Looking through the Field Guide’s idea-generating methods, I decided to give them a test run on a screenplay long abandoned by my high school friends and myself. The story features a long nosed detective named Sherman B. Shure who is tasked with tracking down his traitorous partner, Carl Berger. The story is meant to be rather tongue-in-cheek.
I had the most luck with the outline method. Though it didn’t actually generate many new ideas, it at least allowed me to get my old ideas in order. Free-writing and looping were useful, but often what I would think of were the ideas I wasn’t pleased with in the first place. I suppose that after enough loops something would have to crop up. I found the methods didn’t necessarily lend themselves well to purely fictional writing. For example, the cluster seems it would work best with a fact-based project or an argument.
I hope these methods lead me somewhere. Perhaps Sherman is not meant to be resurrected.