BCre8ive – Blog

After selecting your idea – see blog Selecting an Idea – this blog, First Steps in the art of development, written by Phi Parker, co-founder of BCre8ive, is about the active questions you need to make your idea engage an audience.

You have selected a stand out original idea. You know its tone. You may have an idea of the audience you wish to take it to. You know whether you are focussed on character/s, or the setting, and what the dramatic problem is at the core of the idea.

So developing an outline or treatment, starting some drawings, working up a wire frame, or collecting more material,all seem straight forward, and the obvious next step. For many creatives this is the next step, and provides a solid sense of progressing the idea. However, often this level of activity leads to frustration and dead ends. Now do not get me wrong frustration in the creative process, and exploring dead ends, is normal. The questions are can we avoid some of the frustration and too many dead ends, and if so how do we do it at this early stage of development?

Active Questions

One key aspect of any audience’s engagement in a work is the presence of active questions. These are questions, which the narrative poses that the audience wants to find answers to. In some well-known cases of the visual arts e.g. Mona Lisa’s smile – what, or who, is she smiling at? It is left open for the audience i.e. the viewer of the painting, to answer for themselves. In other literary works e.g. The Hound of the Baskerville’s’ the active question of who, or what, is the hound? is answered in the final passages of the novel.

 © Adisa | Dreamstime.com – Mona Lisa Photo

By identifying the active question, or questions, which make your idea interesting for an audience you can shape the work and avoid some dead ends. However, crucially, you will know why an audience will engage with your idea, and how the answer/s you plan may satisfy them.

How do you use active questions in developing your idea?

Active questions can be the framing device within which all the action of your narrative takes place. This is most easily seen in relation to developing the genre aspect of your idea.

Genre arise from the audience’s history of engaging with narrative, and then spotting links between types of narrative, which setup expectations of what will happen when they next engage with a narrative. Identifying the genre your idea sits in, or may sit in, is key to developing a successful creative work, but this is for another blog on the steps to development.

Active questions in genre terms have an overarching framing function. For instance, in romances it is whether or not two, or more, people will find love, and commit to spending time together or not? While in personal dramas it is will the character/s achieve their stated goal/s, survive the chaos of life and/or achieve some sense of validation.

In this context the main active question is often posed right at the beginning of the game, TV episode, novel etc.. This often occurs after a short, or sometimes long, introduction to the particular world of the action. It is then answered in the final level of the game, the climax of the episode, the final chapter/s of the novel etc..

The presence of this type of framing active question is critical to developing your idea, and in particular characters.

For example, if the only reason you want to work with a character is because they can deliver a punchline e.g. deliver a joke, then they will not be able to sustain a lengthy narrative just on this version of them alone. This suggests either your idea based on them is best developed as a very short narrative or they are placed as a minor character in much larger narrative dominated by other characters e.g.C-3PO in ‘Star Wars’.

More Active Questions

In the romantic comedy ‘Hitch’ the two main characters at the start of the film have sworn off romantic relationships. However, we know, because this is a romantic comedy, hat they will meet up and fall for each other. The questions are when and how, and then will they actually end up together? Inevitably, despite a major breakup/betrayal and several misunderstandings etc. they do end up together.

At first this looks like a very predictable active question – will this couple end up together? However, this is a given – after all this is a romantic comedy! So this active question though central to framing the film’s narrative is not the key active question/s for the audience. Please do not misunderstand me here. If this fundamental genre active question was not fulfilled then the audience would be disappointed – see umpteen failed comedic romances that tried to be romantic comedies. However, this framing question was not what made it a success with audiences. It was the active questions about will these characters change, will the supporting characters also find love, and will the deceit at the heart of their initial encounters eventually destroy their love for each other?

These active questions which tie the various plot lines together are the active questions which the audience wanted answers to. Without them the audience will have no interest in what is a predictable plot.

The key here is to understand that the questions of betrayal and people changing in relationships is so central to the audience’s lives, and in many cases their relationships, that they want to see how the characters in ‘Hitch’ deal with this in order to reflect on their own experiences.

Finding Your Active Questions

So do you have a big active question, which sets up the framework of your narrative? Is it like the mission/s of Desmond/Altaïr ibn-La’Ahad in ‘Assassin’s Creed’ or how did a child live through the Iranian revolution of the 1970’s in “Persepolis’? The nature of your framing question will as I stated above suggest the type end length of narrative. Asking how do the average, or not so average, family cope with their children?, is more likely to work initially as an episodic narrative than a single one off.

However, it is the additional active questions, which hold people to your narrative development that are crucial to its success. So once you have your framing question look to develop the other smaller active questions, before you go too far down one plot line, or develop a sequence or level. What is it that you are asking with regard to people’s own experiences?

“Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value.  It is a process: It’s not random.” Ken Robinson

Having discovered your key active questions you are still going to end up frustrated, and even in the odd dead end, but there will be less of it, and them, if you have worked out what your active questions are.

We all have great ideas, or too many, or just one, the problem is how do you go about selecting an idea to work on. In this blog, Phil Parker, co-founder of BCre8ive, looks at the initial stages of developing an idea and how to make good choices. How do you know if your idea is a good one or not?

1. Identify the idea

Is it a dramatic situation, a character’s problem, a setting, a subject , or a theme?

A dramatic situation is where something major will occur if some action or lack of action occurs e.g. the decision to end a relationship, start a war, or sometimes choose a fig. You are, therefore, looking for the consequences of an action to know if you have a dramatic situation or not.

A Character’s problem stems from having someone face a problem which is unique to them. It may be a common problem in life e.g. leaving home, being in debt, but it is unique in the way it potentially affects this character. This may arise because of their personality, the situation they find themselves in, or who they are related to.

A setting ranges from classic locations e.g. periods or events in history, to fantasy worlds and dystopian or utopian futures. However, setting can be more everyday – the family kitchen, the shambolic office, or a particular street or part of a city.

A subject is a broader collection of material, which may contain within it a series of events, a group of people, a particular event or place. The key is that all the material is connected by one central concern, a focus, which pulls all the material into a subject for development.

A theme is concerned with a central emotional core. A feeling, or concern, which underpins potential characters, actions, subjects etc. This is often seen as the big idea e.g. a fight for justice, the pursuit of love or a search for validation. All ideas, once developed, ultimately lead to a theme, but sometimes an idea starts here.

Having identified your starting point the question then is where do you want to end up?

“A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

2. What type of idea is it?

Not all ideas can be used on all creative platforms. Some work best as photographs, some as drawings, some as videos, some as one offs, some as a series, some have obvious multi-platform potential others appear more likely to work initially only in one format.

In order to clarify the type of idea you are working on it is best to start looking at the various elements identified above, and combine them together, to see how the idea develops. This combination of elements will focus you more on the central thing/s which concern you. You may have to do some initial research, or discuss particular aspects of the idea with someone. It is this process which will start to tell you what type of idea this is, what type of creative work it might become, and critically whether or not you like it enough to keep pursuing it.

3. What is the tone of the material?

All the material you have collected around you as you have developed all, or some, of the above elements will point to an overall tone. This is the emotional impact of the work in terms of its impression left on you, and potentially on your audience/s. Tone is a complex area of expression and sadly this blog does not have space to explore it fully. The key thing to understand with respect to tone when developing an idea is that as you review the material you have e.g. some notes, examples of texts, or visuals etc. where are they pointing in terms of tone?

Does this collection of material give you the inspiration for comedic, dramatic or tragic work? What are your own feelings about the material, and how you see the idea being reacted to by the people you think may be engaged by the idea? You may, of course, on realising that it is ‘too dark’ or ’too light’ for particular audiences change the tone of a work as you develop it, but rceognising the initaia tone is important in selecting an idea as it develops.

4. Define the dramatic universe.

At this point in the process you will be in a position to devise/recognise the dramatic universe of your idea. The dramatic universe is the collection of key elements be they characters, events, setting, images – perhaps songs, poems, that belong together. If for any reason an element does not work with the other elements then either replace it, or adjust the element/s, until you feel they all belong with each other.

It is at this point you will be able to see not only the interrelationships between the elements but also their interdependence. If you alter one of them then you affect the overall impact of the idea you have developed. Of course, you may want to do this to make the idea more attractive to a particular audience or to fit a particular format.

Having undertaken all this work you can really assess your idea. Assessing a idea too early is a major mistake many creatives make, rejecting something before it has had time to grow, develop, into something substantial enough to be assessed.

“You are not your idea, and if you identify too closely with your ideas, you will take offense when they are challenged.” Ed Catmull Creativity Inc.

5. Selecting Your idea?

It is worth reviewing what you have in the light of what is already been produced. There may be ‘nothing new under the sun’ in terms of themes etc., but in terms of the particular dramatic universe you have created, and the particular work you are contemplating creating from it you are looking for the originality in the idea.

The first step is to review what you have created before – is the new idea sufficiently different to a. keep you interested; b. show other people a new side to your work.

The second is to review the most successful works which are like the ones you are contemplating from your idea.  If you can see how the idea is original enough to stand out from the crowd on this basis then it is worth pursuing, if not either abandon it in favour of another, better idea, or change an element/s to make it stand out.

Once you have reached this stage you will have developed the idea to the point where you will be able to successfully assess whether or not you really want to pursue it and in what form, for which audience/s.

All the best with every idea you select, and remember your collaborators are as important as the idea.

Upload your latest idea to the bcre8ive website and see how it flies.