THE ART IN BRAINSTORMING

Above: Not a brainstorm.

Also, comparing yourself to others will drive you nuts.

Brainstorming in forming your screenplay and its features can be a valuable tool in listing and categorizing ideas, details, impressions, viewpoints, etc.

Perhaps you're out of premise ideas at the moment and want to spend time expanding bits and chunks of a setting you'd like to portray in a future script. Perhaps you want to lay out your personal and emotional associations with the subject at hand.

You may find yourself digging up memories, details, smells, colors, and sounds that you might never have remembered had you gone a different route. Or, you want to give your brain a workout even towards ideas or concepts that have merely caught your eye.

A brainstorm is an excellent way to recognize the "parts of yourself" within the things you like, or the "cinematically appealing" parts of a setting, or find new routes within a genre you've chosen to dissect. Anything is possible.

Here are some examples of my own brainstorms and what they have "dug up".

By starting this off with a Riverdale brainstorm, you can hopefully get a sense of how my brain approaches the less-"connected" subjects in relation to my writing. Because Riverdale is so chock-full of references, visual cues, subtexts, "colors", etc. to other "retro" works, you can see this brainstorm here captures my impressions and what I latched onto more than anything else. 

(And of course Cheryl Blossom gets her own "branch". Of course she does.)

This "rom-com" brainstorm was more a "review" of what viewpoints I had previously applied to my own work. As you can see, the rom-com is extremely dependent on tone, as it's a genre so entrenched in the emotional side of film that even a small misstep can "pull one string" and have it all unravel. Also, note my considerable emphasis on "no illegal behavior", et al.

Moving onto settings, brainstorming is a great "cheat" to "color" your settings and make them stand out through the rounding up of details. Sure, other Nanaimo community centers (American spelling and it stays) may offer similar activities, but only Bowen Park has a duck pond, a rhododendron garden, lawn bowling, and a pottery studio. Not all of these details will make it into a script, but they will help stand out from being just a bland community center on film.

Because of my age and how many 60s and 70s building faces in Nanaimo remained well into the 90s, I was able to really fill this brainstorm on Terminal Avenue North. A good two-thirds of these "branches" are memories from my childhood. For example, the old KFC's lack of diners seating stood out to me in the late-90s/early-2000s, as every other KFC (and fast food franchise) in town had plentiful seating. 

I expanded my brainstorm "branch" on Nanaimo's now-demolished Civic Arena when I realized I had far more details buried in my mind than a single branch could cover. Turns out, I hadn't in years thought about the cold metal orange arena seats. Or about the walkup broadcasting booth. Or the time clock with the 90s Pepsi logo on the wall. I guess for a place I had to go to (being too young to stay home alone), my refuge at the time was to take in all the visual details and signs of the past.

Again, setting, genre, and visual influences are just some of the subjects you could brainstorm on. Who knows what you'll uncover for your project.

This hardcover sketchbook from Dollarama

has an excellent value at four dollars.

For all your ideas big and small, you should

keep them safe and preserved.

Copyright © Chynna Moore