At the risk of sounding insanely pretentious, I’d just like to say great art is mysterious. It burns through us and leaves us awestruck.
And it’s tempting to think of artists and creators as some sort of preternatural magicians or witches, wielding unknowable magic.
But the truth is, art takes effort. Creative work doesn’t just spring out fully formed. It takes time. It demands mistakes. It needs to be discovered.
George Lucas wrote multiple screenplays for Star Wars before he felt he had the story nailed down. He had to figure out how exactly how to execute his idea, saying his space opera epic had “always been what you might call a good idea searching for the right story.”
I think about this whenever I’m stuck developing a new TV pilot or movie idea. I try to pick a “good idea” but get frustrated when it doesn’t work right away. “This is A GOOD IDEA! WHY ISN’T IT WORKING!”
This is a trap. The job of a storyteller is not to tell an audiece a Good Idea. It’s to tell them a Good Story.
Good Idea vs. Good Story
What’s the difference? For me, a good idea is about inspiration whereas a good story is about execution.
