How to find your theme, the world you want to write about
This post is about what happens when you have a totally blank page. You have no idea what you want to write about.
How might you take a first step towards finding your theme – some hazy world you might want to begin to explore?
When I made my documentary Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes I asked Christiane Kubrick about the ever-lengthening gaps between her husband’s films. He started out in the 1950s and 1960s releasing one film a year, but by the 1980s and 1990s ten or fifteen years would pass between movies. What was he doing all that time? What was he looking for?
“The magic moment of falling in love with a story,” she said.
The magic moment. You have to find a story you’re incredibly passionate about telling – the thing that’ll keep you going when you’re feeling lost and bleak, i.e. for the vast majority of the process.
But how? In this post I’m going to suggest two very different ways you might find it, both of which have worked well for me over the years.