The 100 Ideas Challenge

(An update on ideas introduced in Things I Learned Doing the 100 Idea Challenge [15/12/2018] and Idea Generation Methods From the 100 Ideas Challenge [16/12/2018] at the old blog)

It's infamous in writing circles: the idea is the easy part. Most of us have too many ideas tugging at us from every angle. So, an exercise designed to generate more project concepts might seem useless to those of us who don't even have the time to chase the ideas we have.

But forcing yourself to gather, generate, organize and refine a bunch of concepts under intense pressure can be really valuable even if you're happy with the slate of ideas you've got. Especially if you take the time to review what you've got, after, with an eye for examining yourself for patterns and creative tics. You might learn a bit about yourself as a creator, and come out of it with some really offbeat ideas you would never have generated normally.

So, what the hell is The 100 Ideas Challenge?

When I signed with my screenwriting agency, they started the process with an exercise: over the course of a month, generate a list of 100 viable project ideas. (In this case, scripted TV pilots.) They don't have to be new, but each one has to be something you can genuinely imagine pursuing. At the end of the month, my agents read every idea and gave thoughts on which ones felt sellable, which ones felt like candidates to merge together, which ones felt undercooked or made no fucking sense on the page, etc.

What this did was, it forced me to collect, organize, and assess every idea in my back pocket – from the developed ideas with story bibles and development notes to the jotted loglines in my notes app. Then, it forced me to come up with ways I could find new ideas quickly on the fly. It set aside all of my inhibitions and pushed me to try everything, to take every idea and stress test it to see if I could find something in it. And then, to take the whole list and examine it with a stronger eye, to ruthlessly set aside those that didn't feel strong enough, be willing to merge or remix any idea on the list... and communicate it in a way others might see what I saw in them.

The exercise was so useful, I bullied my friend Megan MacKay into joining me tackling a 50 Ideas Challenge two years later, where we each generated our lists and then swapped them for review. Even now, when I'm kicking around ideas for new TTRPGs to play with, I go back to my lists and see if any of those ideas might sing in a different form, or if I have new inspiration to bring to them.

And it works. One of Portalier Press' major TTRPG projects came from my 50 Ideas list. Four ideas from my initial 100 Ideas list, and two more from the 50 Ideas list, are either on the Portalier Press slate or are being considered as candidates. And looking the lists over, I see at least another dozen that might be fun to kick the tires on. And remember, these ideas weren't even meant to be games. They were for television pilots. And it still worked wonderfully.

So: Four weeks. 100 project ideas. Give it a shot.

You might end up with a hoard of treasures that will last you for years. Or at least, learn a bit about yourself and the things you like to create.