Elephants go to die in special spots. Development is where part-time creatives take their unfinished ideas and lay them to rest. To develop a story means putting a bunch ideas in a jar and shake, like a cocktails. No it doesn’t way. That’s how you’d like it to be. But development is work, it’s about figuring out what connects your end to your beginning. You had a reason for creating content, right? Go back and makes sure your motivation is still there. No motivation, no story.
Development is about another colored Elephant in the room: PROCESS. Some people hate process because it sounds abstract and subjective, just personal flips of the reality/fiction coin. Process is where mistakes get recycled as new choices and when the moments play out differently from the original plan. Process is how your story takes on a unique identity, when you start to feel your story is going to cut I and inspire some strangers. And without being sentimental or cheesy.
Development is also a storytelling form in itself. Making of and backstage films anyone? Stories of how entrepreneurs had their breakthroughs? The back of a story, the dark side of a journey, the pains of success are not just soft subterranean flow, they are inseparable from the whole story surface.