A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 6
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:
Around 1990, writer Stephen Brill came up with this idea: “A self-centered lawyer is sentenced to community service coaching a rag tag youth hockey team.” That eventually became the movie The Mighty Ducks. That seemingly innocuous family comedy grossed $51M, not bad for a movie with a reported $10M budget.
Then came D2: The Mighty Ducks. Then D3: The Mighty Ducks. Then “Mighty Ducks”, a TV series. Then Mighty Ducks the Movie: The First Face-Off, a DTV animated movie. And then came this:
The Anaheim Ducks [formerly the Anaheim Mighty Ducks]. An NHL franchise. A professional franchise worth an estimated $188M.
All based on the fact that one day, a writer was walking around and came up with a story idea about a youth hockey team named the Mighty Ducks.
As I said… in Hollywood, story ideas are worth gold.
Today’s story idea: “Grainy Pic Was Only Clue in 40-Year-Old Cold Case — Until Now.”
It took two missed Sunday phone calls for Reeves K. Johnson III’s family to worry about him.
The 31-year-old had recently moved to Kittery, Maine, where he got a welding job and rented a cabin. An art lover with long brown hair who enjoyed reading and playing his guitar, Johnson was known in his family as someone who didn’t waste his words, especially about his private life. But he rarely missed a Sunday phone call to his family and wrote short letters every two weeks.
“My parents tried Reeves after they got home from their Bermuda trip in February of 1983,” his sister Sally Swartz told The Daily Beast this week. “But we couldn’t get a hold of him. He was not the type of person to just go off and vanish. He wouldn’t go off the grid.”
Johnson’s parents called the police to check the cabin, but officers found no sign of Johnson or his belongings. Weeks later, an unknown stranger picked up his last paycheck from a post office box.
“That was our only clue,” Swartz said.
A clue that led nowhere.
For four decades, Johnson’s disappearance has remained as vexing a mystery as it was in 1983. There is no body, much less a suspect. Police have no idea where he went after finishing his last morning shift at Donnelly Manufacturing on Feb. 3, 1983.
But thanks to a reinvigorated investigation and a true-crime podcast series, there is finally new information in the Kittery Police Department’s only missing person’s case.
True crime stories are hot. Hot enough to be popular even on TikTok. So, why not dive into those murky, mysterious waters?
With the success of the TV series Only Murders in the Building…
… and knowing that Hollywood’s business ethos for decades has been similar but different, here is my story setup based on the article cited above.
Sophie is a young woman with a marginally popular true crime podcast. It generates some income, but not enough to live on. Working as a barista to supplement revenue is not only irksome, it also prevents Sophie from her research as she desperately attempts to find a great unsolved murder case.
Then one falls in her lap.
A text from an unknown phone number. She responds. Receives a grainy photograph from decades ago. “This is the killer of Raymond Hooker.”
A final text with a phone number. She calls. It’s the police department in a small woodsy town about ninety minutes away.
Sophie does some research and discovers some lurid details about this missing person’s case.
So, she quits her job as a barista, loads up her beat-to-shit Subaru with recording gear, and heads off to the rural burg of Two Knobs.
That’s right. A quirky community which is the second cousin to Twin Peaks.
On the surface, a seemingly normal small town community. But person Sophie meets feels like they have something else going on … something illicit … maybe even …
Evil.
As she digs deeper and deeper into the investigation. Apparently, some unknown individual had approached Sophie (the mysterious texts) for a reason … one which puts Sophie square on a path toward her own demise.
Call the movie an “homage” to Twin Peaks.
There you go, my 6th story idea of the month. And it’s yours. Free! What would YOU do with it?
Previous articles in this year’s series:
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.