A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 3
This is the 15th 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 my…
This is the 15th 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 my through during this series of posts. Here’s another one:
Being able to generate original story ideas sets you apart from writers who can’t.
Some writers can do it. Others can’t. The latter is resigned to doing adaptations, rewrites or taking a preexisting idea and writing that.
If you can develop solid skills at generating good story ideas, you give yourself a leg-up on your competition creating another opportunity to land writing gigs.
Today’s story idea: Inside the mystery of O.C.’s ghost town mall.
The lights are on and the stores are open, but it’s quiet — not a soul in sight — as if people had only enough time to flee whatever befell this place. A faint smell of sewage drifts through the air. Escalators are frozen. The lower levels of the parking garage are sterile and lifeless — a liminal space of flickering lights and zero cars.
But it’s not a scene from the post-apocalypse. It’s Mission Viejo, year 2025, at Kaleidoscope, the loneliest living mall in Southern California.
Mall culture is still thriving in parts of Southern California, where supercenters such as South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, the Grove in L.A., Fashion Valley in San Diego, and Westfield Century City draw tens of millions of shoppers annually. Others, such as Laguna Hills Mall and Brea Mall, faded in the era of internet shopping and are being converted into mixed-use spaces.
But there aren’t many places like Kaleidoscope, which never quite found its footing over the course of 27 years but has refused to die.
On a Tuesday afternoon in March, no more than a handful of people wander through the 243,000-square-foot complex on Crown Valley Parkway, looming over Interstate 5. Some are moviegoers heading to the Regal Theater attached to the mall. Most are employees heading to staff empty shops and restaurants that likely won’t see a customer for hours.
There are businesses aplenty, but no customers.
“It’s a ghost town,” said Sarah Akers. “This place is unbelievable.”
There were signs of life in the eerie, empty space, but no real proof. TVs played ESPN above the bar, but there was no bartender in sight. A faucet dripped a steady stream of water at a kitchen restaurant, but there were no staffers. Unplayable games sat in the corner: a cornhole set with no bags, a ping-pong table with a broken net and a foosball table with a sign asking patrons to bring their own balls.
Akers, who lives nearby, said her friends recently visited and told her the place feels abandoned, so she stopped by to check it out for herself.
“As a mall, it’s terrible. But as a study of entropy and deterioration, it’s amazing,” she said.
Here’s my setup: Five teenagers. Same high school. Different cliques. They wake up. Inside a mall. Deserted.
They barely know each other. Think The Breakfast Club in 2025. But there’s some supernatural shit going on.
How did they get there? Why were they unconscious? Why them? No one remembers anything.
They try to leave. Exits are either chained shut or they have those roll-down metal security walls.
Cell phones? Apparently taken from them by … whoever. In fact, no personal belongings. It’s a freaky situation.
Then the murders begin to happen.
Sure, there was the 1986 movie Chopping Mall: A group of young shopping mall employees stay behind for a late night party in one of the stores. When the mall goes on lock-down before they can get out, the robot security system malfunctions, and goes on a killing spree.
No robots in our story. Instead, it’s supernatural.
GHOST MALL!
There you go: My third story idea for the month. And it’s yours. Free!
What would you do with this story concept?
Previous articles in this year’s series:
Here are links to previous series:
A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2017)
A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2018)
A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2019)
A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2020)
A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2021)
A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2022)
A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2023)
A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2024)
Note: The articles from 2010–2016 have corrupted URLs. I am in the process of cleaning those up.
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.