A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 11

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: 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: “Meet ‘Bionic Teen’ From UK Who Feels No Pain, Hunger Or Fatigue Due To Rare Disorder.”

A young girl in the United Kingdom has been nicknamed “bionic” after she was hit and dragged by a car but calmly got up and walked off afterwards. The accident took place in 2016 when she was only seven years old. As per the doctors, she has a genetic condition so unique she may be the only person in the world with the symptoms, as per a report in Huffington Post. The teenager, Olivia Farnsworth, has a rare chromosome condition known as chromosome 6 deletion, which does not make her feel pain, hunger or fatigue.

Her mother, Niki Trepak had said at that time that she had no “sense of danger”. “Doctors have called her the bionic girl, she’s made of steel. She’s got no sense of danger. She got run over and dragged down the street by a car and she didn’t complain,” she added.

“She was dragged about ten car lengths down the road. It was horrendous, I don’t think it’s something I will ever get over. I was screaming and all my other children were screaming as she ran out But Olivia was just like, ‘What’s going on?’ She just got up and started walking back to me. The hospital said she’s bionic. Because of the impact she should have had severe injuries. She had a tyre mark on her chest. But her only injuries were she had no skin on her toe or her hip. The doctors were busy giving her CT scans, x-rays, trying to find injuries but there was nothing. She was really lucky. The doctors think what saved her from injury was she didn’t tense up,” she continued.

My mind immediately goes to the movie Hanna:

Plot summary: A sixteen-year-old girl who was raised by her father to be the perfect assassin is dispatched on a mission across Europe, tracked by a ruthless intelligence agent and her operatives.

In this story, our “bionic girl” gets pulled in for medical testing, then is surreptitiously snared and taken away from her family to points unknown.

What follows is a cross-cut between storylines: The attempt to locate the girl … and the girl being used by the equivalent of the CIA to assassinate…

Gang leaders.
Loan sharks.
Minions.
Political operatives.

Worse, our bionic girl must do what The Powers That Be demand she do or else turned over to the authorities.

What will this “bionic girl” do?

Tune in next time when some writer takes hold of this concept, pounds a draft, does several revision, then after several rejections finally gets the project set up.

There’s my story concept for Day 10. Your turn! 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
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.