A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 8

This is the 13th 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 always need more than one in your gun.

Want that explained? Go here to read a Business of Screenwriting post.

Today’s story idea: The remarkable brain of a carpet cleaner who speaks 24 languages.

“So, how many languages do you speak?”

“Oh goodness,” Vaughn says. “Eight, fluently.”

“Eight?” Kelly marvels.

“Eight,” Vaughn confirms. English, Spanish, Bulgarian, Czech, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian and Slovak.

“But if you go by like, different grades of how much conversation,” he explains, “I know about 25 more.”

Vaughn glances at me. He is still underselling his abilities. By his count, it is actually 37 more languages, with at least 24 he speaks well enough to carry on lengthy conversations. He can read and write in eight alphabets and scripts. He can tell stories in Italian and Finnish and American Sign Language. He’s teaching himself Indigenous languages, from Mexico’s Nahuatl to Montana’s Salish. The quality of his accents in Dutch and Catalan dazzle people from the Netherlands and Spain.

In a city where diplomats and embassies abound, where interpreters can command six-figure salaries at the State Department or the International Monetary Fund, where language proficiency is résumé rocket fuel, Vaughn was a savant with a secret.

I saw this story recently and this is what immediately came to mind:

Good Will Hunting is about a math savant. What if we switched out the Protagonist and made them a hyperpolyglot. As a thought experiment, why not switch out the gender (non-binary) and ethnicity (mixed race such as Black and Latino). The idea they are “fluid” in terms of their gender and racial composition could dovetail nicely with their ability to be “fluid” with language, able to shift on a dime from one to another.

My first thought was to hew closely to Good Will Hunting in this respect: Our Protagonist (let’s call them Leona) is discovered by an authority figure who becomes fascinated by this “case.” For our purposes, let’s make that character a scientist (Dr. Gretchen Artest) who studies the brains of savants. Her working theory is if science can learn about cranial function in the brains of exceptional individual, it could become possible to train or medically manipulate normal people to tap into and use a greater portion of their intellectual potential.

In fact, we could combine three characters from Hunting into one with our character Artest: Lambeau (expert), Sean (shrink), Skylar (love interest). What if Artest eventually falls in love with Leona?

But then I started to feel like this approach would come across as too obvious. Which is when I recalled this about the backstory of Good Will Hunting:

The original version of Good Will Hunting and the one that would eventually end up getting produced both centered on a brilliant kid from South Boston, but the former also had a spy thriller subplot involving the NSA. In Boston Magazine’s oral history, Ben Affleck compared the feel of the original story to something along the lines of Beverly Hills Cop or Midnight Run with the main characters giving the spy agency the slip throughout.

When Rob Reiner’s Castle Rock purchased the rights to the screenplay in 1994, however, the director of When Harry Met Sally and Stand By Me gave the future Hollywood stars a choice: go with the spy angle or stick with the story about a young math genius and his therapist. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck decided to abandon the spy angle, which caused them to replace 60 pages of material.

Why not run with the spy angle? What if the CIA or some foreign intelligence agency (or perhaps corporate espionage) scoops up Leona precisely because of their unique ability to understand, speak, and write in over 100 languages (why not blow out this character’s capabilities). Why?

My mind went to something like this: There is a document. Or a visual or audio file. It has a message. But it is coded. As far as the experts know, every individual letter or sound derives from a different language. They have reason to believe that this message is [fill in the blank important]. Whatever the stakes are, they are huge. Plus, let’s throw in a ticking clock: they have to break the code soon or else [fill in the blank bad shit] will happen.

Final setup element: What if there are competing agencies, each trying to ensnare Leona to break the code, each with their own morally unsettled agenda? Thus, this linguistic savant, someone who finds comfort in doing a rather mindless job (like cleaning carpets) finds their life to be thrown into chaos when they are scooped up by authority figures to help them break the code. They escape. And now they are on the run. Which brings to mind one of my favorite 70s thrillers Three Days of the Condor.

While trying to escape from those in pursuit, Leona resorts to using their “superpower” (i.e., language skills) to outwit the Bad Guys.

And there’s your story setup. By the way, here is a video with Vaughan Smith, the hyperpolyglot featured in the original article.

I leave today’s story idea at this juncture. My 8th story idea this month. If you like it, do with it what you will. It’s YOURS. And it’s free!

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7

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.