Through out some interesting concepts for me, have it be situations, medical conditions, mental disorders, myths, fabels, urban legends, or anything. I am a screenwriter, and am looking for some basic ideas. Not plots or anything mind you, just something that I can take as a seed and implant it into my mind, thus allowing a composite story to be born.
I’m not using this as a cheap out, I just have been stuck for the past few weeks and thought this could be an interesting way to get my creative juices flowing again, hearing about odd, unusual, and interesting things and concepts, that I would otherwise never know of.
Some people out there in the world do really really irritating things… talking during movies, parking across two spaces, cutting into lines, being rude to salespeople.
Often, you look at them and say “I wish someone would just kick that person’s ass”.
Our hero decides to spend his time doing just that. What happens next?
Suffering from writers block, a screenwriter desperately solicits the members of a public message board for ideas. Later regretting it, he discovers to his chagrin, that he cannot delete the thread.
I’m just kidding you Brent.
I’ll play you in the movie. The romantic (nay, erotic) sub plot will introduce my co star. Any one of a number of ladies who have been featured in playboy will do.
How are you at science fiction? Fantasy? I’m pretty fertile in those areas, but perhaps less so in others.
SF:
[ul]
[li]Psychic parasites: Humans land on a planet that has beings that are, by themselves, sub-sentient (like on the level of rats, mentally), but can combine with a sentient life-form to create a composite entity that is sentient, with the host’s intelligence but the parasite’s urge to survive and reproduce. [As for reproduction, please don’t rewrite Alien. Do something a little more original.][/li][li]Radiotelepathy: Life evolves on a distant world that has, since its inception, been bombarded by iron meteors. This means that all life on the planet has what we would consider elevated iron content in their cells. So life on this planet is able to detect and create radio broadcasts by virtue of their cells all being miniature radio stations. Imagine insect swarms coordinated by radio, or predators able to broadcast soothing' frequencies to their prey. Imagine how intelligent life would evolve with telepathy being a reality. How would such beings react to radioactive materials, or the discovery of electricity and artifical radios?[/li][/ul] Fantasy: [ul] [li]Fantasy noir. A private investigator in a city full of magical beings and magic-users tries to solve mysteries that sometimes lead him to the edges of reality and sanity.[/li][/ul] Other: [ul] [li]Radio Free San Francisco: (Admittedly, not the most original of my ideas, being essentially WKRP-meets-M*A*S*H) After the Big One, the only radio station left becomes the center for the rebuilding efforts, not helped by the fact that Jerry Buchanan's Family Majority Party is running the White House and is glad to be rid of the Sodom and Gomorra of the West Coast.’ Character-driven comic drama with characters from all over the ruins (from the League for Majority Morality to the Homosexual Liberation Front) driving an episodic story.[/li]
Or not.
[/ul]
I have a thousand little ideas tucked away in the recesses of my mind. Most of them come from books, TV, music, or movies. The biggest thing to remember is to always stay alert. Don’t actively look for ideas, just look. That’s what it takes.
(No, I don’t mind tossing these germs to the four winds. I can always create more. My muse is capricious, but she is prolific.)
(Imagine Woody Allen as the lead character) He is twerp. Gets in argument with SO. Goes to the newstand to buy “Last Sunday’s Paper.” Guy give him a funny look sends him to a back rom. Inside is a tape machine. It starts to play.
“Good morning Mr Phillups…”
rest of the movie is the guy trying to do the mission being followed by the good guys (who don;t know the mission themselves) secretly helping him, plus the bad guys trying to stop him.
In the end he suceeds in a way even the good guys find impressive. His SO thinks he is a stud.
Thanks so far, you guys sure are interesting, lol. Remember though that I’m not looking for plots, just basic ideas or events or old stories that one anyone could take, plant into their mind, and allow it to grow into an original idea.
Monkeys. With manual typewriters. They can’t type very well, causing them to become insane. So…
Monkeys. In straight jackets. With manual typewriters and padded walls. They’re trying to type Shakespeare, but can’t because of the straight jackets. So…
Monkeys. Really insane ones. With straight jackets, manual typewriters, and padded walls. Trying to type Shakespeare, but failing because of the straight jackets. So…
You get the picture. I gave you the idea, you make a plot.
Hm. You know, a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters will someday write A Tale of Two Cities.
How about one on that?
Oh wait, it’s already been done by David Ieves. But with 3 monkeys and doing Hamlet.
I suggest a Tarantino-esque stylized drama where Protagonist seeks to destroy the rude people of the city. Like MaxtheVool suggested, some people are just rude and deserve and ass-kicking. Work on that, but with Quentin’s amusing dialogues and violence it’d be good.
Well, it depends what kind of movie you want, but here are a few.
Setting: 1700s.
Very frequently, girls were sent away from their families to work as a servant in another household. The main character is one such girl.
Now, in order to make this interesting, let me tell you some basic info about that situation in the 1700s. The mistresses of the household were frequently abusive, both verbally and physically. The masters and sons generally made unwanted advances towards the servant girls, and the girls often had no choice. If they ended up pregnant, they would be often cast out into the streets to fend for themselves as prostitutes. Alright, that was a bit long, but I wanted to add in a bit of info that described the situation of that time period.
A fantasy writer gets so into his novels that he spends all his time writing them, barely pausing to even eat. He gets sucked into one of his stories and becomes the main character, and ends up as a night having to fight dragons, rescue beautiful princesses, and joust with evil knights, etc.
I’ll let you know if I have any more.
Tell the story of heroic policemen and firemen rescuing people on 9/11, except not in New York. All the events in New York happen in the background while family members watch TV.
The screenwriter bites a post on a private message board and uses it as a basis for his new movie idea. It becomes a hit. For the rest of his natural life he runs away from the original poster in abject fear of his life.
Confessional: A random person, nobody very special to anyone else, one night begins seeing ghosts who immediately launch into recounting their sins to him. He has to deal with this, and wonders what all of these dead people have to do with him.
(Hell, there’s a lot that could be done with that little blurb. A terror movie (easy copout, IMHO ;)), a character study of the confessor, a series of snapshots into the societies the dead people came from and why they did what they did, a philosophical inquiry into what, exactly, people want in a listening ear (better a friend or a stranger, better a human or an alien intelligence?), or any number of things. Maybe the main has seen The Sixth Sense and tries to put things `right,’ only to find that it simply isn’t possible.)
I had a great idea; maybe someone could turn it into something productive and silly
A minor-league pitcher is incensed by a particular umpire who for one reason or another, doesn’t like this pitcher. So, the umpire always calls questionable calls every time he’s in a game where said pitcher is on the mound. Pitcher gets so fed up, he KILLS the umpire! By throwing a fastball at his head! So then, people start getting suspicious about this umpire murder, and the pitcher has to fastball them to death!
