2025 Zero Draft Thirty March Challenge: Story Prep — “What if…”

A series to help prepare writers for next month’s Zero Draft Thirty writing challenge.

Do you have a story you want to write? A feature length movie screenplay? An original TV pilot? A web series pilot? A novel? Short story? An epic length limerick?

The 2025 Zero Draft Thirty March Challenge is for you!

March 1: You type FADE IN / “Once upon a time…”
March 31: You type FADE OUT / “…They all lived happily ever after.”

It’s free! It’s fun! It’s Fade In to Fade Out!

For everything you need to know to join, click here.

To help prepare writers for the #ZD30SCRIPT Challenge, this week I’ll be running a series on Story Prep.

Today in Part 1, we begin at Ground Zero: The Story Concept.

The two most important words I know in the process of generating story ideas are these: what if? An example from screenwriter James V. Hart:

The secret, the great key to writing Hook, came from my son. When he was six, he asked the question, ‘What if Peter Pan grew up?’ I had been trying to find a new way into the famous ‘boy who wouldn’t grow up’ tale, and our son gave me the key.

What if Peter Pan grew up?

Here’s another example from screenwriter Bob Gale:

The inspiration for making the movie, for coming up with the story [Back to the Future] is that I was visiting my parents in the summer of 1980, from St. Louis Missouri, and I found my father’s high-school yearbook in the basement. I’m thumbing through it and I find out that my father was the president of his graduating class, which I was completely unaware of. So there’s a picture of my dad, 18-years-old, and I’m thinking about the president of my graduating class, who was someone I would have had nothing to do with. He was one of these “Ra-Ra” political guys, he was probably Al Gore or something. Captain of the debate team, all this stuff. So the question came up in my head, ‘gee, if I had gone to school with my dad would I have been friends with him?’ That was where the light bulb went off.”

What if I had gone to school with my dad?

One more example: I read a piece about screenwriter Evan Daugherty who sold the spec script Snow White and the Huntsman for over $3M. What was the origin of that story idea? He wondered why didn’t the Huntsman kill Snow White after the Queen ordered him to take her away into the forest and dispatch her.

What if I told the story of Snow White from the Huntsman’s perspective?

So every day as you try to conjure story ideas — and you should spend at least 10–15 minutes each day doing that — use these powerful words what if to spark your imagination.

Who knows. Maybe you’ll come up with something like, “What if a bear ingested a whole lot of cocaine?”

Tomorrow, I’ll have another story prep tip.

Have you got your story concept ready to rock and roll in the 2025 Zero Draft Thirty March Challenge? Come back here every day in March to share the experience with a slew of other writers as you make your way to FADE OUT.

Zero Draft Thirty Challenge: Pound Perfectionism. Push Productivity.

Twitter: #ZD30SCRIPT.

Facebook: Zero Draft Thirty.

Onward!