What are your thoughts on "cannibalism"?

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  • What are your thoughts on "cannibalism"?

    So you've written a few things and haven't got anywhere but you're still trudging forwards. So you start something new,,, and you discover that there's an idea/character/scene that you've previously committed elsewhere that would fit perfectly in your new opus. What do you do?
    I heard the starting gun


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  • #2
    Use it, it's yours.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by Southern_land View Post
      So you've written a few things and haven't got anywhere but you're still trudging forwards. So you start something new,,, and you discover that there's an idea/character/scene that you've previously committed elsewhere that would fit perfectly in your new opus. What do you do?
      I'll pass on some advice a mentor once gave me, and I think it was good advice. (Up to you to decide.) I wrote a spec, and then a few scripts later started something new and was bouncing it off the mentor. He said -- "It could go this direction..." He threw something out, something about resolving intergenerational family conflict between adult kids and parents in their 60s. I said, "I already did that story." He said, "It didn't sell, who cares." Then he start naming writer/directors who make the same story over and over again. He said, "And they have careers." I think one of the people he mentioned was James Brooks. M Night also. So I said -- All right. The resulting story turned into a novel, and it's better than the original spec. I'm glad he removed that mental block from my head.

      So why not? Cannibalize away. The one that sells is the one that gets to keep the story elements.

      The Coen Brothers have done this. Fargo is similar to Blood Simple, it just has snow instead of Texas heat.

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      • #4
        I agree most artists "sing the same song" over and over again just in different ways. It happens to me all the time when I look at my work and see the repeated themes I didn't even realize I was doing.

        Still, don't fall into the trap of just cutting and pasting pages you already have into something new to save yourself time. Make sure it's not just taking the easy way out. But we all get into that issue where because it's already been written it's better than the blank scary pages. I've been there too. But at some point those unwritten pages we love so much were also blank pages too... if we did it before, we can do it again. And better.

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        • #5
          I use/reuse ideas mostly because they [the cannibalized word/phrase/location] represents something symbolic in the story-- death or threshold crossings, for example. They are deliberate choices and ones I will not forget. In the back of my mind I understand that if one sells, I might then have to remove the reference from either that screenplay or the other.

          Use what is most provocative, immersive and entertaining. That's your goal for every story.
          "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy b/c you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." -- Edward Snowden

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          • #6
            You'll never top Cannibal Holocaust, so why bother?

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