You can never have too many screenplay ideas

How many ideas do you come up with for screenplays? Do you do new ones each week? Or just when they come to you? Well, I read somewhere recently that this writer submits a new screenplay idea to her managers each and every day. Every day! Sure they're not all great. But it's wonderful practice to have to force yourself to keep coming up with new ideas. So I've decided to adopt that as my daily practice too.

If I'm reading a news article I like, I jot it down into something that could be a film. Or if someone mentions something funny I could see as a germ of an idea, I jot that down. I keep an ongoing list of ideas that might be my next script, or who knows, even something I could pitch to a producer. I've had many screenwriting teachers tell me to keep a list of ongoing ideas you can write or pitch. So I've always been good about it. But now I'm really getting good at it.

And you never know how or when you'll need it. For instance a working screenwriting friend of mine had a pitch meeting for certain comedy talent. And these talent were so specific, that most of the other writers that went in all pitched the same ideas. But my friend had such a list of ideas in his back pocket that they were the only ones that pitched something truly original that these guys could be in. And guess, what? They got the project and it was his first film actually made and put in the theaters.

So it just shows you how important it is to have a plethora of ideas. Even in advertising, my day job, I spend my whole day coming up with new ideas, seeing things in new and interesting ways. And when I worked with a TV producer on docudrama ideas, I had so many for him, he didn't know what to do with them all. But it's because I've had years and years of practice of always coming up with more and new ideas. And guess what? He loves working with me. And now it looks like we're going to start producing things together. So it just goes to show, keep germinating those ideas. You never know if you'll use them. But somehow, somewhere, you will.