300+ Story Ideas

Having troubles finding solid story concepts? Here are 330 story ideas drawn from news items over an 11 year period… free for the taking.

Scott Myers

20 Sep 2020 • 4 min read

Having troubles finding solid story concepts? Here are 330 story ideas drawn from news items over an 11 year period… free for the taking.

Every April for eleven years, I have run a daily series at Go Into The Story. It’s called: A Story Idea Each Day for a Month. The series is exactly what it sounds like. Each day, I post a link to a news article I have happened upon over the course of the preceding twelve months which I flagged as having potential for a movie or TV series.

I don’t just stop there. I do a bit of brainstorming. What if this news item were a comedy… or a drama? What if we switched the gender of the lead character? What if changed the era? What if we flipped a narrative dynamic to make it an entirely different story?

What’s the point? Part of the answer is ever since I broke into the business as a screenwriter in 1987, I have always kept my eyes and ears open for potential story ideas. This is an extension of that.

I should say, I only post stories I don’t have an interest in pursuing myself, which is to say the underlying idea and any brainstorming I do is all yours — free and no strings attached.

That’s the good karma aspect of the series. The pedagogical point: YOU should be keeping YOUR eyes and ears open for story ideas. Get into that habit. You never know when something may cross your path of daily existence which could become the basis of a writing project that could change your life. As the man says:

“Ideas cost NOTHING and require ZERO risk. And yet, oddly, the LEAST amount of time’s usually spent in the idea stage before a small fortune is dumped on a whimsy that’s still half-baked… Ideas cost nothing yet have the potential to yield inexplicably long careers and happy lives.”

— Kevin Smith (Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma)

Here they are: Links to 330 story ideas, any one of which could spark something in your imagination and become your next screenplay.

2010

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17
Day 18
Day 19
Day 20
Day 21
Day 22
Day 23
Day 24
Day 25
Day 26
Day 27
Day 28
Day 29
Day 30

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

I will be back in April 2021 for the 12th installment of the series as I’ve already got a couple dozen news items stashed in my files.

Good luck with your hunt for a great story concept!

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