"that single moment of inspiration". Who can define that? Shall we wait for that?

Probably what Bob Gale really meant was "That seemed like a good idea, so that was the beginning of the journey." Whereas there were 10 other ideas he had that month which were the beginning of 10 other journeys. This is just the one that caught on.

New writers wait for that magic and it never comes and they abandon great story ideas and possibly their dreams. Or, they get hit with that magic 1000 times a year, and none of it ever pans out.

Perhaps instead of talking about generating story ideas, and that magical inspiration moment, etc. -- one should talk about what that moment is, and what it means, and how to recognize when a story concept is worth pursuing. Bob Gale's idea is totally unremarkable -- any one of us has had the same idea in 100 different forms -- it's all in the execution.

It's interesting how far they strayed from that original idea. I mean, yeah, Marty gets to see how awkward his dad was as a teenager, but the main point of the movie is to get back to 1985 without causing permanent damage to his family tree. It's a pretty big leap from "would I be friends with my dad when he was young?"

@jeff2001: Your point is taken. However I have to think that the initial kernel of an idea Gale had struck him as being pretty significant as it hits on a lot of story cylinders: What if a son has a chance to be around his father when they're the same age? Would they be friends or not? That leads almost immediately to: How to get them together? Which leads to: time travel. Which leads to: complications. So my guess is Gale pretty quickly saw the strong narrative potential in that idea.

@Darren: My response to jeff2001 touch on what you wrote. It is a jump, no doubt. But I think much of the jump to time travel is pretty well implied in that core conceit: how to get father and son together where they're the same age?

This the beauty of two things: (1) A strong story concept which just naturally seems to have a wealth of narrative potential. (2) The value of posing that great question "what if," arguably the single biggest tool in the story development process especially at the conceptual level.

I don't think many movies have been as well constructed as Back To The Future and Back To The Future 2. It excites me so much to watch them and see how they worked and so much, and made it make sense, and somehow made it seem so effortless. Truly magical.

I've got a very inside baseball question. I am starting to save my ideas in Evernote instead of OneNote because I can tag them easier. Idea # 57 (Back to the Future) might be tagged SciFi, Time Travel, Teen, Comedy, **** (four stars, I use to rank which ideas get more writing/development time). How do you organize your ideas? Which tags do you find most useful? How/when do you review them? How do you handle random ideas for dialogue or jokes?

@Don: That's a terrific question. Do you mind if I ask that as a GITS post so everyone can answer? I'd be curious to see how different people handle their story ideas.

And so you like Evernote?

Hi Scott! I'm WAY INTO brainstorming story concepts. I have a system that's served me well that now my manager demands of all his clients. Should I discuss here or wait until you do the follow-up post?

@BOB: Why don't we make that part of the Q&A? It'd be great for GITS readers to hear someone else in The Biz hammer on the importance of and how to brainstorm story concepts because I'm sure they get sick of me blathering on about it. I'll be sending you the questions hopefully by next week, if that's okay.

That sounds great!