A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 10

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 my through during this series of posts.

Initially, I provided a daily explanation about why you should make it a habit to be generating story ideas. This week, I’ll give you some tips on how to come up with stories.

Tip: Look at magazines.

I love magazines. Or at least I used to. Before at one point, I had over 30 subscriptions! [Now I’m down to 2: The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books].

The thing is if you’re trolling magazines for possible story ideas, you have to avoid the biggies like People, US, Time, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, GQ, Esquire, and so on. You can be sure that Hollywood studios and producers cover those regularly. Indeed more and more magazine writers tailor their stories as possible movie projects.

No, you need to dig deeper and go wider with your research into magazines. Fast Company, Smithsonian, New Scientist are some good ones.

Then think regional like Southern Living. Or foreign like Der Spiegel. Or really odd like Miniature Donkey Talk Magazine.

Again there are plenty of story ideas out there, especially in magazines. You just have to look for them.

Today’s story idea: “2,500-year-old marijuana discovered in an ancient tomb.”

A 2,500-year-old stash of whole marijuana plants have been unearthed from an ancient tomb in northwest China. This discovery adds to a growing body of evidence that ancient people used marijuana for its psychoactive properties, and incorporated it into their rituals.

A team of archaeologists, led by Hongen Jiang with the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, discovered 13 marijuana plants that were still largely intact, if yellowed and desiccated after millennia underground. In a first for funerary marijuana, the plants were found lying like a burial shroud atop the body of a man who had died in his mid-30s. Their roots lay below the man’s hips and the tips — which had been trimmed to remove the flowers — extended up around his face, according to the publication of the find in the journal Economic Botany.

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Ancient people in Siberia and northwestern China have been putting pot in tombs since at least the first millennia BCE. An open question has been whether these plants were used for fruit, for their hemp fibers to make rope and clothing, or for what we use them for today: to get high, or to cut pain.

It’s time for the return of Cheech and Chong!

Or Rogen and Franco!

2,500 year-old weed. Stolen from an ancient tomb. And it’s incredibly potent. A few sales and everyone wants a taste. Toss in some tomb raiders. DEA agents. And maybe awakened spirits of the dead. A chase movie. And lots and lots of stoner humor.

There’s my story concept for Day 10. Previous articles in this year’s series:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9

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.

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.