I suddenly remembered that I still have a Telegram channel, and then realized the last post there was already more than ten days ago. Lately I’ve been studying screenwriting in a more systematic way, and somewhere in that process I also forgot to keep sharing the interesting things that came up along the way.
Most of what has felt interesting recently has come directly from learning. Today, for example, I ran into a creative principle that completely overturned one of my old assumptions: share the script you’re developing with other people.
This isn’t only about testing whether an idea can survive contact with the market. At the earliest stage of writing, it may also be the most direct way to tell—just from someone’s expression—whether the premise actually sparks interest. And yet most writers instinctively resist doing this. They worry about revealing too much of an idea, or having it stolen.
So I tried a small experiment.
I took Duckling, which already has a rough shape, and reduced it to a one-sentence premise. Then I told that sentence to several friends I trust. What I wanted to see was what exactly caught their attention. And even without including the twist—the turn that changes everything—that one-line version still made them curious. More importantly, it prompted questions. Why? What happened? What’s really going on?
In the past, I probably wouldn’t have said anything until I had almost finished building the whole thing in private. I would shut the door, write alone, and only then let the work face any kind of test. But by that point, feedback arrives too late. If the story needs major revision after that, you’re not really editing—you’re tearing the house down and starting over.
This time I wanted to try the opposite approach. Let people in while the foundation is still being poured. Before the building goes up, find out whether the central line of the story and its core conflict can actually hold someone’s attention. Better yet, whether they feel drawn into it enough to want to know the truth behind it.
For a long time I had another misconception as well. I kept thinking that if I told someone else about a story I was developing, I would somehow lose my creative momentum for it. But clearly, even when I tell no one, that momentum doesn’t magically last forever. There’s no real causal relationship there.
And the harsher truth is this: keeping the idea secret does not make the final work any more likely to succeed. Even if nobody hears about it during the writing process, the finished piece still has to face the market in the end. If it fails that test, secrecy didn’t protect it from anything.
What I found especially interesting in my friends’ responses was the way they began guessing at the causes behind the story, and where it might end. No two people imagined the same version. Their guesses were all different from one another, and also very far from the ending I had originally envisioned.
That made me wonder: if two people start from the same opening and write completely different stories that lead to completely different endings, are they really telling the same “great idea” at all?
When writers work so hard to conceal a supposedly brilliant premise because they’re afraid it will be copied, maybe what’s underneath that fear is uncertainty. They aren’t fully convinced by the world they’ve imagined. On some level, they suspect that the fictional universe in their head is something someone else could easily think of too.
It’s a little like hiding details and evidence in a detective story. On the surface, it can look like an intellectual contest, where only the author knows how the unpublished clues connect, as if the whole point were to prove that the author alone is the true god of that world.
That said, the risk between creators is not imaginary. Someone really can take your premise, or use a larger writing team to finish a version of the story faster than you can. The result may end up being entirely different from what you had in mind, but the opening that made the idea exciting in the first place may already have been lifted.
And finding someone who is both a worthy creative match and scrupulously fair about it—that turns out to be a difficult thing in itself.