A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 1

This is the 14th 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: Scientists have revived a ‘zombie’ virus that spent 48,500 years frozen in permafrost.

Warmer temperatures in the Arctic are thawing the region’s permafrost — a frozen layer of soil beneath the ground — and potentially stirring viruses that, after lying dormant for tens of thousands of years, could endanger animal and human health.

While a pandemic unleashed by a disease from the distant past sounds like the plot of a sci-fi movie, scientists warn that the risks, though low, are underappreciated. Chemical and radioactive waste that dates back to the Cold War, which has the potential to harm wildlife and disrupt ecosystems, may also be released during thaws.

“There’s a lot going on with the permafrost that is of concern, and (it) really shows why it’s super important that we keep as much of the permafrost frozen as possible,” said Kimberley Miner, a climate scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.

Permafrost covers a fifth of the Northern Hemisphere, having underpinned the Arctic tundra and boreal forests of Alaska, Canada and Russia for millennia. It serves as a kind of time capsule, preserving — in addition to ancient viruses — the mummified remains of a number of extinct animals that scientist have been able to unearth and study in recent years, including two cave lion cubs and a woolly rhino.

The reason permafrost is a good storage medium isn’t just because it’s cold; it’s an oxygen-free environment that light doesn’t penetrate. But current day Arctic temperatures are warming up to four times faster than the rest of the planet, weakening the top layer of permafrost in the region.

To better understand the risks posed by frozen viruses, Jean-Michel Claverie, an Emeritus professor of medicine and genomics at the Aix-Marseille University School of Medicine in Marseille, France, has tested earth samples taken from Siberian permafrost to see whether any viral particles contained therein are still infectious. He’s in search of what he describes as “zombie viruses” — and he has found some.

Zombie virus. So we’ve got this:

The hit HBO series The Last of Us. Plus, last year in this series, we explored a similar starting point and ended up a horror-comedy.

Question: Have there ever been any zombie movies, TV shows, web series, or videogames where an infection actually makes someone a better person? Sure, there’s this:

I guess to qualify as a zombie, a character must eat people, particularly brains. That doesn’t seem like an improvement. So let’s go in another direction.

Scientist working on permafrost project. Releases an ancient virus. And it transforms them into a stronger, smarter, more attractive, and more sexually satisfying person. They go from science nerd in the Antarctic to toast of the town in, let’s say, London.

All good, right?

But what if there is a limited amount of the virus which they need to keep ingesting to maintain their physical status. Otherwise, they begin to degrade at a rapid pace.

Then someone notices the remarkable transformation of this individual. A rival scientist. They deduce that our Protagonist has stumbled on what could be the greatest discovery in history, especially if you could develop and monetize it as a marketable product. They could align powerful forces — sleuths, moneyed tycoons, armed thugs — to find our Protagonist (now on the run) in order to find the secret.

They capture the Protagonist, but guess what? No more virus supply except that … the Protagonist is a source of the virus and can be held hostage, kept alive, and drained daily of the magic goop. Like this:

Imagine that, only with a sole “patient”: our Protagonist.

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 (2010)

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2011)

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2012)

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2013)

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2014)

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2015)

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2016)

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)

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.