upon a stash of $500,000. Her new fortune courts the attention of two IRS agents with equally disturbing, yet conflicting, motives.
A single mom with 250k$ debt to some sharkloan caught her rebellious teenage son brought back home a bag containing 500k$ in a small town in michigan. One would expect the owner of the bag would search for this bag and that they're not ordinary people.
I really liked the writing challenge, but I messed up trying to make a story with every element lol. Did you just make the game up? There should make a website that generates idea fragments.
A life threatening dare leaves Kate as a single mom who has to find the $500 000 that her husband told her about on his death bed, will she beat her 24hour memory loss condition or ……?
Hi Aaron, these are prompts we just made up in 5 minutes. Here is another screenwriter going through the same process, but he took a different approach - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Njeba5TcQu0.html
An elderly single mother, Kate Upton, traveled alone to a foreign country against her families admonitions that it could be very dangerous for a seventy-year old woman, alone! Kate hopes to track down a bandit who had attacked her and and taken her money and documents witch stranded her in Bulgaria for a nightmarish and harrowing two years. She had spent 20 more years returning to this place, and now standing in front of her is a man dressed a old checkered suit in front of the same dilapidated castle. Kate's friend, Angela still home in St. Joe, wines St. Joseph's only two detectives, who dared Kate to use the tools she carries in a yellow bag on the train, and across the continent to break into the castle. Kate intends to collect the bet, she had kept her mouth shut about the 500,000 cash she carried to help finance her mission. Before she walked to the castle's property line, Kate repeated a motivating phrase she had used many times in her revenge-seeking journey - but in her excitement Kate forgot the phrase. After she returns, Kate thought her and Angela would catch up on Angela's twenty years of life in Los Angeles, but now, if all goes according to plans, Kate will show them just how powerful she is.
I cheated a little because I didn't feel up to the challenge right away. But this is after glimpsing the list, forgetting about it and going back. The story is about the cockle picking disaster on Morecambe Bay. A single mother from China lost her daughter in the incident, the only remains a distinctive yellow knapsack, but never got to see the scene of the tragedy. She is invited over by an old friend who recently moved to Liverpool. She meets the detective who seem oddly incompetent given their responsibility. She has unsettling dreams of a man in a check suit selling cockles. She learns of the power of the sea and how tides can rise suddenly without warning. She thinks there may be clues still out there buried beneath the sands and decided to venture out despite the risk. She also takes a train at some point. +There are lots of castles in England.
What did I fit? Single mum - the protagonist $500K - nope A train - squeezed in (edit: but an inspiration because I have been on the Lancaster - Carnforth train that skirts the bay) Memory loss - I forgot about that one Small town MI - hwats that? Power of silence - the tides Yellow bag - daughter's Man in checkered coat - dream sequence (edit: Oh I thought you meant CHECKERED suit.) Friends that haven't seen for ages - ally and opportunity to travel Abandoned castle - It is England of course there's a castle Life threatening dare - going on the sands Mismatched pair of detectives - first contact for protagonist and semi-allies Rebirth - The protagonist nearly dies like her daughter on the treacherous bay (not mentioned above but implicit?) "They don't realise how powerful I am" - The goddamn SEA
It turns out this subjects has been covered in the film "Ghosts" 2007, written by Hsiao-Hung Pai, Nick Broomfield and Jez Lewis, produced/directed by Nick Broomfield.
Yup. That’s what I said and it’s true. But there’s resistance in every direction so it’s also a matter of choosing your battles wisely. Also see the other thread on this topic here. It’s an important discussion!
~5 minutes A Single Mom, desperate for cash, is approached by a secret society and is offered a chance. Live and sleep inside an abandoned castle for one week and receive $500k. As the days tick on, she realizes that there is someone else here, a man in a checkered coat that likely isn't human.
A pathetic loser murdered by his business partner wakes up 10 years after his own death and uses his rebirth to gain fame, power and influence until his murderer and his own conscience compel him to confess the truth. (About 5 minutes.)
@@mvjorplvg6088 maybe he was accidentally brined like a pickle because his dead body was thrown into a sea of pickle inside the warehouse, and the pickles have healing properties to heal a gunshot wound or something so he survived.
@@mvjorplvg6088 Placed in the family tomb on a slab. But the rats.... Maybe it'd be better as a one-week death or less. Three or four days. Ricky Gervais to play the lead. It could work.
I think one year is better on second thought. No need for futuristic changes, but long enough for some changes. The key is he's obsessed with death and decomposition so he gets a futuristic coffin with a fresh air supply but that will prevent predators like rats and worms. Then in one year he wakes up, and has all kinds of hilarious things happen, like the meeting with the lawyer trying to convince him he's alive, while the lawyer insists he's dead according to the paperwork, and there's no way to challenge his death in a court of law. It could be very funny...if Ricky Gervais played the role.
Meth addict after memory loss is tricked to believe that he always lived in a small Amish town with his wife and his cravings are symptoms of head injury (memory loss, small town MI, rebirth, power of silence) You can sprinkle it with "an abandoned castle" where he would get a **500K** reward if he can accomplish **a life threatened dare** from "undercover" behaviorists/psychologists. Challenge sounds like an easy money but in fact he is not aware that he is an addict that helps in a science research on "how to compensate strong cravings in a healthy way". The more closer he gets to his goal the more flashbacks he gets about his previous life and harder it gets but he also starts to understand that money are not the biggest reward in the challenge. Is it OK to mash all ideas that I liked in one story?
I kept watching, but I understand the sentiment. Most of what I write has scifi or fantasy elements. If I need the same lived experience of my characters, I'm dead in the water.
Yep, it was disgusting. It's a pity to see social justice infect Film Courage, a RU-vid Channel dedicated to educating and teaching people how to tell great stories...
Yeah I really disliked that take. If you take that approach to it's logical conclusion, he can only write straight white men. The irony of this surely can't be lost: his stories become mono-coloured, mono-gendered and entirely heterosexual. At that point, by not writing all of these people who you don't feel you can represent, you only end up representing your own demographics, which, if you feel that it's "problematic", ends up as a huge own goal. A good writer should be able to represent these characters as real people, with their personal circumstances and demography entailed naturally into their characters. If you can't write them respectfully, then you shouldn't consider yourself an authority on storytelling.
@@t.r.e.v.o.r_s.m.i.t.h Easier, not necessarily better. He could very easily research the subject and existing stories. There's little financial stability for the average Single Mother, perhaps he could pay for their time, stories and experiences as a research method. Helping all those involved...or he could just make a story up with no prior experience. Though it's interesting to learn that George Lucas actually experienced Star Wars in reality, I hope he got to use a Lightsaber at least once.
This is a great discussion! First, writers CAN write whatever damn characters they want. And if you look at a film like EIGHTH GRADE that had a teen female protagonist but was written and directed by a white male in his late 20's --- and yet it was totally personal and delightful --- that's AWESOME! My fav film of that year. My understanding of that masterpiece is that Bo says he FELT that an eighth-grade girl was a powerful metaphor for his current existence, and that's what made the emotion and nuances so authentic. And that's the key, right? What's your way into the character so that it FEELS like your personal story to tell? You are certainly NOT limited to your own race, age, gender and sexual orientation. But you need SOME sort of personal way in, and that bar goes way up when you move further away from your demographic. And your resistance in the marketplace will also rise when a person from one group is telling the story of another group. While we'd ideally live in a pure meritocracy, we're not there yet. And the social imbalances are still working themselves out.
Again travelling alone, like an advert for a statistic, here goes a single white female trying to look reborn as an 80s goth. Train passes the ruined castle, I wave, no one waves back. Few stops from here to Mi, forget the amount of times I've travelled this route. But today is different, not before has 500k been on offer, call me stupid but the Job came from Bill and Ben the shady detective men, I shouldn't trust them but I do, quirky pair have the letter B at the start of their names and that's where the similarity ends. I digress, need to focus on this one, I know they offered it to check coat man but I kept quiet, not his sort of style, funny they have no idea we were friends once.... a long time ago. I know they doubt me but they have no idea what I'm capable of. Here's the stop, there's the trash can and there's the bag, ffs bright yellow, That will be Bills idea, wanker, gonna clash with my goth look, anyways 500k and a job to be done.
I love Brook Elms, but watching him struggle with this prompt is great. Its an obvious BS exercise that you only give to fledgling writers. It lacks the narrative drive of a real story when takes as a whole. Its a gish gallop of ideas. Seeing him finally reject 90% of the prompts shows how real inspiration works. Its a spark. A single electron. Not a whirlwind of prompts. I never did well with these either, because I always tried to incorporate all the nonsense. Dont do that. Reject the BS and only use the gems.
It's really interesting how different the process if for someone else. For me. I immediately scanned the page for an emotional core and got hooked onto the 'two friends who haven't seen each other in 20 years' and stuck with that. What could cause them to drift apart so far? 'Life threatening dare' caught my attention. And here's what I made. Two former friends, one with a family and the other, a successful but single lawyer blame each other for their childhood friend's death.
