OK, a bit of a bait-and-switch with the headline. This is a post about where IDEAS come from. Hey, if you’re a writer, ideas ARE babies.

Earlier this week a friend asked about the process in my head when I create humor. I wasn’t sure how to answer. I spend very little time thinking about the source of funny.

On her most-excellent blog, Jane Espenson recently posted about two kinds of comedy writers, people who say funny things naturally and then write them down, and people who analyze the shapes and patterns that make jokes and recreate them as they write.

I don’t think I’m an either-or. My brain works enough like an engineer’s that analyzing humor is very appealing. But I also have sufficient experience with improvisational acting to know that the magic of the moment can create humor that an outline and some graph paper simply will not produce.

I had two different experiences with housemates this week that very much demonstrated there is value in being able to think both ways:

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I’m not a poser. I’m not one of those wannabes who just says he’s a writer but who never actually writes, that much should be clear. However, to be fair, I can be a king of procrastination. In the struggle to find balance in “research” versus pen-to-page, my scales tip a bit too heavily to “research,” and the word has a broad definition. I am a fits-and-spurts writer, sometimes going weeks without a pen- or keystroke, then kicking out tons of pages in a few days. Yet my productivity is on par with the more disciplined writers who claim to write on regular schedules. I’m not sure how that works out… One of the problems with dedicating your life to writing is that each moment spent on NotWriting has a small twinge of guilt tied to it. I WANT to become the kind of person who has a certain number of hours dedicated each day, and who therefore can enjoy his NotWriting time, but typically haven’t found sufficient regularity of schedule. NotWriting sometimes has a mind of its own.

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This is the first year I haven’t done my own taxes. Given a stack of receipts from various writerly and less writerly expenses, the fact that I donated away most of my stuff when I moved to L.A., and a pile of 1090s from nine different employers over the course of the year, I figured the time had come to pay someone else to deal. I knew that I hadn’t paid in as much in as normal, since most of the work I did this year was contract labor. I was expecting to owe, rather than to get a refund. So I was disappointed, but not surprised, when my tax preparer’s initial report was that I would need to pay about a thousand dollars on my federal claim. D’oh.

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This weekend Mystery Man is hosting a blog-athon of people’s favorite screenplays. As he suggests, favorite screenplay turns out to be a tougher question than you might assume on first consideration. One’s favorite film isn’t necessarily one’s favorite screenplay. It took a while for me to settle on the right choice.

At first, my thoughts turned to my go-to “favorite” movie, The Princess Bride. That film’s tone remains unmatched, in my opinion. I’ve only seen shooting script copies, however, and there are so many “CUT TO:” directives riddling the pages that you can barely get through it. (Isn’t Goldman generally given credit for ending the practice of writers calling transitions?) Overall, Goldman has a very definite voice that gets in the way of the story he’s telling. Loved it in the novel, don’t love it in the screenplay.

My next thought was Blade Runner. If you are a writer and haven’t read this script on paper, do so. The visual descriptions are poetry. It’s a fluid read, more like a novel, and yet mostly staying this side of too many words. In the end, though, it collapses under it’s own weight a bit, and makes a better movie than a read. (That’s a compliment of course, and what a screenplay is supposed to do, but if I’m picking a FAVORITE…)

I considered Alien. See my thoughts on Blade Runner. There’s magic to be found in The Muppet Movie, but there’s also a whole lot of groan-inspiring puns, so it’s out. Good Will Hunting was a contender, but then I’d have to credit Ben Affleck with writing my favorite screenplay.

In the end, I had to choose the first screenplay ever to enter my collection: “Rita Hayworth & Shawshank Redemption, screenplay by Frank Darabont, based on the novella by Stephen King, third draft, 2/22/93.”

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I try not to be a bandwagon blogger. However, a few screenwriting blogs have mentioned scriptclouds, and I couldn’t help myself.

The concept is that you can enter a .txt file of a script you have written, and you will get out an analysis of what words are most frequently used. It does an oddly accurate job of conveying the feel of a story, actually. Plus, you can see if you’re overusing words you don’t mean to, or if your verbs are too common.

I decided to test it out with my TV pilot, the last script I’ve written that I consider polished. I also ran my current, half-written feature screenplay through for kicks. Here are the results:

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Take the quiz and find out the true depths of your screenwriting geekitude. Answers at the bottom. #1. The famous statement that, in Hollywood, “Nobody knows anything,” is from the book Adventures in the Screen Trade, authored by what screenwriter? #2. If you registered a script with the WGA today, how many digits would there be in the registration number? #3. What was the first feature screenplay from the scribe who later wrote Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?

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Any salt-worthy writer knows the value of another pair of eyes to go over his screenplay. Building a world and a group of people and a journey is a huge task, and the best of us can lose perspective. There comes a point where you need feedback. You have your wonderful story in your head, and you need to test whether it’s the same as the one you’ve put on paper.

Fortunately, there is no shortage of people out there with opinions. Getting someone to provide a useful opinion on your script is not like, say, finding a useful opinion on your doctoral dissertation on French impressionists. Most people watch movies and television. Even readers with no background who protest their inexpertise can be very valuable to you if you guide them with questions about whether this thing worked or that thing. Hopefully, you can build a set of people you can trust to be supportive of your work while still giving you honest feedback. And if you don’t have a writing partner or writer’s group or really wise spouse to turn to, there is of course no shortage of people who will provide you with feedback for a fee.

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