A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 4

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:

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.

Today’s story idea: How a Network of Amateur Sleuths Helps Rescue Women Kidnapped by ISIS.

The investigator’s eyes dart between the two photographs. In one, a young girl, maybe 10, is wearing a colorful shirt, her hair loose. In the other, a woman, her face weathered to an indeterminate age and framed by a black hijab, stares into the camera.

The first picture is among hundreds of images of young girls sent in by families desperate to find loved ones who were kidnapped years ago, when militants from the Islamic State first roared to power in Iraq and Syria. The pictures of older women come in from a variety of sources.

The woman examining the photographs has become skilled at finding the telling detail that might help confirm an identity — and lead to someone’s freedom. But she is not a professional investigator. Her name is Pari Ibrahim, and by day she is the executive director of a nonprofit in suburban Maryland.

At night, by the glow of a laptop screen, she scours the photos, hoping to locate women taken captive as long as a decade ago.

“Sometimes, late at night, I’m working to see if this girl is someone who can be identified,” said Ms. Ibrahim as she compared the two photographs, searching the faces for any hint — the bow of the lips, perhaps, or a telltale mole — that she might be looking at the same person.

“Ten years brings a lot of change into someone’s face and appearance,” she said. “It’s not easy.”

The missing people are all members of a religious minority, the Yazidi, who were a particular focus of the brutal campaign of terror that ISIS, also known as the Islamic State, launched in 2014. In the years that followed, according to a United Nations commission, the militants murdered, enslaved, raped and tortured at will. Some 3,100 Yazidis were killed and 6,800 kidnapped in August 2014 alone, one study estimates.

What a terrible tragedy this is. Perhaps this story would be best served as a documentary. If one were to do a live-action feature film, why not focus on one person’s unending pursuit of a loved one kidnapped months, maybe years ago.

There is a saying about storytelling: Find the universal in the specific. The saga of a father or mother seeking to rescue a daughter or son is a story that could speak to every parent. A true underdog tale.

Use cinema to highlight the plight of the Yazidi community which has suffered so much.

And maybe with a story in which there is a successful rescue, it could provide a bit of hope in a world where optimism comes in short supply.

Previous articles in this year’s series:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3

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.