A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 16

This is the 13th year in a row I’ve run this series in April. Why a story idea each day for the month? Because the best way to come up with a great story idea is to come up with a lot of ideas. And the best way to come up with a lot of ideas is to be proactive in sourcing story ideas.

Today’s story: I’m a professional baby namer: Rich parents pay me $10K to do it for them.

More money than sense?

Expectant parents are paying upward of $1,500 to a “professional baby namer” who picks the perfect moniker for their child.

Taylor A. Humphrey, 33, helped name more than 100 babies in 2020, raking in more than $150,000 from cashed-up couples.

Some panicked parents are even turning over an eye-popping $10,000 so that Humphrey can help them settle on an impeccable name for their offspring.

“If you look at the most popular baby names, it’s such a telltale sign of our cultural values and our aspirations,” Humphrey told The New Yorker in a profile published Monday.

The New York businesswoman — who does not have any children — bills herself as a “passionate writer and storyteller” who is “adept at branding, marketing and social media.”

Okay, if this isn’t the central conceit of a rom-com, I don’t know what is. Some possibilities:

• Our Protagonist (Taylor), the baby-name guru, gets hired by super-wealthy couple to consult with them on best possible name for their soon-to-be born child. Taylor ends up getting pulled in as a marriage counselor, the husband and the wife increasingly relying on Taylor for ad hoc individual therapy sessions, getting our baby-name doula in way over her head.
• Similar setup, only this time, Taylor falls in love with the husband.
• Same thing, only now, Taylor falls in love with the wife.
• An Elon Musk-type hi-tech gazillionaire has hired someone to be the surrogate mother to Musk’s sperm-inseminated child. He hires Taylor because she is the best and agrees to pay her a ridiculous amount of $$ to find the perfect name for the Silicon Valley heir-to-be. Only problem is no name satisfies Musk. Not because he’s dissatisfied with the names, but rather he keeps pushing back because he’s falling in love with Taylor and refuses to settle on a name to keep her around.
• It could be an origin story: A blue-collar Taylor has developed a knack for naming babies amongst her blue-collar friends. Some local TV news reporter does a short piece on Taylor. No big deal, right? Except (again) an Elon Musk-type, whose internet company is a data-mining outfit, hits on the news report. Either he’s married and wants Taylor to help the couple with the baby-naming process. Or he’s single (as above).
• Then there’s the couple version of the story: Taylor is married to Burke. She’s a baby-naming consultant to the rich. She’s also pregnant. But while she can name other babies, she struggles with finding a name for her child. As it turns out, this problem reflects the fact that her marriage is falling apart. Fortunately, she falls in love with an Elon Musk-type single guy…

By the way, it’s a given that the Elon Musk-type character ultimately turns out to be a nice guy.

I’m sure there are multiple other story setups (rom-coms are not my forte), but if this story interests you, I’d jump on it. The NY Post article landed on April 12 and I’m sure somebody is already working on this as the basis of a spec script.

That’s my 16th story in this month’s series. What would YOU do with this setup? Other stories in this year’s A Story Idea Each Day for a Month:

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
Day 15

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.