The Idea

by Erik Bork

  When a script really feels rich and meaningful, the human condition has been explored in some fresh and specific way. The journey that the main character takes, and how they impact their world (and how their world impacts them) resonates with audiences and has a lasting effect on them.

  Think about how some of the following Academy Award Best Picture winners and nominees clearly have deeper themes that one can sink their teeth into. We might not be able to instantly sum them up in words (though it might be a good exercise to try), but we can definitely say they’re “about” something more than their surface plots:

  The Wizard of Oz

  Little Miss Sunshine

  Brokeback Mountain

  The Aviator

  A Beautiful Mind

  E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

  American Beauty

  L.A. Confidential

  To Kill a Mockingbird

  Unforgiven

  These are not inconsequential stories. A lot is going on beyond the surface plot and entertainment. Deeper issues are being examined. And one comes away feeling that meaningful questions in their own life, for society, and/or for life in general have been explored.

  Sticking to the Audience’s Ribs

  There are a number of ways stories can be meaningful and give the audience something to remember and value beyond the fleeting experience of consuming them:

  They tell us something about—or give us a new perspective on—the world or a specific issue or subculture.

  They inspire us in our own lives through the character battles, triumphs, and change they depict.

  They move us, through the good that we see coming through characters as they connect with one another—and as we connect with them.

  They create a call to action, motivating us to move or act in some way.

  They make us understand and admire what others might have gone through or are going through.

  They make us look at how we (or others we know) are like certain characters, allowing us to develop personal insight.

  They show us how others live, which can provide guidance and perspective in our own lives.

  They give us a broader sense of the world, its problems, and humanity as a whole.

  They inspire us toward some sort of change, as a result of what we witness characters doing or facing.

  They give us hope or emotional sustenance, and help us see that we’re not alone.

  TV Characters Don’t Really Change

  Television can go much deeper into characters—and their lives and relationships—than a single long-form story, and can find more “meaning” in the process. It can also be more impactful and satisfying for an audience to follow characters over a long time period, checking in with them regularly. They become more like real-life relationships. Because of this, a big part of the TV writer’s challenge is to create a world of people and situations that a large audience would want to do that with—where they could easily get close to the characters and want to stay with them for the long term.

  At the same time, television can’t provide the kind of “meaning” that movies, novels, or plays do, in the sense that the latter are all about character and life transformations that are significant and come about because of a single compressed story journey. Series by their nature have to come up with new stories every week that are based on virtually the same kinds of problems and conflicts as every other episode, so it can seem like characters don’t really grow, change, or learn much. They may learn a few things, make some adjustments, and evolve in small ways, but their primary inner dynamics and outer difficulties have to remain pretty much in place, from episode to episode and season to season.

  This is a mistake writers new to TV often make, focusing on long-term character arcs as key to their show’s concept. Walter White might evolve into a darker figure by the end of Breaking Bad’s final season, but what really made the show go from week to week was not that glacial evolution so much as the huge problems that came up each episode—all of which were connected to the central problematic situation of the show, which was established in the pilot. Surface changes to the lives of TV characters may come and go, but the main engine of the series in terms of conflicts and challenges (and what the characters are all about) can’t.

  That doesn’t mean the situation they find themselves in, as a series launches in a pilot, shouldn’t still be “life-altering.” Characters are still faced with some enormous set of challenges, with significant and relatable life stakes. It’s just that they can’t really resolve them anytime soon—and the episodes of a series aren’t about “steady progress toward solving them.” Instead, episodes present an infinite number of smaller variations of the larger problem that they connect to, and do resolve in some way, even if the bigger issues don’t.

  On Sex and the City, for example, we have four women battling various challenges in the world of relationships with men—as the main “problem” for each of them, in every episode, for season after season. They each have their own internal qualities that are part of the reason for these challenges, which have to stay in place for the series to keep going. If all this is ever to be resolved, it can only be in the last episode of the last season, where each of them finally has a satisfying long-term relationship situation that seems like it’s working, with no more pressing problems—and there’s a sense that each has finally grown internally, as well. (Until the first movie, when they need to shake things up again to create more story.)

  “Meaningful” Checklist

  If your idea can live up to this five-point mission statement, it should be meaningful enough:

  My story/series explores universal and important human issues, beyond its surface plot, which don’t have easy, facile answers.

  My characters are driven by primal, unmet wants and needs around which there is the possibility for growth and change.

  The end point of the story/series illustrates some transformation that makes the journey seem worthwhile.

  There are specific ways in which my story/series is meant to positively impact and affect audiences in their lives.

  I’m not overtly focused on theme and character arc—they are subtle but meaningful by-products of compelling storytelling.

  9

  PUTTING “PROBLEM” TO WORK

  All of this is a tall order, I know: trying to come up with ideas that meet all of these criteria. But this is why it is so challenging for writers to break through and succeed—and so rewarding for those who do. It’s not that the “industry” is too closed off. It’s not about “who you know.” Or “what’s selling.” It’s not even about dialogue and description, primarily, or story structure. Yes, all those things play a role. But at the heart of it all, for a writer, it’s always about a story premise that is “worth writing”—even more than it is about the writing itself. And even writers who are really good with scene writing, dialogue, and story structure struggle with generating winning ideas.

  Yet it’s the most important part.

  Where Ideas Come From

  The question of how to “find” great ideas (and whether my ideas were even in the ballpark) has long been daunting to me. Maybe that’s why I wrote this book. Over time, I’ve realized that most of the ideas that I (or others) think “should be a movie” or “could be a series” actually lack some of these key elements, and it’s often not easy to reshape them so that they can succeed.

  This is just something one has to get past. It happens to most writers. Very few of us create project after project that really “work.” In fact, many of the very best movies, series, novels, and plays were one of only a very small handful of projects by their author that broke through in this way. (Sometimes the only one.) Nobody just pumps out winning idea after winning idea and turns them into successful project after successful project. Or at least, almost no one. Most of us have a very low batting average. But we keep going, because something drives us to.

  When we talk about idea generation, and where ide
as come from, there’s also something mysterious to the process that seems to be a bit outside of our conscious control. We can’t just take these PROBLEM elements and somehow “figure out” an idea, from nothing, that meets all of them. It’s more that we apply these standards to ideas that do come through, in order to evaluate and shape them. But first, we need something to apply them to.

  Most of the process of writing is actually about coming up with the next idea—even if it’s just for what should happen in the next scene. There’s always the need for ideas at every point in the process. And in my experience, ideas tend to come when I find some way to get out of the analytical mode. This usually involves letting go of being stressed about the situation and getting more playful and curious—asking questions and listening for answers. They might show up when I’m taking a long drive or walking or in the shower. Ironically, a large part of the “job” is to relax into allowing the flow of ideas.

  Another way to activate this creative mode is brainstorming on some need I’m trying to fill or problem I’m trying to solve. I pose a question—a small and definite question that, if answered, would take me a step forward in whatever I’m writing. If I identify the right question and get out of the way (meaning, relax and trust), answers do tend to come. If I have to, I’ll just start listing possible answers off the top of my head—not stopping to critique any of them—until I have ten or twenty. Usually something intriguing will come at some point—as long as I haven’t stopped and become critical and analytical along the way.

  Finding Story Ideas

  What if I don’t have any idea of what I want to write but know I want to write something? Then I make it my job to start noticing what I’m interested in. As I consume others’ work, live my life, and observe, I notice stories I really like and would like to emulate, and also what I’d like to explore more in life. What am I uniquely and passionately obsessed about? What bothers me? Excites me? Moves me? I keep track of these things.

  I actually have a document on my computer with several columns full of random fragments that have crossed my mind that I might want to write about. One column is full of people—occupations, life situations, types of potential characters. Another column contains topics that are part of life on planet Earth. A third column is for arenas or worlds of activity. Another is for locations and settings.

  These can be very mundane on their own, but you never know where a story idea might come from. One practice is to look for the most extreme, outrageous, or difficult version of something that we otherwise think of as everyday. (Like a bachelor weekend in Las Vegas— which led to The Hangover.) Or the most unexpected, entertaining, or brand-new version of something. Because that’s the kind of thing that a viable story tends to be based on—not the everyday version, but the hugely, provocatively exaggerated one.

  Another helpful practice is to brainstorm on combining seemingly disparate elements to see what that produces. When I’m in the mode of looking for what I want to write next, I might set aside fifteen minutes a day and decide to generate five ideas during that time. Maybe that sounds impossible to achieve, but with the right tools, it isn’t. I take an item from one column, pair it with an item from another column, and see if anything comes.

  I’ll go down those other columns, one item at a time, looking at how I might combine my first item with any of these other items and what that might lead to: “If I had to write a story that combined aliens with baseball, what might it be?” Then, “What about aliens and genetic medicine?” “Aliens and hippie environmentalists?” My list might have a hundred things on it that I’m trying to mix “aliens” with. Nothing might come to mind for most of those. But you’d be surprised at the intriguing story possibilities that will pop into my head about some of them—just a sentence or two of a possible concept to explore later.

  Then, on another day, I could be starting with baseball and looking to combine baseball and genetic medicine, then baseball and hippie environmentalists, etc. Eventually, every item in every column can be considered with every other item to see what might emerge.

  I don’t spend a lot of time on this—again, it’s light brainstorming. I just look for a few seconds at each possible pairing and see what might spring forth as a basic story situation I can jot down in a rough logline. And then I’ll move on and keep going until I’ve done that day’s “homework.”

  If I do this for a single month, even just on the weekdays, I’ll have one hundred ideas. Then I look them over. I might not want to further pursue a single one of them. But I might. And I may see common threads that generate new ideas.

  The basic principles that seem to work for me are:

  Note things that you like and are interested in, in the world and in other stories. Keep track of these.

  Focus on generating lots of ideas.

  Schedule a (short) regular daily time devoted to this.

  Create a brainstorming tool of some kind that stimulates mental connections between different potential story and character elements.

  Don’t edit, critique, or try to figure it all out. Just lightly consider possibilities and jot them down.

  Know your preferred genres—study them and make them part of the process. (While being open to stretching into new ones.)

  Sit with potential story fragments or questions and expect answers to come at odd times. Focus on being relaxed and playful about it.

  Spend regular time chilling out doing activities during which ideas tend to come—things like walking, driving, biking.

  Last, but not least, work to understand what makes a viable story idea—its key elements—so that it becomes second nature to you as a filter you apply to every potential idea.

  Again, the goal is lots of ideas and an ongoing process for generating, recording, and playing with them. Your new mission, after all, is not to jump into writing the first thing that intrigues you. Because now you realize the job of a writer is a lot less about writing than you thought—and much more about deciding what to write: “the idea.”

  Talent Is Overrated

  Because writing is such a competitive field, where there are a very limited number of paid jobs or sales, compared to the vast numbers of people who want to be doing it for a living—and a system designed to keep most of them out until they can demonstrate the salability of their work—it’s easy to get caught up in thinking of it in terms of “haves” and “have-nots”: that there are the elite who are talented and thus successful, and then there’s… everybody else.

  I like what Akiva Goldsman said about this at a rally during the 2007–08 writers’ strike. He was then one of the most successful screenwriters in the business. (He won the Oscar for A Beautiful Mind.) Throughout his life, he said, people kept telling him to “stop”—that he didn’t have what it took to make it as a writer. The secret of his success? He just never stopped.

  There’s much wisdom to that simple statement. I don’t know that any of us are born talented. Things might come quicker or more innately for some than for others, but most of our early scripts (and early drafts of our current scripts, even) are not “good” in the sense that others would read them and want to get behind them. In my view, “talent” (i.e., that thing some people have that allows them to succeed) is almost entirely about attitude and practice, and not native ability.

  For all of us, on every project, there is a continuum of growth from writing something that nobody thinks shows talent (i.e., it doesn’t grab the audience as believable, compelling, and fresh the way successful writing needs to) to writing something that others say does show talent—and proves you have it.

  On my first professional writing gig—a script for an episode of From the Earth to the Moon—I wrote many drafts that my supervisors, to be frank, didn’t think showed much talent, if any. (But apparently I must have had some, based on other things I had written that got me the job.) They continued to give me notes, and I continued to work to address them.

  Eventually, I turned in a draft that,
to me, was less than 10 percent different from the previous draft (and I’d lost count of the number of drafts at that point). But to others, it pushed the script over the edge into something that was good. And suddenly their perception of my talent for this project increased greatly. Suddenly my script worked, and I was asked to rewrite some of the other scripts. Did something change within me that made me suddenly have something I didn’t before? No.

  The difference between the perception and experience of “I don’t have talent” to “I do have talent” is not about innate worthiness or ability to do this, but about attitude and actions along the way as one strives to do better and better at what all of us writers are here to do—which is to communicate with others and engage their emotions.

  Anyone can do that, in their own unique way, if they really choose to and stick with it. So my advice is to stop wondering if you “have it” or not. Take that out of the equation. You have it. What makes you one of the special ones who succeed is what you do with it.

  About the Author

  Erik Bork won two Emmys and two Golden Globe Awards for his work on the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers and From the Earth to the Moon, writing multiple episodes of each and working on the creative producing team—for executive producer Tom Hanks (and Steven Spielberg on Band of Brothers).