A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 1

This is the 15th year in a row I’ve run this series in April. Why a story idea each day for the month? Several reasons which I’ll work through during this series of posts. For today, the most basic one:

If you have aspirations of becoming a professional screenwriter, you should be in the habit of generating story concepts.

Let’s say you write and sell a spec script. Congratulations. You’re the “flavor-of-the-week.” Your agent and manager set up meetings across Hollywood with producers and studio execs. The first words out of their mouths will likely be some variation of “Love your script ” (even if they haven’t really read it). The second thing they say will almost assuredly be, “What else have ya’ got?” If you haven’t been developing other stories, that is likely to be a very short meeting.

By the way, I give away these story ideas. They’re yours to use however you like. In fact, several writers have gone off and written spec scripts from story concepts presented in this annual series, one script making the Nicholl semifinals.

There are many ways to generate story ideas. This month, I focus on one: Looking for ideas in news sources. Each of the items I’ll be posting for the next 30 days comes from a news site.

Today’s story idea: Family Feud Erupts Among L.A.’s Top Home Stagers.

Over the past two decades, Meridith Baer, with her firm Meridith Baer Home, established herself as the gold standard for luxury home staging, servicing the homes of such clients as Scarlett Johansson, Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts, among many others. Baer is locked in a nasty legal feud with her nephew and niece — Brett Baer and Jaime Morse — who once worked for her. After being fired, Brett and Jaime — along with the latter’s husband, Caleb Morse (also named in the litigation) — regrouped 16 months ago to launch Vesta Home, which quickly emerged as a rival to their aunt’s firm. Vesta Home, which has staged houses for Chris Pratt and Kanye West, recently worked on a Pacific Palisades home that was bought by Ben Affleck.

A fundamental truism about writing: You can’t have drama without conflict. Rival real estate agents? You got your conflict.

Another truism: Explore a unique subculture. Real estate stagers? You got your subculture.

You could go real estate rivals dealing with luxury homes. That’s a great opportunity to satirize the rich and Hollywood famous.

But you could also set the story in a more modest environment.

I bet next to no one has seen the 1987 Barry Levinson movie Tine Men.

Logline: A minor car accident drives two rival aluminum-siding salesmen to the ridiculous extremes of man versus man in 1963 Baltimore.

The central conceit of this movie is how these two salesmen try to one-up each other in their attempt to exact revenge on the other.

Same dynamic for this story.

How to spin the concept to make it a story with a unique hook?

What if you set the story in the Deep South? Or the Midwest? What if the rival real estate agents and their staging teams are different genders … different races?

This strikes me as a story arena with strong potential as a comedy that also sends up American capitalism.

That’s my setup. My first story idea for the month. And it’s yours. Free!

Each day in April, I invite you to join me in comments to do some brainstorming. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when we play around with it. These are valuable skills for a writer to develop.

Here are links to previous series:

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2017)

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2018)

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2019)

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2020)

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2021)

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2022)

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2023)

Note: The articles from 2010–2016 have corrupted URLs. I am in the process of cleaning those up.

See you in RESPONSES to hear YOUR take on this story idea. And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.