here are two skills I wish to have as a cook; first, I want to open any fridge and see what I can make with what's there (similarly, I'd like to dance with any woman I meet, but that's for another post) and second, I'd like to make a meal with as little waste as possible.Till then, I may as well get it right on paper. There's no reason to have an idea and to make it solely into a novel or a screenplay. That's like buying a pig only to make bacon. Why not develop ideas in length and depth through different forms? Start as a log line. Sprout into a poem. Grow to a song. Develop into a screenplay. Fill out as a novel. Not a bad way to flesh out a thought and expand one's works simultaneously.
hanks to feedback from a screenwriting classmate, I now have 18 log lines for potential screenplays ready to go. I've also done extended preliminary work (what I call 'pipelining' for whatever reason) on five screenplays - fleshing out characters, subtexts, locations et al. These early notes get me percolating and have lead to longer notes about specific scenes and culminating moments all of which bodes well for nice, tight synopses. 