A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 4

This is the 9th 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…

Scott Myers

04 Apr 2018 • 3 min read

David McGlynn / New York Post

This is the 9th 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:

You can evolve into being a writer-producer.

Let’s face it, you can only write so much. But sitting on your side of the table, all those story meetings you’ve had to endure, you’ve probably developed a pretty good sense of what it takes to be a producer at least on a creative level.

Why not don that hat, too?

A quick way to jump start you producing career: Come up with story ideas. Here’s a great example: “Woogles”, a pitch that sold a while back from writers Nick Antosca and Ned Vizzini. Who is producing the movie? Screenwriter Max Landis (Chronicle) who came up with the story idea for the project that sold.

That could be you.

Today’s story idea: College dropout refuses to leave her dorm room.

She loves the college life — just not the classes.

Hunter College is waging a court battle to evict a stubborn student who refuses to leave her dorm room some two years after dropping out.

Delaware native Lisa S. Palmer — who has not paid rent since 2016 — refuses to leave Room E579 at the school’s 425 E. 25th St. co-ed dormitory, according to an eviction lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.

The 32-year-old “racked up a staggering $94,000 in unpaid residence hall charges on account of her continued occupancy, all the while ignoring Hunter College’s service of additional vacate notices,” said the suit.

While I was reading the article, it felt like the setup for a pretty straight ahead comedy. Maybe she’s unable to leave the room because if she does, the authorities will change the locks on the door.

Maybe she starts a protest, uses social media to garner support. College students start to support her. She becomes a celebrity because of her outspoken tirades. Crowdfunds thousands of dollars, turns the dorm room into party central.

Then I hit the last two lines of the piece:

The college wants to boot a total of nine nurses who were given rooms in various wings of the E. 25th Street building when it was owned by Bellevue Hospital.

The resident nurses include 67-year-old Derek DeFreitas who kept a dormitory room “crash pad” at the address for decades.

That struck me as pretty odd and took me down a psychological thriller, even horror route: College kids in a dorm that’s supposedly haunted, but in actuality, there’s a psycho living in a secret room with a twisted past at the school… in that dorm… a tale of blood and wickedness.

THEN I thought: Senior Citizen College. In the 80s, there was Back to School:

Millionaire businessman Thornton Melon is upset when his son Jason announces that he is not sure about going to college. Thornton insists that college is the best thing he never had for himself, and to prove his point, he agrees to enroll in school along with his son. Thornton is a big hit on campus: always throwing the biggest parties, knowing all the right people, but is this the way to pass college?

But that idea is pretty much blown out of the water for the time being because there’s the upcoming Life of the Party:

When her husband dumps her, longtime dedicated housewife Deanna turns regret into re-set by going back to college — landing in the same class and school as her daughter, who’s not entirely sold on the idea. Plunging headlong into the campus experience, the increasingly outspoken Deanna — now Dee Rock — embraces freedom, fun, and frat boys on her own terms, finding her true self in a senior year no one ever expected.

So, I guess I’ll go with my first instinct: Student forced out of school due to uncivil behavior refuses to leave her dorm room. Now trapped there, it becomes a test of wills between she and the university administration, while a growing worldwide audience witnesses the standoff on social media.

It’s Norma Rae meets Animal House.

There you go: My fourth story idea for the month. And it’s yours. Free!

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3

Each day this month, I invite you to click on RESPONSES and join me to do some further brainstorming. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when you play around with it. These are all valuable skills for a writer to develop.

See you in comments. And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.

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