Boozehound Films

Coming up with ideas for a screenplay can be surprisingly difficult. Sometimes the blank page simply beats us into submission. You can sit in front of it for hours, determined that today will be the day you come up with your next great idea, only to find yourself staring at an empty document with absolutely nothing to say. It doesn’t matter how experienced you are or how many scripts you’ve written before, this happens to everyone.

The good news is that there are plenty of exercises you can use to get around that blank page. One of my favourites is an exercise I call the Most-Watched Films Exercise. I’ve used this technique for years, both in my own writing and with students, and it’s particularly useful when you’re struggling to work out what kind of story you actually want to write.

The exercise has an important starting point: You are your first audience member.

Before anyone else watches your film, you have to sit down and write it. Understanding what you naturally enjoy as a viewer can therefore tell you a surprising amount about the kinds of stories you might enjoy creating.

Where the Exercise Came From

I first encountered this exercise during my time at film school, when it was introduced to me by my lecturer Justin Shevlin. I’ve since used it with students myself because I think it provides a useful way of looking at your creative instincts. The important thing is that this isn’t a list of your favourite films. That’s a slightly different exercise. Instead, we’re interested in repetition. What films have you watched more than anything else? The answer can reveal patterns in your taste that you might not have consciously noticed.

Step One: List Your Most-Watched Films

Start by writing down between five and ten films that you’ve watched more than any others. Don’t overthink it. Don’t choose the films you think are the most important films ever made. Don’t choose the films you think you should put on the list because they’re critically acclaimed. Choose the films you’ve actually watched repeatedly. This often means the list includes films from childhood or adolescence. Those are the periods of our lives when we’re particularly likely to watch the same film over and over again.

Maybe you’ve watched The Lord of the Rings twenty times.

Maybe you’ve seen Jurassic Park every time it’s been on television.

Maybe there’s an obscure comedy that you’ve watched so many times that you can quote almost the entire thing.

Those are exactly the kinds of films we’re looking for. The more honest you are about what you actually watch, the more useful the exercise becomes.

Step Two: Look for Patterns

Once you’ve got your list, start looking for connections. This is where the exercise becomes interesting.

Ask yourself:

• Do these films share similar themes?
• Do their protagonists have similar goals or needs?
• Do they belong to the same genre or subgenre?
• Do they contain similar relationships or character dynamics?
• Do they use similar narrative structures?
• Do they contain recurring plot elements?
• Are they subversive in some way?
• Do they feature similar types of characters?
• Are there similarities in their tone or visual style?

Don’t restrict yourself to those questions. Write down everything you notice. Even if a similarity seems insignificant, record it. At this stage, you’re looking for accumulation rather than certainty. You might discover that four of your films feature unlikely friendships. Perhaps most of your protagonists are outsiders. Maybe you have an unexpected obsession with stories about people trying to escape small towns. Or perhaps you’ve discovered that almost everything you love involves a group of people being forced to work together despite initially disliking one another. The pattern doesn’t have to be profound. It just has to be there.

Step Three: Work Out What You’re Drawn To

Once you’ve identified your patterns, try turning them into simple statements about your creative taste. For example:

“I’m drawn to stories about unlikely friendships.”

“I like underdog protagonists in fantastical worlds.”

“I enjoy genre films with strong social themes.”

“I like ensemble stories built around camaraderie.”

“I’m drawn to subversive horror.”

These statements can be incredibly useful. They begin to give you a vocabulary for understanding your own creative instincts. You might think you want to write a science-fiction film, for example, but after completing this exercise you might realise that the science fiction itself isn’t what interests you. What you actually love are stories about outsiders finding a community. That’s a much more useful discovery. Now you can start generating ideas around that theme and experiment with different genres, settings and characters.

My Own Example

When I first completed this exercise, my list included The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Hot Fuzz, The Lion King, and The Wizard of Oz.

Looking at those films together, one pattern immediately jumped out at me: They’re all built around unlikely or unconventional friendships.

In The Lord of the Rings, characters from very different cultures and backgrounds form incredibly strong bonds. Legolas and Gimli are probably the clearest example, beginning with significant cultural differences and developing one of the most memorable friendships in the trilogy.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure takes a completely different approach, but again centres on an unconventional group of relationships. Two underachieving teenagers find themselves interacting with historical figures from across human history.

Hot Fuzz is essentially an odd-couple buddy film, with Nicholas Angel and Danny Butterman forming a friendship despite initially seeming to have almost nothing in common.

Then there’s The Lion King, which gives us Simba, Timon and Pumbaa—a lion, a meerkat and a warthog forming an unlikely family.

And finally, The Wizard of Oz takes Dorothy on a journey where she forms relationships with a scarecrow, a tin man and a cowardly lion.

Once I noticed the pattern, it became difficult to ignore. The fact that this connection appeared across so many of the films I’d repeatedly returned to suggested that it wasn’t accidental. It was something I was naturally drawn to. That’s the important part of the exercise. You aren’t trying to prove a theory about your taste. You’re trying to discover what your instincts are already telling you.

Step Four: Turn the Pattern Into an Idea

Once you’ve identified your strongest pattern, use it as the starting point for brainstorming. Ask yourself:

What story could explore this idea in a new way?

What genre could I put it into?

What happens if I exaggerate the pattern?

What happens if I completely invert it?

If you’re drawn to unlikely friendships, perhaps your next film is about two characters who absolutely should not be friends. Or perhaps they are forced to work together despite being enemies. Or perhaps the story begins with an unlikely friendship but gradually reveals that one of the characters has been manipulating the other. Suddenly, the blank page isn’t quite so blank anymore. You have a starting point. And that’s really all this exercise is designed to provide. You don’t need to discover your entire screenplay in one sitting. You just need to find a door into the story.

How This Helped Me Develop Sock

This exercise has had a direct influence on my own filmmaking. When I was developing the idea for Sock, I returned to the patterns I’d identified in the films I loved. One of the things that stood out was that the films on my list were often genre stories built around strange, unexpected or unconventional relationships.

That became one of the foundations for Sock.

The result was a film that combines genre elements with an unusual relationship at its centre, something that feels very much in keeping with the kinds of stories I’ve always been drawn towards. Looking back, I don’t think I would have arrived at the idea in quite the same way without taking the time to analyse my own viewing habits. That’s why I continue to recommend this exercise to writers.

You Don’t Have to Wait for Inspiration

One of the biggest misconceptions about screenwriting is that good ideas simply arrive. Sometimes they do. But most of the time, I think coming up with ideas is a process rather than a moment of inspiration. Exercises like this give you something to work with when inspiration isn’t cooperating.

Your most-watched films are essentially a record of your own creative instincts. They’ve survived countless viewing choices because something about them continues to appeal to you. So, if you’re struggling to decide what to write next, don’t necessarily look for an idea that nobody has ever had before.

Start by looking at yourself.

What stories do you keep returning to?

What characters do you love?

What relationships fascinate you?

What genres do you always find yourself watching?

The answers might tell you more about the screenplay you should write than you realise. And remember: you are your first audience member. If you can work out what makes you want to watch a film again and again, you’re already one step closer to working out what kind of film you want to make.