OT: Simultaneous Ideas or Procrastination Doesn't Pay

[Raellus]

From time to time, I come up with a germ of an idea that I think I might someday want to try to turn into a full-fledged novel or a screenplay. I write the idea down, intending to get back to it at some point in the future but nothing's ever come of it. I wrote this one down about four years ago.

"Rich people abandon sh*tty Earth and live on Mars. An umbilical of some sort connects them? Earth sucks- it's hot, toxic, overcrowded, etc. Mars is nice. Humans on Mars are genetically modified. They don't age or get sick and they're all beautiful or designer weird. They are called Homo-something (X-Men beat me to Homo-Superior). They travel to earth to "slum" it with lowly Homo-Sapiens. Maybe one of the 'normals' decides he wants a taste of what's up at the other end of the chord..."

That's as far as I got. I've tried writing fiction before, but I can't get past 2-3 pages before I get frustrated with myself and give up. Anyway, I saw this trailer for Elysium the other day and its uncanny how similar the premise of this film is to the idea that I came up with a few years ago. How do I get past the wall and start fleshing these stories out? I know that it's a long shot that I'll ever get anything picked up or published but how will I know for sure if I never really try?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIBtePb-dGY

[raketenjagdpanzer]

I worked with a guy who was a film nut - and he was working on a screenplay. I remember him telling me all the details about it and asking me to be on "FrienDA" (like an NDA but just sort of verbal between pals). It sounded fascinating at the time ('95 or so) and I thought if he ever made this film it'd be huge.

Fast forward to 2001 - Vanilla Sky (which, I realize, was based on a Spanish film called Abre su Ojos or "Open Your Eyes") comes out. Seemed to match a lot of the details right down to the cryogenics, entering a persons dreams, etc. etc. I checked the details of both films and he had nothing to do with either one.

Then skip on ahead to Inception - bam, that was everything else he'd told me about that I didn't see in Vanilla Sky. And again, he had nothing to do with that film either.

It was scary how much both films reflected his ideas. Of course, you could say that Tarkovsky's Stalker predated all three of those and his ideas and was an earlier form of questioning reality versus dream/fantasy...but still a lot of the ideas seemed plucked from what he'd told me about.

[Targan]

The Matrix came out before Vanilla Sky (but after Abre los Ojos) and featured many similar metaphysical themes. And the concept of Homo Superior (and probably that exact term) has been around for a looong time. Heck, when I watched the Lord of the Rings films I was blown away by Legolas' fighting style, as many of the moves he makes in those films were EXACTLY the same as many fighting moves my Harnmaster character Tarquin Melfea (Targan the Quick) had made in a campaign a decade before.

[Raellus]

I really wonder if anything truly original can be produced any more. Everything is derivative to some degree- music, film, literature. With all of the rehashes and reboots out there at the moment, it seems like this is more true today than it ever has been before. Anyway...

I've got to commit some of my ideas to paper in a full treatment, whether it be a novel or a screenplay, before someone else produces a more or less identical conceptual product.

[simonmark6]

http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/

This guy has a solid way of developing an extended piece of writing.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

The Matrix came out before Vanilla Sky (but after Abre los Ojos) and featured many similar metaphysical themes.

You could make a similar case for Ender's Game.

However, Abre los Ojos and Vanilla Sky were...warmer, more human, had more pathos than either of those.

But that's a matter of personal nuance, really.