Peach Pie Or Cash? Choosing What To Write

I'm plagued by ideas. They tumble from my brain like gum balls from a machine. I jot them down, e-mail them to myself, save them, shred them, and sometimes share them with my agents and managers to see if I'm onto something or out of my mind.

Even with a list of dozens culled to maybe five or six or ten viable ideas, what do I write? How do I choose what to work on at this moment? And, in what format will I realize this idea? Novel? Short story? Screenplay?

For me, deciding format is the first step, and it's also the easiest. Some ideas are just that--ideas. Kernels. A snippet of a whole that I do not yet see. If that's the case--short story. I focus on that and embrace the contained nature of the format, cramming those 2 or 5 or 12 thousand words with as much story as possible until what emerges is like a bomb with a lit fuse, ready to go off, waiting only for someone to start reading.

Now it gets harder, because it's easy to confuse the applicability of either novel or screenplay to certain ideas. You might think that an idea can be fully realized as both. But that's not the decision to be made. You have to look at what will best serve the idea. Will it satisfy its audience more fully on the page, or on the screen? When considering this, don't get caught up in the reality that an idea can end up as both, usually finding its audience as a novel before being interpreted for the screen. That's not the choice to be made.

To decide between novel and film I ask myself a very simple question: how much do I need to be in the main characters' heads to make this work? If the answer is more than 'very little', then it's a novel. Screenplays are about showing, not telling. Novels allow more introspection by your characters. The key here is being honest with yourself. You may imagine your idea as being painted on the beautiful canvas of a cinema screen, but if your characters are going all 'My Dinner With Andre' in order to explain to the audience why a certain vampire must be killed, I'd lean toward novel.

So now I've made my choice. Or you have. I forget if I'm talking about me or giving you advice here. No matter, I/we have chosen our format. Or format. Each viable idea has been branded a short story, or novel, or screenplay.

Which one to write?

Here you have to exercise the honesty gene again and ask yourself if you want to fulfill yourself or your bank account. The two choices aren't always mutually exclusive, but there is almost always an idea which rises to the top of the 'what will entertain others' pile as compared to the 'what will make me feel warm and fuzzy' pile. And here you have to ask yourself why you write? If it's to write things you'll love, have at the novel about how Aunt Judy stumbled upon the peach pie recipe her great great grandmother used to feed Union soldiers during the civil war. But if your motivation is to write what others will love and want to pay for, the choice may be how Uncle Frank ignored orders and led a squad of soldiers across the border during the second gulf war to rescue a comrade snatched by Iranian commandos.

I like peach pie a lot, and I still know which one I'd write.