Old Code

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Where do ideas come from?

There are books written about this. Probably entire courses taught. Lots of theories. For me, it comes down to this: stuff goes into our brains, we mix it up, and it comes out looking different. What kind of stuff? Oh you know. Everything. What we read, what we watch, what we listen to. What we feel. Especially that last one. Everything we experience is game to be remixed into something else.

When it comes to movie ideas, I have a process. Decide on my genre, come up with a list of movie stars, then brainstorm a movie for each of them. I do this five, ten, a hundred times. Most of the resulting ideas are bad. Every once in a while, there’s a good one. And then I write a script.

I started writing short stories a few year back and that’s been a lot of fun, mainly because I can’t rely on my old tricks on generating ideas. My fiction ideas generally come from prompts either in a workshop I’m taking or a themed open call for a publication I’m interested in submitting to.

Here’s an example from a story that was published a couple weeks ago. My journey to find Hollow Vision a home was a long one. Four years and sixteen rejections, to be exact. I posted about finally finding it a home and got thousands of likes across multiple platforms.

You can read the published story here.

The original idea for this one came from an open call for an anthology, meaning anyone could submit a short story with the hope of being a part of this book. The theme was described as being like Black Mirror, which is an amazing sci-fi/horror anthology show. This told me they were lookin for something that was dark, set in the near future (or today), and had some sort of tech involved.

The idea I came up with involved a young woman who finds herself haunted by a digital hologram of her dead boyfriend. But in looking back at the finished story, I can see the seeds of it in three things:

Losing my dad

I lost my dad to cancer when I was 23. It was, as you can imagine, a lot to deal with. A week or so after the funeral, I woke up in the middle of the night and could swear he was standing at the foot of my bed. I didn’t see him, but I felt him. Now I don’t know if I believe in ghosts or not, but I believe in souls and that the energy we carry for our loved ones continue on after we pass.

This became the opening image of my story, when my lead character Jax wakes up and sees the ghost of her dead boyfriend. She believes that ghosts are “bullshit” but if that’s the case, then what is standing at the foot of her bed?

What started out as a simple ghost story became a story about grief. Losing my dad was a seismic moment in my life and thirty years later, I was inspired to process it in a story. That’s often what art is, trying to make sense of something that never will.

A show from a long time ago

Before the streaming era, my favorite television mini-series of all time was Wild Palms, a near-future sci-thriller starring Jim Belushi (really). It was set in Hollywood and had all these weird cyberpunk trappings. It felt like it was totally made for me.

One of the random subplots in Wild Palms involved a technological advancement where sitcoms were shot with special cameras and then aired in people’s homes using hologram projectors. So it would look like the actors were sitting in your living room as a laugh track echoed. I always thought this was super weird and interesting.

With traditional three-camera sitcoms currently on the outs, I wondered what if there was a way to watch any show you want as holograms? So with HoloVision (the tech in my story), Jax can watch her favorite “dragon show” and see dragons flying around her living room. But the ghost of her boyfriend looked like the same kind of hologram. So what exactly is he? That’s the crux of my story and it was inspired by a show that no one probably remembers but me.

A podcast conversation between two screenwriters

I’ve always been a big fan of the screenwriting podcast Script Notes. The hosts John August and Craig Mazin are not only two of the most successful writers in Hollywood, they also have a really fun friendship that leads to interesting banter.

I remember an episode where they were discussing Final Draft (the #1 screenwriting software in the world) which is notorious for being extremely buggy. Craig talked about the reason being is that for every update, instead of creating new code from scratch, the designers would just write new code over the existing code. I have no idea if this is true or not (I know nothing about coding,) but something about that idea lodged in my mind and never left.

Late in my story, Jax is spending time with a HoloVision repairman who’s trying to help her figure out why a hologram of her dead boyfriend keeps appearing in her apartment. At some point, he talks about how he doesn’t believe in ghosts, but he does believe in code. And this is part of what he says to her:

“But more times than not, everyone’s in a hurry so they write new code over the old stuff. And if it works, you don’t notice the old code is still there, trying to do what it was written to do. It’s like every piece of technology is a living thing built on top of the ghost of what it used to be. And when something gets buggy, that’s the old code underneath trying to be heard.”

I don’t know why, but this scene is one of my favorite things I’ve written in recent years. Again, I don’t know anything about coding, but there’s something haunting in this idea and I was happy to find a place for it in my work.

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And so if my short story was a meal that I cooked up, then the recipe is this: take one themed call to an anthology, add a memory brought on by grief, mix in a bit of an old TV show, sprinkle some ideas discussed on a podcast, bake for four years, and there you have it…a tasty short story that I hope will bring readers some comfort. Or sadness. Or more likely, a combination of the two.

Some follow-up

My story was rejected by the anthology for which I wrote it. It was rejected by other places, too. I was getting frustrated, but I was also realistic. My story was long (over four thousand words). It also straddles the line between sci-fi and horror, which can be a tough sell. And for a ghost story, it’s not really that scary.

A few months ago, I trimmed a few hundred words and got it down to an even four thousand. That helped, I think. Also, I found a cool publication that seems to specialize in haunting stories that straddle various genres. So if that’s your cup of tea, then for sure check out the other great stories at theworldswithin.com.

Oh, and I totally bailed on Final Draft shortly after that Script Notes episode. Fade In is now my screenwriting software of choice. As I’ve mentioned, I don’t know much about coding, I just know if something works or not, and Fade In works great.

Which makes me think about making art, in general. It’s hard to know if one’s process of coming up with ideas and executing them is the “right” way or not. All that matters is: does it work? And mine does. Not every time. Maybe one in a hundred ideas are any good. But if that’s how I code, then I can live with that.