Too creative to write?

How can this be?

Surely being too creative is the least of anyone’s problems?

Well, here’s an extract from an email exchange I’ve been having recently with a user of my Screenwriting Goldmine package.

It reveals how an excess of imagination can be a very damaging thing - and tells you what to do if you have that problem.

Here’s the email:

I just wanted to ask your advice regarding narrowing your ideas down. I have the opposite of writer’s block: my major problem is that I’m interested in pretty much everything. I’m attracted to any idea, and will happily and fickly flit from a project I’m bored with (perhaps just begun) to a new shiny thought that has grabbed my attention. I have notebooks full of half-begun narratives, scribbles, sketches and ideas, all of which I’ve lost interest in as quickly as my initial enthusiasm.

It makes it difficult me for to even get through your first screenwriting steps of generating ideas - an idea which I really like because it’s so similar to developing an art sketchbook. All the images I come up with seem very disparate, and I feel like I’m trying to impose a narrative upon them, rather than letting something emerge. I’m then increasingly dissatisfied with the basis of my narrative and throw the whole idea out, only to start the futile process again.

Am I destined to write short stories? If not, how do I gag my internal fickle teenager?

Jess

This is my reply:

In some ways I wish I had your problem, in others, well, I recognise it to be a curse.

I would always suggest the following steps when you are doing that first step of brainstorming and getting some seeds for your story:

1. ALWAYS make sure that you are thinking in terms of concrete scenes, with dramatic action - not themes, or moods, or concepts, or anything more vague. Be absolutely rigorous with yourself - if your idea isn’t a picture of people doing stuff then it shouldn’t be in the list.

2. Make sure that every scene you include like this really does make you catch your breath in some way when you think about it.

3. Make sure that you still think that when you come back two days later, or a week later. Any scene that has lost that power you throw out, then find yourself a new scene.

4. STOP when you have 10 of those scenes. And now put your mind into the next problem, the next step in the book.

5. Any other bright ideas that come up, you can note down, but your real job now is to go out and work with these seeds, structure your main story tentpoles, do the research, and, crucially, get onto the next phase, which is starting to work out your beat sheet.

And this is the reply Jess sent back:

…you’re right about focusing on dramatic action - I’m very prone to just thinking in moods and concepts, because that’s what I usually take from films, plays, books. But obviously the reason I connect with those moods is due to character and action . . . This sounds like an excellent excuse to re-watch some of my favourite films to try to identify the “catch your breath” scenes and look at how the writer creates the ambience I love so much through the action.

You’ve also identified my other problem: trying to work through the steps too quickly and not letting my written-up scenes settle on the page or in my mind for long enough for me to become critically distant from them.

Jess’s comment here last is absolutely right - in screenwriting it’s very rare you can express theme except through the choices (ie actions or inactions) your characters make. If you start trying to do it any other way you will end up with a nebulous, self indulgent, BORING pile of paper. Not a screenplay.

Do let me know if you recognise any of this in your own writing - and whether you find it helpful advice.

(And thanks, Jess, for letting me use our conversation.)