Has the well of inspiration run dry? Are you creatively bankrupt for new stories? Don’t fret. If you are having trouble thinking of something for your next screenplay, there are many places to go for new screenplay ideas.
The first place you can try is the screenwriting reddit. Looking to your peers can sometimes spark an idea. Many of the screenwriters on reddit are looking for people to help them with their writing so they post their scripts up for feedback. Reading some of their scripts may cause the wave of creativity to swell again. Another place to read peer scripts is The Black List. The Black List has a helpful blog that celebrates movies, TV, and the life of screenwriters all over the globe.
What often gets my creative juices flowing with ideas is simply reading other works of art. Books, comic books, short stories, you name it. In the same vein as screenplays, reading other forms of stories can serve to trigger different ideas told in different mediums. This is why it’s important to read often. The works you’re reading were inspired by people who read other people’s work who read other people’s work. Keep that line of inspiration going and use their work as a jumping off point for your own screenplay ideas.
Moreover, you could get screenplay ideas from telling stories from new points of view. Look at how Cobra Kai is told from the point of view of the bully, Johnny Lawrence. With that same concept in mind, take any existing legend, fairytale, or public domain IP and focus on the story from a different set of eyes. Maybe The three bears weren’t really the antagonists that the original story led people to believe. Or maybe the three bears plead their case in court in front of a judge. You might come up with an interesting dynamic and then decide you don’t actually want to tell the story, but you do want to tell the story of a villain that was really just misunderstood. You can worry about the development of a story you’re passionate about later. You’re just trying to generate an idea for what you’ll eventually write.
Take any rite of passage and add a fantasy, supernatural, or sci-fi element to it. Brainstorm “what if” using these elements in as many ways as you can. For example, if you chose high school student’s first car and hallucinations. What if the student crashed their first car and the student begins seeing the car everywhere. Then the car starts trying to kill the student as revenge for having wrecked it. You can play with genre and tone for varying possibilities.
If you’re creatively blocked and don’t know what to write about, these are some places and ways you can come upon screenplay ideas.
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