Breaking The Story

If you remember, on July 6th I had a breakthrough.

I was being haunted by two simple little words for weeks: High Concept.

Then it came to me.

An idea that I not only loved, but genuinely felt was high concept. I was rock hard to jump into characters, arcs, plot, and outlining. I was stoked.

But that excitement was short-lived.

For the past ten days I've been struggling with a new demon - breaking the story.

I had a great concept, a great theme, a great title - and nowhere to go with it. I can't even begin to tell you how frustrating this was.

The first outline felt contrived. Forced.

So much so, that I tried to move on to outlining another idea that had been on the back burner.

As much as I tried, though - I kept circling back to the high concept one.

I knew there was a story there - a great story - I just had to find it.

Once again, I took a couple days off to let my brain cool off and watched movies and read scripts.

Then all of a sudden, last night, it happened.

We broke the story.

You should have seen it. It was amazing.

"This this happens. Oh god, then this! What about this? That's hilarious! Jesus, this is great..."

Until yesterday, the phrase "the comedy should come from the concept" didn't really mean anything to me. It was just a mantra used by the professionals.

I was wrong.

Something special happens when that light bulb flickers on, and concept starts driving your story. That inherent comedy that comes from a concept is one you just can't reproduce with gags and characters.

Concept is king.

Anyway, I don't want to get too ahead of myself here - and risk incurring the wrath of the Hubris gods - but I really feel like this is the one.

The script that's going to bring me to my goal ahead of schedule.

I really hope I'm right.