Inspiration

It was Tuesday night. I’d only popped into the corner store to get some cottage cheese for my diet-conscious lunches, when it happened.

I glanced up and saw a man, rather dishevelled, looking slightly lost or confused. In his hands, he was clutching a family-sized bar of Rolo chocolate. Nothing particularly note-worthy, except I was immediately struck by the question of why, in a queue full of commuters picking up the final ingredients for dinner or the obligatory bread and milk, this odd chap was only interested in a bar of caramel-filled chocolate.

Of course, there are a million reasons why - none of them particularly interesting - but the lost, slightly dazed look had me thinking.

By the time I had paid for my groceries and was walking out the door, I had the inspiration for my next screenplay.

Waiting for Inspiration to Strike

I have been searching for the next screenplay idea for a long time and have had many false starts. Usually, although I can find an original story and have no problem plotting out the beats, the idea doesn’t inspire me enough to add the necessary life and punch. Therefore, they end up unfinished and unloved. If I can’t get passionate about them, no one else will.

I think back to the moment the idea for ‘Nightfall’ came into my head. This is the script that I wrote in a fortnight only for it to be selected out of a field of 1200 as one of the top twenty scripts in the inaugural Project Greenlight Australia. I was sat on the train commuting to work, listening to Radiohead on the iPod. As was common for me at that period in my life, I would often just stare out the window and remember my wife who had passed away suddenly the previous year. During the song ‘True Love Waits’, an image set root in my head and refused to leave. It was just a simple image of a character staring through an upstairs window at the woman he loves, while knowing he could never have her. This image made it into the final screenplay as the scene where David spies on Caroline from the house across the way, taking photographs and, in effect, stalking her.

It was a haunting image, in my mind, of lost love and futility and set the tone for the screenplay that followed.

Within five minutes I knew why David couldn’t have Caroline, why he refused to give up and how the tragedy would resolve. The major plot beats were already fully formed in my head before I left the train – and they remained intact through the seven drafts, and counting, the screenplay has since endured.

A story idea that comes so easily has resonance. If the plot beats come without effort, without ever seeming predictable, then I know the story works. All good stories flow naturally so that, looking back, it should seem to the audience that events could not have progressed any different way – even though things seemed far from obvious as it unfolded.

Forcing Inspiration

Since ‘Nightfall’, I've had many plots occur to me. I’ve sweated over keyboards forcing story beats to make sense, trying to construct something with the same natural flow. What I’ve learned is that you can’t force it. The story is either there, fully formed and waiting to be discovered, or it isn’t. I am reminded of Michelangelo, who claimed that, when sculpting, he was merely freeing the forms that always existed within the stone.

I think the problem is an emotional, rather than intellectual one. I am sure someone can create a perfectly fine story by merely building on the established elements of character, form and structure that works as a spine to all storytelling, but for a story to resonate, it needs to speak on a different level. The story has to hit me in the gut, not the grey matter, for it to work on that indescribable level that separates the classic from the pedestrian.

This event in the supermarket was one of those 'gut' moments. Unlike ‘Nightfall’, I was lacking a couple of plot beats but I had a compelling central character, a dramatic situation to place him in and an inciting incident that would support a screenplay.

Dancing to the Beats

Before I commit anything to paper, patting myself on the back for having a completely formed idea, I need two more things. I need to know what the cental turning point is and how the story will resolve in the final act. Without these two plot beats, I don’t know what I have. Along with the inciting incident, these form the beginning, middle and end of the structure, around which every other scene will hang. They will form the central planks of each of the three acts and should also provide a journey of change for the lead character(s). That is, the final plot beat should see the lead character changed in some way from the first plot beat.

It was in the shower the following morning that everything fell into place. What could possibly provide a major turning point for the middle of Act 2 within the situation I had dreamed up? This beat is crucial for me and can help determine how the story ends.

The solution was easy. Completely reverse the premise of the situation. What the central character, and therefore the audience, has assumed to be true will turn out to be completely false. Roles reverse, relationships change and a new situation is created that powers the screenplay towards a fantastic climax. What was beautiful about this solution was that it also answered the final outstanding question – the story arcs of the two major characters.

Protecting the Magic

You may have noticed I'm being rather coy in describing exactly what my screenplay is about. There is a reason for that and it isn’t a fear that one of you will go off and write it first. My fear, and it is one shared by many other writers, is that if I tell the story to anyone before I have completed writing, the magic goes.

Even Shelley is being kept in the dark, much to her annoyance. As I skipped around the house celebrating my inspiration, Shelley had to put up with repeated refusals to tell her a single detail. The brilliant television writer Steven Moffat summed up this - I hesitate to call it a superstition – in a recent interview for ‘Doctor Who Magazine’. “It changes the experience of writing it if I give too much away... I don’t want to say it out loud. Not because it would matter if anyone knew about it, but just because saying it out loud might spoil the magic. You might look disappointed (on hearing the story) so I need to cling to this idea. Before, I’ve told people things and they seem underwhelmed, so I’ve lost faith in it from that point on. The most truthful thing… about writing is the importance of these secrets. The magic of Not Telling Anyone Yet. Because it turns to ashes in your mouth. It almost becomes ordinary.”

I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Inspiration Becomes Perspiration

So now comes the plotting and the bits of card with ideas for scenes strewn around the bedroom and the late nights and the still refusing to talk about it and the formation of back-stories and the filling of notebooks and the coffee – lots of coffee.

Once a draft is complete, all will be revealed. Until then, you will be able to track my progress and maybe even give me a prod every now and then if I do something stupid like let work get in the way of getting words onto the screen.

Just know, it is such a secure and fulfilling feeling for me as a writer to have an idea safe and complete in my head. It is promise and opportunity and possibilities and hope and creativity and life and sweat. It is the spring in my step and the glint in my eye.

Oh, I just love a good idea.