A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 15

This is the 10th year in a row I’ve run this series in April. Last week, I provided a daily explanation about why you should make it a habit to generate story ideas. This week, I’ll give you some tips on how to come up with stories.

Tip: Public domain.

Laws vary from country to country, but if a person, event, book is considered to be in the public domain, then from a writer’s perspective, it is free content, you don’t need to secure any rights.

You want to adapt “Romeo and Juliet” into a contemporary gang shoot-em-up love story, you can do that.

You want to turn Abraham Lincoln into a vampire hunter, you can do that.

Straight adaptation, genre bend, gender bend, whatever you want to do, you can do it with a public domain entity. Plus, the added benefit: Pre-awareness. Hollywood likes that. A lot. It’s a plus for their marketing department.

Today’s story: The major league shot he chased his entire life finally arrived. Then it drowned.

Why Brian Mazone? Why, when there have been more than 19,000 players to appear in the major leagues, 750 of them on active rosters at this very instant, tell the story of one of the millions who never did?

Because maybe you remembered the news story from September 2006 — “Rainout kills major debut for 30-year-old rookie,” one headline read — and felt a long pang of sympathy.

Because maybe, years later, you went back and checked to see if he ever made it back to the majors — and he didn’t. Because maybe you thought that summed up something about baseball and life and regret and the awful randomness of it all, and you needed to explore what that something is.

Because maybe, now 12 years later, the story still hadn’t left you, and you wondered how the guy, after all this time, processed his cruel fate without letting it crush him, and so you called him up, and Brian Mazone, now 42, graying and working in medical-supplies sales, answered.

“Every now and then, sitting on the couch, watching MLB Network, I always have that — not regret exactly, not any sort of animosity,” he said. “It’s more like, ‘Dang, what if I did get in that game, and what if I’d put up six [scoreless innings]?’ Just what-if, I guess.”

Mazone’s one opportunity to pitch in a Major League Baseball game was washed away by a rainstorm. When asked about that experience, Mazone replied, ““I hate the rain.”

Regret is one of the most powerful of human emotions. It’s one thing to regret having done something wrong. Or not seizing an opportunity. But to have the chance right there only to have it yanked away… and never return…

That is the stuff of some powerful regret.

This story has a good movie association: Bull Durham. A beloved sports movie which was released decades ago, yet still lives in the minds of moviegoers. That’s a plus for this potential project.

Then there’s Moneyball which turned out to be a hit. It also deals with baseball and regret.

Is there a story that is similar but different enough to warrant a movie?

Here is where I landed in my brainstorming: A former minor league baseball player. Living in a mobile home. In the desert. Way in the desert. Wants to get as far away from rain as possible. Deep negative associations with precipitation.

His life… pretty dissipated. He’s just making do. What if his job is to deliver beer to bars? He drives a truck. Wheels in kegs of brew. One backwater taproom after another. Day after day. His nights spent drinking away his income and hitting on waitresses and barmaids.

Something happens. What if…

• The principal of a nearby high school recruits him to coach their feeble baseball team?
• One of the bars he frequents wrangles him to join their softball team?
• A woman shows up with a young girl in tow, claiming that the child is the result of a one-night stand when our guy was playing in some backwater town in the South?

Something needs to happen. Something that forces the Protagonist to lean into and confront how the fickle finger of fate fucked him over. And at some point deep into the movie…

It needs to rain.

There you go: My fifteenth story idea for the month. And it’s yours. Free!

Here are links for all the previous posts 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
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14

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.