Students often talk about not knowing what to write about. There are several stock answers- write about what you know, create a character first, then have your story spin out of that. In one of the best screenwriting classes I ever taught we created an entire feature length treatment on the fly just by discussing character types. Our lead was a 90-year old Boston woman on her death bed who revealed a secret. The rest of the story was told in flashbacks- her husband was part of Irish organized crime. Think Rose Kennedy meets Citizen Kane. Most commonly, I think, writers start with a plot idea and create everything around that.
To test this theory I am going to provide a set up and you can take it from there. Please add your comments and we’ll see where this takes us. By the way this really happened to me this past Saturday.
I found a wallet just off the sidewalk about half a block from my house. The wallet had one dollar bill, a CTA pass and several business cards from an art and design school. There were two forms of identification both Colombian. From the ID the man’s name is Mercurio Velasco. He is 22 years old and has a closely shaved head. There was no other form of ID, BUT there was a fingerprint scanned and imbedded on the back of the ID.
I couldn’t find him in the phone book, but two hours later a sign was taped to our front door saying he lost a wallet and leaving a phone number. Nothing was mentioned about money, but there was great importance placed on the immigration documents. We met on the street- he know smy phone number and where I live.
Your job is to create a story around this character.
PeterH
