Vale's Technique of Screen and Television Writing

14

From Idea to Final Form

A writer is frequently asked about the basic ideas from which he develops his stories and scripts. The original concept seems to arouse as much interest as its subsequent growth. Often, almost magic powers are attributed to the truly creative notion, as distinguished from one that is unproductive; indeed, it is often assumed that the “good” idea appears full-blown in the writer’s mind, replete with the capacity to grow of itself along inherent and foreordained lines.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Any writer looking back upon his completed works will recall that the first ideas have come to him in a rudimentary or fragmentary form, in a variety of ways, and, more often than not, in a completely unpredictable ...