A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 26

This is the 11th 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: Inmates create a Japanese garden inside the Oregon State Penitentiary.

The inmates’ idea was far-fetched: install a Japanese garden in the shadow of a massive cellblock at the Oregon State Penitentiary.

For one, prison officials wondered, who would pay for it? Who would do the work? Would the elegant elements of a Japanese garden run afoul of the Byzantine rules intended to keep the maximum-security prison safe?

The men persisted.

They became adept at grant-writing, securing nearly $500,000 to fund their idea. They made presentations to corrections staff, potential donors and others, transforming themselves into polished public speakers in the process. They recruited laborers from their own ranks — nearly 180 inmates in all — who worked during the summer to plant trees, move boulders and install elaborate water features.

This week, five years after floating the idea, the men — and the prison officials who signed off on the project — unveiled something extraordinary deep within the grounds of Oregon’s oldest penitentiary: the largest prison garden of its kind in the country.

The world-renowned Japanese garden designer, Hoichi Kurisu, who designed Portland’s famous Japanese garden, provided design services pro bono. And inmates added to the funding from foundations by making monthly donations of $5.00–10.00 a month out of their meager prison incomes to support the project.

Kurisu has a lovely statement about the garden on his website:

The healing garden at OSP has the potential for long-term impact on how justice is defined and rehabilitation achieved.

As Japanese gardens have done for thousands of years, this garden will offer unique opportunities for self-realization, tranquility, and peace. For inmates experiencing depression, anger, stress, and total disconnection from natural elements, recovering a sense of awe and appreciation for nature’s beauty can inspire transformation at the deepest levels.

In this year’s Story Idea Each Day for a Month, I am featuring female lead characters. Therefore, let’s start by gender bending this setup.

The site: A women’s correctional facility. Let’s go with three prisoners at the center of the story: The lead protagonist is African-American (Arianna) and two co-protagonists, one white (Jackie), one Latino (Lara).

Day after day, Arianna stares out her cell window and what she sees is a wall. If she stands atop her bed frame and crooks her neck just so, she can see a tiny slant of green grass. The grass is unused and it taunts her as she gets her daily stretch of time outside in the prison yard.

When she was a youth, she dreamed of becoming an architect. That gave way to a life on the streets, then a lengthy stretch in prison. However, when she visits the library, she is drawn to books about buildings and such.

One day as she was browsing her usual row of books, she found a book on landscape architecture. In it, she found photos of Japanese gardens. The idea struck her immediately: Transform that unused strip of grass into a Japanese garden.

She has to convince Jackie and Lara to support the project as they hold sway over a lot of women in the facility. The three of them pitch the project to the warden. “You can do what you want to try to raise the funds, but you know… nothing’s gonna come of this.”

Two more elements for the setup:

• I think they reach out to the Japanese garden designer featured in the book and he becomes a kind of Mentor figure throughout the process, although he learns as much from them as they from him.
• There is a group of prisoners who oppose the project. Some just don’t see the sense of it, others can’t envision, and one in particular takes on a Nemesis role.

Ultimately, the women succeed and transform that strip of grass into this:

It’s The Shawshank Redemption meets Bridge on the River Kwai, a story of redemption, community, and beauty.

There you go, my 25th story idea of the month. 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
Day 24
Day 25

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.