The Idea Index Fund by Brady Walker
Over the past year, I've begun to find ways to create a searchable idea database. I call it “idea indexing,” and it’s become an indispensable part of developing brand new ideas or finding nuggets of interest for a work in progress.
Idea indexing is a series of tiny habits with accruing results. If creativity is combinatorial in nature, then I’m building up a massive nest-egg of puzzle pieces. Today, I’m going to describe the “daily practice” aspect of idea indexing.
Part One: The Somedays Journal
The Somedays Journal revolves around four prompts taken from screenwriting teacher Corey Mandell. They are designed to uncover the powerful inner motivators of anger, fear, curiosity, and desire.
These are the prompts:
The one thing that makes me more pissed off than anything else right now is...
My absolute worst fear in life right now is...
The biggest problem I'm trying to figure out how to solve is...
If I could have a magic wand and have one wish/fantasy granted, it would be...
This exercise is teaching me how to be aware of my own emotions and preoccupations. It prepares me to explore the inner lives of characters, especially ones least like myself. Plus, it’s useful to respond to these as your characters.
In addition to the “reps of an exercise” component, all of my responses are usable. If I’ve got a thinly imagined character, I can play around with assigning them different fears, furies, and fantasies until they accrue sufficient depth.
Part Two: The Daily Forestry
A Story Forest is the broadest category and could be anything describing the character’s story world. A Treetop is more specific but still leaves much up to interpretation, like the very beginnings of a scene. And a Tree is a more detailed imagining of a scene.
For instance:
Forest: Dating
Treetop: Going on a blind date and realizing that they're your ex.
Tree: Going on a date in a new town where you don't know anyone and at your loneliest and lowest of lows, you finally get a date, and who is that date? It's not just any ex, it's THE ex, and she's in witness protection and living under an assumed identity.
In Daily Forestry, I don't worry about the Tree level. Instead, every morning I randomly pick from the following folder of documents and add 10 quick Treetop ideas. Once a week, I commit a half-hour to generate 50 Treetops for a specific folder. Below is a list of my Forest categories, leaving out project-specific folders.
Forest.Childhood
Forest.Elementary School
Forest.Middle School
Forest.High School
Forest.Senior Prom
Forest.Adulthood
Forest.College
Forest.New Job
Forest.Moving
Forest.Adulthood.Dating
Forest.Adulthood.Friendship
Forest.Marriage
Forest.Divorce
Forest.Parenthood
To get an idea of what this looks like, my first five entries in Forest.Childhood are:
Going with your parents to strange, annoying places.
Being stuck in a car for hours.
Being woken up early for school.
Not wanting to go to sleep.
The existential importance of watching cartoons.
What’s great about this approach is the fact that I now have a place to file things away when I hear a funny story. Did Ted’s kid do something creepy again? File it away under Childhood and cross-tag with Parenthood. Karen just told me about getting stranded in the desert with her mother-in-law this weekend. File it away under Marriage.
I would love to share this idea more widely and create shared Forest databases, but the best part of the Daily Forestry isn't the productivity of it. It's the gratifying scrape of old memories and recent observations that wouldn't land on anyone else’s list. These momentary firing of synapses are fleeting, but if I can capture it at the right time, it might be what I need for my next story to succeed. And even if that’s not the case, I have a chance to list and categorize the most profound events of my life.
As cheesy as it sounds, the point of The Somedays Journal and The Daily Forestry are to be more me in my writing. In a world that treasures speed over everything, it gets hard to invest yourself in the grind of providing “content.” But you can build a daily practice, like a rainy day fund, so you have the tools you need to make sincere work.
Brady Evan Walker is a Los Angeles-based, Cajun-bred screenwriter/producer hailing from south of where you think Louisiana ends. Short films written by Brady have screened at the Lighthouse Film Festival, jellyFEST, Williamsburg Independent Film Festival, Malarkey Film Festival, Sedona Film Festival, Taos Short Film Festival, Queens World Film Festival, Blackbird Film Festival, and his short film "Bygones" won Best Comedy at the Key West Film Festival.