A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 24

This is the 14th 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: To All the Women in Bathroom Lines We’ve Befriended Before.

We may barely remember one another or our pacts of undying friendship, but, in those brief and heavily intoxicated moments, I swear we were infinite.

Grand Banks, 2012

Finding common ground in our dislike of artist boyfriends, we agreed that we’d never again be collateral for someone else’s creative process. Also, that rompers were a terrible idea when we knew we’d be drinking all day. I may have forgotten your name, but I haven’t forgotten how well you pulled off bangs in high humidity.

Some Dive on Avenue C, 2014

Neither of us felt that we really fit in at such a gross bar, although our respective marketing salaries might have suggested otherwise. Thank you for the Purell, and for your almost rabid insistence that we wouldn’t have Craigslist roommates forever. I hope you’re now living the dream with an in-unit washer/dryer.

The Meatball Shop, 2015

When you freaked out at your roommate for ordering weed without budgeting adequate time to finish your drinks and rush home to clean the apartment, I respected that. Hope you got to break out the Hoover and enjoy your purple haze without feeling paranoid about what the dealer thought of your living-room-dust situation.

This is a humorous piece in New Yorker by Sarah Solomon (June 12, 2019). Reading it, I came up with a Slamdance movie. Maybe Sundance. It’s an execution piece (i.e., it all depends upon how the writer handles the characters), but the concept is something that would hook a listener’s attention.

The entire movie takes place in the women’s bathroom of a nightclub. One night. Real time. Characters come and go … and come back again. Some characters we see on a recurring basis including our Protagonist (Chandra). Probably five primary characters with a handful of secondary and an occasional tertiary character who shows up with one line, then gone.

There is gossip. Shit-talking about dates. Drug use. Lots and lots of primping and preening in front of the bathroom’s mirrors. Drunk texting. Checking social media on cellphones. Probably some vomiting. Why not a verbal conflict heats up into an physical altercation? And tears. Surprising confessions. Revelations.

It’s a club set in an urban environment, so there is a wide cross-section of ethnicity and gender identity.

In other words, it’s a cinematic version of a play. A writer who has a great ear for dialogue and knows well the mysteries of what transpires in a women’s bathroom in a pulsating nightclub.

One night. Real time. Everything takes place in a nightclub bathroom.

I’m certainly not the person to write this story.

Maybe you are!

There you go, my 24th story idea of the month. And it’s yours. Free! What would YOU do with it?

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
Day 16
Day 17
Day 18
Day 19
Day 20
Day 21
Day 22
Day 23

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.