it's pretty obvious and pretty brilliant at the same time (i guess that's why they call it insight).
now i'm no great originalist or creative mastermind like lynch... but i do have a process that i think works pretty well. we'll use an idea i "came up with" just a few minutes ago as an example (it's unlikely i'll use this for anything significant in the future (at least, it was unlikely until i wrote that sentence. now it's probably exptremely likely (at least it was extremely likely until i wrote that sentence...))).
first off (a generalization): A (always) B (be) W (working). Always Be Working. in my experience, it is so much harder to start working (creatively) than to continue working (creatively). even if you're not focused like a laser on a specific project, just doing a little bit of something on a fairly regular basis keeps the mind open for playing with new ideas.
secondly (some context): i watch/listen to a lot of news. i don't read as much news as i probably should. lately it's been all about politics and economics. not uncoincidentally, the script(s) i'm writing now have political/economic undertones. you write what you eat (or consume, rather).
thirdly (the example): one person that pops up a lot in the various news outlets i consume is economist and nobel laureate, Paul Krugman (the man deserves capitalization (and capitolization)). for some time he has been critical of the obama administration's ecomomic recovery moves. i understand his general point to be that they aren't altogether "bad", just generally insufficient.
Krugman is a pretty smart guy. and for this, he has been booked for loads of television news programs, although his television presence is mediocre at best (last year i heard him repeat the same joke on four different programs over the course of one week - though it was a clever joke, it fell flat every time). he is bookish. and not in a cute, hodgman sort of way.
this morning, i came across this:
that's a pretty evocative cover. Krugman looks extremely serious and looms large over a negative reference to the new, popular president. this representation almost casts Krugman not as a critic urging the administration toward what he feels to be better economic policy, but as an idealogical nemesis.
that was my immediate response to the image. knowing a little bit about the subject, the cover image seems pretty absurd.
this is key: whenever i see or hear something absurd, instead of rejecting it, i try to source it - figure out how that absurdity might become a reality.
taking that absurd image of Krugman and merging it with his awkward television bookishness, i started wondering what it would be like if Krugman really fed off the media attention. what if he bought into his own hype. what if this very smart, albeit awkward, man used the newsmedia attention to feed his ego and, over the course of the next few years, developed into a blofeld-ian, luthor-esque villian for obama. that would be kind of comic-booky, but weird because he's an economist.
since i immediately cast him as a comic book villian, it makes sense to cut out every aspect of the concept that seems too much like a comic book. you want to avoid the easy answers and the obvious stories. eliminate the "obama" character - don't give him direct opposition. flip it just a little so that, out of his nobel prize, this character uses a lot of improbable newsmedia attention to slowly grow a physical empire based entirely on his economic philosophies.
and that's where the lesson ends and we move on to something else.
Krugman as lex luthor (sans superman) is not a great idea. it's weird. and the source was interesting. but i really don't see a story there. so you wrap it up and put it away (i write it down in a little moleskine i carry around in my back pocket). maybe it finds it's way into something else sometime later.
this one didn't work. but sometimes they do. sometimes you can see something absurd, try to imagine a world in which it makes sense, and discover that the imagined world actually says something about the real world. that's where a story begins...
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