A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 1

This is the 11th 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: Southwest Airlines flew the remains of a Vietnam airman home to Dallas. The pilot was his son.

Bryan Knight was 5 years old when he waved goodbye to his father from Dallas Love Field Airport. He never saw him again.

The year was 1967, and Roy Knight Jr. was heading to war. The pilot reported to Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base in January. By May, after flying near-daily combat missions, Knight was missing, his plane shot down over enemy territory in Laos. It was another seven years before his family found out he had been killed. And on Thursday, 45 years after that, they finally received closure.

Knight’s remains, recovered near his plane’s crash site more than five decades after it went down, were flown from Honolulu to Oakland, Calif., and from Oakland back to Dallas, where his family greeted the Southwest flight as it arrived.

Bryan Knight, the son who watched his dad leave to fight in the Vietnam War, was also the man who flew his remains home — the pilot of that flight from California to Texas that landed at Love Field, the last place the two saw each other.

It’s a moving scene. The confluence of a son piloting his father’s remains back home is amazing. What story could we come up with to work as a movie?

How about this. The son is, indeed, a commercial airline pilot. He has built himself a solid life. Wife. Children. Career. The personal history about having lost his father at a young age has receded into the past as the son busies himself with his work, being a husband and a father.

Then he receives a mysterious message. His father’s remains have been found in Laos. Who is the caller? A patriot, he says. They agree to meet. The man is a grizzled Vietnam vet. He spends much of his time in Southeast Asia tracking down the remains of soldiers left behind.

As it turns out, this is a dirty business. Trackers in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos know they can turn a tidy profit extorting funds from the deceased’s family. The patriot (let’s call him Ed) claims to be able to navigate the ins and outs of this black market business. The U.S. government can only do so much and are unwilling to pay these ‘entrepreneurs’ they consider to be criminals.

What follows is a journey to Laos, the son and Ed. A drama thriller as they plunge into the underworld to try to track down the remains of the son’s father. And perhaps Ed is not quite what he claims to be.

The physical journey to Southeast Asia mirrors the psychological journey the son takes into his own psyche, revealing what he thought was laid to rest is not, layers of sadness and rage roiling in his subconscious.

I see a happy ending echoing the actual one which happened at Love Field, but only after a harrowing experience in retrieving his father’s remains.

How about you? What would you do with an incident like the one described above? Is there a movie to be found here? Head to Responses and do some brainstorming.

There you go: 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)

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.