Skip to main content

New Ideas

Thursday, March 25, 2010

...where do the good ideas come from?...

H

ere's a quote from someone's Facebook wall,

Just when I think of a great script idea...I search and find out it is already 'in production' for 2012!

I know the feeling. I once started work on a story only to plop a DVD into the player and discover the story I started, the great idea I molded, was already a movie and before that a successful novel in hardcover. Ugh!

There was no point continuing with the same idea because it had been done--even though I had thought it up on my own--it didn't matter. I had to move onto another premise, another idea.

After I soaked in enough frustration from being deflated, I felt better when I realized I had come up with a clever idea for a story and others thought enough it to publish a book and make a feature film. That was something. Much better than no ideas or tired ones.

But any idea, clever or derivative, is nothing until it is formed into its being as a novel, script, prototype, beta version, or business plan in action. There are lots of ideas, what matters is the execution of it. Many people fail to understand this later part.

Darwin didn't come up with the notion of evolution, others had the idea. What Darwin did was develop the mechanism to explain how it happened, natural selection, and spent decades compiling the evidence to support his theory. (It's a theory that stands to this day. After 150 years, mountains of research and evidence support Darwin's work. Remarkable.)

So for our frustrated blogger on Facebook, keep at it, there will be many more ideas and some of them will make it into your next story or the one after that. Speaking of which, I have a novel to write. It's about a doctor possessed with the notion of creating life out of...

Posted 2010/03/25 at 19h30ET in Writing.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CRA & E-Filing

Tuesday, March 6, 2007 ... Online Tax Services Suspended by CRA ... I received an email press release from the Canada Revenue Agency late on Tuesday stating they were shutting down the computer that processed e-filed personal tax returns. For many tax preparers the announcement means they will have to file paper returns or wait for the system to come back on, but it could be a long wait. Until we can announce a business recovery date, the Agency will provide daily updates to the media on the steps we are taking. On the surface, e-filing a return makes sense because it is more efficient, but at present it only makes sense for simple returns. If you file a return beyond a T4 and an RRSP deduction, you can expect follow-up letters requesting original receipts. For accountants, this hassle means additional time—time that usually can't be recovered. As result, many accountants file paper returns for their benefit. What is required is a system that allows the recei...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Crusades (1935)

Sunday, March 29, 2009 The Crusades. Feature film. (1935, 125 mins) IMDB ... a Hollywood romance with swords thrown in ... T he title is extremely misleading. The film is not about the crusades but a love story set in the midst of a crusade led by King Richard. Richard never spoke English and barely even lived on the British isles. He was a Norman who spoke French, but you wouldn't know that from this film. The filmmakers also want you to believe the King would have been caught up in something as trivial as love. Not a chance. Marriage wasn't about love. It was about matters of state, about power, and with that power, wealth. A true-to-history film about King Richard and the Crusades would lack romance and therefore wouldn't appeal to a broad audience. What we have in this film is nothing more than a love story. Richard is betrothed to Alice, the sister of King Philip of France. He doesn't want to marry her. He decides to go on the crusad...
Post a Comment
Read more

If Only We Could Agree

Monday, June 11, 2012 ... have you been accused of misspelling a word you know is correct ... S usanne O’Leary wrote an interesting article on her experience with the variations of the English language in different countries. You know the obvious ones like colour with or without a “u” but less obvious ones like travelled versus traveled. Growing up in Sweden she learnt English in school—the UK variation. In publishing her books, she read reviews where she was criticized for improper spelling. False accusations as it turns out. While I write tire and cozy, it’s not incorrect to write tyre or cosy. Same language. Both accepted. Just different. You can read her write-up here along with the numerous comments posted by readers. I found it interesting, but that’s me. As a Canadian I deal with this issue everyday. I feel her pain when she’s criticized for something based on ignorance. No fun. I was told by a boss that “data are” isn’t correct. It should be “data is.” Read...
2 comments
Read more