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In this Staff Blog, Access Programs Coordinator Megan Lee reflects on the July Logline Challenge of Roadmap's Top Tier Program.
During July, Roadmap’s Top Tier Program introduced a challenge: write one logline every single day of the month. Now, I had just come off six months of writing and rewriting six drafts of the same pilot, so I was itching for an opportunity to force as many new ideas through my head as possible.
And apparently, it was exactly what I needed.
I ended up writing 77 new loglines in July. Here’s what I learned:
Don’t shut yourself out of ideas
Up until now, I’ve only written Pilot scripts. As soon as I started screenwriting, I saw my career being primarily in the TV space, and it never really occurred to me to write much else.
But my intention for the month was to write down as many ideas as I could. So I didn’t stop myself when an idea deviated from what I would normally write. For the most part my ideas stayed in the same general genre, but there were quite a few ideas that turned out to be new formats for me.
Now, I have 26 feature ideas and I’m even excited to write them!
An imperfect idea is still worthwhile
For so long I didn’t even bother writing down every idea. Only certain ideas deserved to be developed. And then, some of my favorite ideas this month turned out to be the ones I never would have thought more about in the past.
And I think the thing that helped me the most this month was to take the pressure off myself. It started with allowing myself to write down ideas outside of my normal format and genre, but then I reminded myself of something important: I didn’t actually have to write these ideas.
Yes, of course the goal is that these loglines would lead to projects I write, but when I try to come up with my “next idea” I tend to get very lost in the weeds and overthink any ideas into the ground. My graveyard of murdered loglines is vast.
As soon as I took the pressure off finding the “perfect” ideas, they started flowing much easier.
Sometimes, ideas just need space to breath
I have three words for you: White. Space. Brainstorming. Don’t worry, this isn’t nearly as pretentious as it sounds.
Throughout the month I tried different things to inspire new ideas. I searched Pinterest. A lot. I scrolled other social media platforms to see if anything would spark an idea. I watched videos to learn new information that could lead to an idea.
I tried very, very hard to force loglines to spontaneously appear in my mind.
For me, this can quickly lead to burnout… which means no new ideas. So I found a way to do nothing and still be productive at the same time.
I’d create moments for myself to clear my mind and let it wander. Then, try to be aware of what I was thinking about in case an idea made its way through. My favorite way to implement this method was to play video games while listening to music or watching Wired’s tech support series.
This worked so well. Some of my favorite ideas this month came when I let my mind just wander to them.
I need to stop passively waiting for ideas to come to me
Now, disregard (almost) everything I just said. Because I’ll admit it. I can get lazy. I start to sit around waiting for loglines to come to me. I wait for that magical moment where lightning strikes and an idea hits me out of nowhere.
The problem is it does happen. There are times where I am just sitting around and suddenly an idea is delivered to me so complete I can practically see the stork. And it is beautiful. A holy experience.
But you can’t live a functional life sustained only by miracles. Neither can my writing be sustained only by such miracles. I want a career, a life, out of writing. That means I have to respect my writing enough to be an active participant in the whole process.
I have to balance the “white space brainstorming” with dedicated, focused brainstorming. The trickiest part is learning to recognize when each method would work for me.
Bonus: I can’t do this every month
I’m not about to turn into some machine throwing out 70+ loglines every month. Or at least, I can’t do that and actually write the projects those loglines are for.
This was an amazing experiment, but one of the most important things I’ve learned this month is that just because something works, doesn’t mean it makes sense to do every day. Now, I have a new tool to pull out when I need a writing reset.