A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 25

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: The Ghost Wolves of Galveston Island.

From a distance, the canids of Galveston Island, Texas, look almost like coyotes, prowling around the beach at night, eyes gleaming in the dark.

But look closer and oddities appear. The animals’ bodies seem slightly out of proportion, with overly long legs, unusually broad heads and sharply pointed snouts. And then there is their fur, distinctly reddish in hue, with white patches on their muzzles.

The Galveston Island canids are not conventional coyotes — at least, not entirely. They carry a ghostly genetic legacy: DNA from red wolves, which were declared extinct in the wild in 1980.

For years, these genes have been hiding in plain sight, tucked away in the seemingly unremarkable animals that scavenged for food behind housing developments and roamed the grounds of the local airport.

Their discovery, which came after a determined local resident persuaded scientists to take a closer look at the canids, could help revive a captive breeding program for red wolves and restore the rich genetic variation that once existed in the wild population.

“It doesn’t seem to be lost any longer,” said Bridgett vonHoldt, an evolutionary biologist at Princeton University, referring to the genetic diversity that once characterized red wolves. “We might have a chance to bring it back.”

It was the title of the article that caught my eye: Ghost Wolves. That right there feels like a strong starting point for a movie.

A group of scientists travel to a remote island. Their quest: To find the legendary lobos fantasmas. Thought to carry the DNA of the extinct red wolf, the scientists intend to capture some of the “ghost” wolves, extract blood, work with the DNA, then bring back to life the red wolf.

The problem is, as the locals tell the scientists, the ghost wolves are not to be messed with. All sort of legends exist about the mysterious creatures. They may not even exist as no one has ever captured or even photographed one. But if they do exist, they are possibly responsible for the grizzly deaths of human beings and even more fantastical activities.

Off the scientists go led by the only local loco enough to head off into the deep jungle, the supposed habitat of the ghost wolves. This character provides a subplot: Does she have an ulterior motive and if so, what is it? The scientists have their individual agendas and personalities which leads to conflict as things start to go awry.

The story enters the narrative territory of Predator and Alien as people begin to disappear, then attacked and killed. The wolves can be heard, but damned if they can be seen. Hence… ghosts.

Could it be true that the wolves are reincarnated spirits of an evil tribe which used to inhabit the island thousands of years ago…

There you go, my 25th story in this month’s series. What would YOU do with it? 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
Day 16
Day 17
Day 18
Day 19
Day 20
Day 21
Day 22
Day 23
Day 24

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.