A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 29

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: She found a secret passage hidden in her home. It led to long-lost love letters.

HENRICO COUNTY, Va. — “Home is where the heart is” is a phrase that certainly applies to Anna Prillaman’s home on Monument Avenue in Henrico.

Prillaman is most happy relaxing in her Near West End house with her dog Alfie.

“It is like my passion project. When I first saw it I fell in love with it,” Prillaman said about her home. “I care about the house similar to the people I love. I love this place.”

Her 67-year-old Cape was bought with good bones. What Anna didn’t realize was her pride and joy also came furnished with a mystery.

During an early round of spring cleaning, she discovered a hidden panel leading to part of the attic.

“I realized there was a door. It is not a door that had a key or anything it was just latched at the top,” Prillaman said.

Inside a fortune stashed away by a previous owner.

“I am an 80s baby, so I watched ‘Goonies.’ So as I’m rummaging through the attic I’m thinking there could be treasure back here, could be a map, there could be gold coins,” she said.

It wasn’t gold nor a bag of cash, but two boxes stuffed with gems from a bygone time.

Hand-written letters. Hundreds of them sent to a young woman named Betty Sue in Richmond.

— —

Prillaman couldn’t bring herself to toss the bundle of missives.

“But upon glancing at these, it was clear [they] needed to be in the right hands and I needed to figure out how I was going to find that,” Prillaman said.

She turned to a most modern way of corresponding — social media.

— —

Days later, that work paid off with a potential lead. With fingers crossed Prillaman reached out to a man named Dalton Long.

He lived 3,000 miles away in Portland, Oregon.

“I put my cell phone in an email and it wasn’t 30 minutes later and he texted me and said, “I would love them,’” Prillaman said.

Dalton Long knew Betty and Vance quite well. Dalton said the couple went from writing each other to exchanging vows. Their marriage lasted 50.

Dalton is their grandson.

In adapting this story as a movie, here are two things you would have to put considerable time and thought to:

• Complications, twists and turns: The journey in discovering the rightful heir to the letters would have to be fraught with roadblocks and reversals. This is not only about creating a story big enough to be a movie, but also this…
• The Protagonist’s inner journey: The story’s lead character needs to go on a journey of her own. Whatever form that outer journey takes (for example, she could take off on a road trip to hand deliver the letters to the grandson), it needs to fundamentally be about an inner journey.

In other words, what does the journey in locating the grandson mean in terms of the Protagonist’s own life?

Of course, you could go another route entirely: The Protagonist discovers this hidden doorway which leads to some sort of magical land.

But that’s another story!

There you go, my 29th 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
Day 25
Day 26
Day 27
Day 28

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.