A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 2
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…
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 through during this series of posts.
Here’s another one: The only way to find a great story idea is to work your way through a bunch of crap ideas.
Ira Glass (“This American Life”), arguably one of the most knowledgeable people around today re storytelling, said this:
“You have to record and get rid of a lot of crap before you find something special.”
Same thing with screenwriting: You have to generate a bunch of crappy ideas before you find something special. Still don’t believe me? How about the wisdom of Linus Pauling:
“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.”
Linus Pauling should know, one of the few people to win multiple Nobel Prizes.
So why focus on generating a bunch of story ideas? Because most of the ones you come up with will be crap. However somewhere along the line, you’ll find some that a pure gold.
Today’s story idea: 7 Chinese Girlfriends Buy Huge House Where They Will Retire and Die Together.
A group of seven girlfriends in southeastern China purchased a dream home as part of their pact to retire and die together in the future.
What started as a joke among the friends in 2008 has now become a reality in the 700-square meter (7,535-square foot) house in suburban Guangzhou, Guangdong province.
“We’ve known each other for over 20 years,” says the video’s narrator, who notes that their ages span about 10 years. “We were colleagues, and sometimes we are even closer than siblings.”
The three-and-a-half-story estate is surrounded by paddy fields. It features shared space on the ground floor and individual bedrooms for each of the ladies on the upper level.
Highlights include huge tatami mats for group hangs, a tea room, furniture collected in India and Morocco, and, of course, a long dining table for group meals. Outside there is a swimming pool and even an airy tea pavilion connected via a bamboo walkway.
What to do with this conceit: A group of female friends buy a retirement dream house together. Let’s do a bit of star-casting here.
What if three longtime friends pool together all of their financial resources to remodel a broken down house, but one with lots of history and character. Beautiful location. A kind of Eden environment.
Maybe the three are each divorced or at least, each has had some bad relationships, maybe even one with a same gender partner (to provide some variety for the characters).
My original inclination was they had been living in the place for a while, long enough to have done quite a bit of the remodeling themselves, when some awful neighbors move in next door.
But then, I thought of this movie:
What if the story begins with the three relocating to the house, but soon determine the remodel is beyond their skill levels. So they hire a handyman:
He’s a one-man genius when it comes to remodeling and handiwork. He’s also quite the lothario and the sexual tension transforms the friendship of the three women into a contentious affair until…
They discover that the dude has got some sort of ulterior motive which involves fleecing the women out of the rest of their savings and ownership of the house. That’s when the women go into revenge mode like:
But get in over their heads like this:
There you go: My second story idea for the month. And it’s yours. Free!
What would you do with this story concept?
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.