Hi, I make short films, so I write (or want to anyway), scripts rather than prose, however I suppose the process of constructing a story is much the same whether its for a film or for the writen word. I really struggling with coming up with anything to write about. Sometimes I'll have characters at least parttly developed that I think would work well on screen - but then trying to come up with some plot to put those characters into just doesn't seem to flow. So what I wanted to ask is - does anyone have tips for actually finding ideas on which to base a story (rather than developing an existing idea), and does anyone else start with characters before plot, if so how do you go about creating a plot for a character?
Welcome, sjws1888! I often think of characters before anything else, and often these characters arrive with a conflict already in hand, so the story just sort of works itself out. However, when that doesn't happen, I tend to run through a lot of thought-experiments as I search for a story. Like, "What would happen if this met that," or "How long would it take for a human to mentally devolve in this situation?" From those trains of thought I can often pick out a story and run with it. Or I look at what is being way, way over-done in the media around me and I try to turn that idea on its head. *shrug* I dunno. That's a good question. I'm interested to see how others respond. Currently, I'm having the opposite problem. I have a setting that I'm quite excited about, but only vague shadows of characters and no plot to speak of.
This is not what you asked for but just something that came to mind, since I've seen similar threads lately. I didn't know that people studying filmmaking had to write the script themselves as well. To me it sound odd. Writing and production of a film are two different things and, I imagine, request very different skills. Do people really have to come up with a story and write it while studying producing? It's not the first thread I've read by someone giving the same background. Did I misunderstand something?
Then go back through each scene and play devil's advocate and add in the worst possible scenario to prevent the protag from achieving their next step, and work out how the protag gets around or solves that problem.
