A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 12
This is the 13th 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…
This is the 13th 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 Craigslist.
DreamWorks bought this pitch based on Craigslist ads.
There is this musical based on Craigslist ads.
There was this TV movie based on a Craigslist story.
Now something proactive you can do for your writing career while searching for a used barbell set.
Three Oklahoma sisters were recently sentenced to prison over a plot to shoot one of their ex-partners because of a child custody dispute.
Tierzah Mapson, 29, gave birth to the child in question in 2013. In 2014, a North Carolina court gave her physical custody with the father granted visitation rights subject to amendment by both parties.
Somewhere along the way, the contours of that court order and the concomitant visitation schedule apparently didn’t work anymore.
On June 18, 2018, the child’s mother and her two sisters, Elisa Mapson, 25, and Charis Mapson, 33, lured the child’s father and his wife to the parking lot of Barbara Ann’s Place, a convenience store in rural Eldridge, Alabama. Tierzah Mapson had promised to hand over the shared child to her ex-romantic partner there. But the temporary custody exchange, scheduled to last all of two weeks, never did occur.
The setting of the would-be swap and eventual scene of the crime was agreed upon as something of a neutral halfway point between the victims’ home in Tampa, Fla. and the defendants’ homes in Tulsa, Okla.
According to their federal indictment, the three sisters used their cellular phones “to communicate and coordinate efforts to accomplish the objectives of the conspiracy,” including a series of “false text communications” that kept the victims at the convenience store for over four hours as Tierzah Mapson “repeatedly engaged in false text communications with” the victims in order to “lull them into remaining” at the store as her sisters got into position for the attack.
Notably, Charis Mapson is a former Marine with, what the federal government calls, a “skill level in rifle marksmanship.” During the early morning hours on the day of the attack, Elisa Mapson texted her former service member sister what the government called the following words of encouragement: “It’s just Halo.” The government described that as “an apparent reference to a first-person shooter video game” of the same name.
When I saw this headline, my mind immediately went to this movie:
I, Tonya (2017): Competitive ice skater Tonya Harding rises amongst the ranks at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, but her future in the activity is thrown into doubt when her ex-husband intervenes.
“Intervenes” is an understatement. The ex-husband brutally assaults one of Tonya’s ice skater competitors.
The concept of three sisters attempting to murder one of their ex-husbands and his new wife has that “similar but different” angle Hollywood has embraced for decades. Granted, it doesn’t have the notoriety of the Tonya Harding case, but it does have two things going for it:
- Three Protagonists instead of one.
- Attempted murder instead of breaking a victim’s leg.
One thing the two stories do have in common: Comedy. I, Tonya is in my view a satire on America’s obsession with fame. I can see a similar approach to tone, only instead of fame as a central theme, what about this: What binds together these three women, apart from their connection as sisters, is that in reflecting about their lives, they are confronted by an existential question: Is this all there is?
- Sister 1: The mother of the child at the center of the conflict with her ex-husband is stuck being a single parent. She struggles to get by financially, working two jobs just to make ends meet. And even though her sisters help out as caretakers of the child, there is that relentless reality that goes with being a parent: It never ends.
- Sister 2: An ex-Marine, let’s say she served in combat in Afghanistan. Back home now for several years, she has never made the adjustment to “normal” life. She’s run through several boyfriends and jobs, unable to settle down. In fact, she secretly yearns for combat because that was exciting, living on the edge, the presence of potential death providing an intensity to existence she is unable to replicate back home.
- Sister 3: The quiet one, a middle child. Her older sister went off to fight in a war. Her younger sister got pregnant when she was a teenager which drew substantial attention to her plight. This sister has gotten lost in the shuffle. Often overlooked and her opinion, when rarely offered, ignored, she is a boiling cauldron of anger and resentment, deeply repressed with nowhere to go to express her true feelings.
All three are stuck in a lower-middle class existence, living in a shitty town in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma, absolutely zero prospects of elevating themselves out of their respective mundane dead end lives.
While the prospect of whacking Sister 1’s ex-husband and his wife seemed absurd when first raised during a late night drinking session, the idea begins to take root simply because it is something to do. It makes their lives more interesting and provides something exciting in their otherwise dreary existence.
Does the story lead up to the assault in Act Three? Is the story told in flashbacks framed around a court case where the narrative is stitched together through the defendant’s testimony? Is there a Rashomon dynamic in which we see the story played out through the different perspectives of the three characters? Are the women already in prison and the story is told through the perspective of a documentary filmmaker?
There’s a bunch of different ways to approach this story, but I like the idea that the answer to the audience’s central question — Why in the world did these three women set out to kill an ex-husband and his wife — is simply this: They were bored.
My 12th story idea this month. If you like it, do with it what you will. It’s YOURS. And it’s free!
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
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.