good story ideas / preliminary viewing?

Ummm, I watch to be entertained, always and forever. Story ideas breed in my mind, I get at least one good story idea a week if not more often. I get them more when I actively engage in writing and creating then when I don't.

Now that I have delved into writing as deeply as I currently am, I find that although this dialog bothered me before, now my mind is coming up with replacements. It does not detract from my overall experience of the movie as I do this all at a subconscious level. It allows me to glean what I need for my study purposes while fully enjoying the movie, but I have always had an analytical mind so this is nothing new for me so it is all part of the working of the gears.

I am not sure what you mean by preliminary watching, so I can't specifically answer your question, sorry.

I never go in saying, "I need to come up with a good story idea, come on, think!" To me that is a lot of pressure and pressure seems to inhibit creativity in my case. My mind takes thoughts, scenes, questions, characters and turns them into stories and as I said above, the more I write, the more efficient and creative this process becomes and the easier it becomes.

icerose said:

Ummm, I watch to be entertained, always and forever. Story ideas breed in my mind,

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Absolutely agree.

Why would you watch a movie with a view to generating story ideas? Watch the movie. If it kicks something off afterwards in your subconcious then that is a bonus.

These questions just didn't make sense to me, so I guess I must be one of those pesky "watch for entertainment" types.

I also guess I've never had problems thinking up ideas for stories. (No guarantee they're good ideas, but they come to me, unwanted and unasked, usually as a key dramatic scene which the rest of the story gets built around.)

-Derek
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dpaterso said:

These questions just didn't make sense to me, so I guess I must be one of those pesky "watch for entertainment" types.

I also guess I've never had problems thinking up ideas for stories. (No guarantee they're good ideas, but they come to me, unwanted and unasked, usually as a key dramatic scene which the rest of the story gets built around.)

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The questions don't make a whole lotta sense to me, either.

I watch movies I've never seen before for one reason: to be entertained.

I've watched hundreds if not thousands of features with an analytical eye, often with stop watch in hand, both pictures I have enjoyed and thought were good and pictures I thought stunk. This activity is just part of my ongoing study of cinema and learning about what works and why and what does not work and why.

My story ideas usually come in the form of a premise, often sparked by some notion I've conjured up of an interesting character.

I've only had about a dozen ideas that I thought were good enough to write. I've had a zillion ideas that didn't pass that muster and were never written. Ideas are a dime a dozen; ideas worth writing are inconceivably rare.