I remember reading in an interview somewhere that Harmony Korine writes his screenplays that way. He starts almost exclusively with images he wants to see, then manages to weave them together into a narrative. That's why a movie like Gummo is so aesthetically incandescent, and why the plot itself is so rambling and meandering. But because the scenes are so luminous, you almost forgive him his narrative looseness.

"The Quest" has been the single most helpful exercise I have ever participated in while learning the craft of screenwriting. Even if my loglines make it no further than the opening salvo, I want you to know this series has forced me to think about idea creation in a way that I never imagined. And the best part (at least for me) is that you don't seem to have any intention of resting on your laurels now that the deadline has closed. A sincere and heartfelt thanks.

That was me on Twitter. This is a practice I continued from school, where we were tasked to come up with a story based on a given image. It's one of the best exercises I know for generating ideas and keeping the brain in that creative mode. Related: - Bergman's inspiration for the chess game in Seventh Seal was a painting he saw as a child. - Aronofsky once optioned a picture book. - Amazing Stories used to run a feature where authors came up with short stories based on an image. - Val Lewton's 1945 film Bedlam was inspired by a William Hogarth painting called A Rake's Progress, so much so that he was given a writing credit. - Tortoise and Hippo was in development at Walden for John Dykstra to direct, based on a famous photo that the film producer's daughters showed him on the net.

Wow, that's awesome, Devin! Over those 10 days or whatever, it was like I could feel people finally starting to grasp the challenge and importance of story concepts and loglines. While professional screenwriters don't have to worry about loglines so much, if we are choosing to write a spec, the concept is often the absolute determining factor whether to move forward or not. Also just getting schooled in thinking about story concepts helps to sort through various OWAs, and grasp the essence of the story, something onto which one can hold during the writing process. Re resting on laurels: Hell, I'm hoping if this works to do the same thing again, another 4 writers for "The Quest" in 6 months.

Thanks for identifying yourself, sabrescribe. I went back to check, but my Twitter feed had bumped that tweet off the list. Thanks for the inspiration for this post. Seeing as movies are fundamentally a visual medium, it makes a whole lotta sense to work with images at the core level of story concept.

Very cool about Bedlam, sabrescribe. The Hogarth paintings inspired Stravinky's opera of the same name in 1951 (a great opera), but I'd never heard about the connection with the movie. I'm in the middle of reading Russel T. Davies and Benjamin Cook's book Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale, and Davies talks about being a visual writer and starting from images then working to the page. (In contrast to Charlie Kaufman, Davies also writes his endings first.)

Interesting post. Most of my scripts usually start with an image. For example, a thriller script I wrote originated with the image of a woman lying in the back of a car with blood pouring out of a gunshot wound in her stomach. Then I thought: What if she hadn't really been shot but was just pretending? The story developed from there. I also find collecting images from Google and storing them in a file helps a lot to kick start the ideas process. It can be an interesting building or a funny face or a child crying in the street. Even if I don't use them as direct inspiration, they'll usually help me through a sticky patch, ideas-wise.