A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 11

This is the 12th 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: Halliwell’s Film Guide.

This is based on the anecdote I heard about Woody Guthrie. Having written 4,000 songs in his life, he was asked how he came up with so many melodies. His answer: “Well, I take a melody I like, and I change it a lil’ here, and change it a lil’ there, and I make it my own.”

Same thing with Halliwell’s. You can read a post I wrote about it all the way back in November 2008, how you can read through the 24,000 movie listings — each with a logline — then gender and genre-bend your life to creative bliss.

Today’s story: A Vast Web of Vengeance.

Outrageous lies destroyed Guy Babcock’s online reputation. When he went hunting for their source, what he discovered was worse than he could have imagined.

Guy Babcock vividly remembers the chilly Saturday evening when he discovered the stain on his family. It was September 2018. He, his wife and their young son had just returned to their home in Beckley, an English village outside of Oxford. Mr. Babcock still had his coat on when he got a frantic call from his father.

“I don’t want to upset you, but there is some bad stuff on the internet,” Mr. Babcock recalled his father saying. Someone, somewhere, had written terrible things online about Guy Babcock and his brother, and members of their 86-year-old father’s social club had alerted him.

Mr. Babcock, a software engineer, got off the phone and Googled himself. The results were full of posts on strange sites accusing him of being a thief, a fraudster and a pedophile. The posts listed Mr. Babcock’s contact details and employer.

The images were the worst: photos taken from his LinkedIn and Facebook pages that had “pedophile” written across them in red type. Someone had posted the doctored images on Pinterest, and Google’s algorithms apparently liked things from Pinterest, and so the pictures were positioned at the very top of the Google results for “Guy Babcock.”

Mr. Babcock, 59, was not a thief, a fraudster or a pedophile. “I remember being in complete shock,” he said. “Why would someone do this? Who could it possibly be? Who would be so angry?”

Then he Googled his brother’s name. The results were just as bad.

He tried his wife.

His sister.

His brother-in-law.

His teenage nephew.

His cousin.

His aunt.

They had all been hit. The men were branded as child molesters and pedophiles, the women as thieves and scammers. Only his 8-year-old son had been spared.

Guy Babcock was about to discover the power of a lone person to destroy countless reputations, aided by platforms like Google that rarely intervene. He was shocked when he discovered the identity of the assailant, the number of other victims and the duration of the digital violence.

This is a truly frightening article. Anybody’s life can be ruined by an anonymous figure using online tools and social media. From a writer’s perspective, that’s actually a plus because a story with this as a central conceit is something which can tap into consumers everywhere.

What if that happened to me?

The article is written from the perspective of the victim, but what if shift the Protagonist to be the person screwing with another person. An additional thought which could make the story even more interesting: What if the perpetrator is someone who lives and/or works in close proximity to the victim? Since the identity of the criminal is unknown, at least for a good part of the story, that means as far as the victim is concerned, it could be anyone around them.

Here’s a take: The Protagonist (Audrey) works at a large insurance company which specializes in medical care. The Victim (Mitchell) is a mid-level management type. Married. Two children. Not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination (his wife Trina works part-time to help make ends meet), the family lives comfortably in a safe suburban community.

Audrey is the assistant of a co-worker (Brett) at the company who is one of Mitchell’s best friends. Their offices are on the same floor and nearby. This affords Audrey a clear view of Mitchell’s comings and goings. In fact, later on it is revealed, she was hired just six months ago after Brett’s previous assistant (Geoff) was forced from his position after a hit-and-run driver bashed into him while jogging. He is paralyzed from the waist down and in long-term physical and psychological therapy.

[Yes, Audrey was the hit-and-run driver.]

Why has Audrey gone to such lengths to become Brett’s assistant? Because she is about to severely mess with Mitchell’s life… and she wants to watch every… single… detail… of his demise.

As it turns out, all Mitchell did was deny insurance coverage for experimental drug treatment for a Stage IV cancer patient. The patient, a woman in her early fifties named McNair later went on to die a slow, painful death.

McNair was Audrey’s mother. She didn’t have to die, at least that’s what Audrey believes. It was only because of some “pencil-pushing pinhead” at the “God damn insurance company” that her mother’s fate was sealed.

And now? “That fucking bastard is going to pay.”

Audrey intends to use the internet and social media to anonymously destroy Mitchell’s marriage… lose his children… all the money in his bank accounts… fired from his job… hounded by police for being the leader of a child pornography ring… on and on and on, Audrey is going to heap abuse onto Mitchell, all via the safety of her keyboard.

As Mitchell’s life goes down the tubes, Audrey is going to watch his demise every step of the way. And once he’s down for the count, she’s got one last piece of the plan to exact revenge for her mother’s death.

There you go, my 11th story idea of the month. And it’s yours. Free! What would YOU do with it?

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10

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.