A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 9

This is the 11th 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.

Initially, I provided a daily explanation about why you should make it a habit to be generating story ideas. This week, I’ll give you some tips on how to come up with stories.

Tip: Look at news sites.

I’ve been demonstrating that in this series, every idea from a news article. While you can surely keep an eye out when reading the NY Times or LA Times, you’d better believe there are plenty of writers already eyeballing those pages. So troll smaller newspapers. Offbeat news sites. Have you ever checked out Weekly World News? I used to subscribe to the print version way back when and actually wrote a spec based on one of their articles: “Couple Adopts the Child From Hell.” Unfortunately, the spec script “Problem Child” beat us by 2 weeks: same premise.

Today’s story: Dan Stoddard believes there is room in the NBA for a 42-year-old rookie.

Dry heaves racked Dan Stoddard’s body as he bent his 6-foot-8, 325-plus-pound frame awkwardly over a toilet, shaking as he vomited up the Gatorade and other fluids he had consumed in an attempt to stave off dehydration. The 39-year-old hadn’t slept well in days, and even when he did manage some shut-eye, it was only for a few hours at a time before beginning the first of his two six-hour shifts driving a bus for Ottawa’s OC Transpo public transit system. Stoddard had never felt this exhausted, but he couldn’t rest — down seven points at halftime, his team needed him.

It only took the first 20 minutes of this early February 2018 game against Seneca, one of the Ontario Colleges Athletic Association’s top teams, for Stoddard to realize his body was fully gassed. Algonquin had lost 10 of its first 14 games, so the final outcome — an 80–71 defeat — was immaterial, but Stoddard had joined the team to finally act on the lifetime of regrets he had accumulated, and he didn’t want to add another disappointment to the ledger.

In September 2017, Stoddard enrolled as a freshman at Algonquin College, one of Canada’s largest public colleges. Not long after, the accounting major joined the basketball team. But Stoddard wasn’t just acting on a whim, a loosely conceived midlife crisis outfitted in size 14 Air Jordan 8s: Stoddard, who is known around campus as “Old Man Dan,” has serious hoop dreams. “You can call it lunacy,” he told me over tea with honey at Tim Hortons on campus. “I’m not saying I’ll make the NBA or go play overseas, but I want to get to a point where I can do it.”

He knew others would think this experiment was crazy — during the Thunders’ preseason schedule, Stoddard heard the laughter from opposing coaches and players — and he even realized that his endeavor reeked of desperation, but he never felt the pull of quitting. “If I’m not talented enough, I can live with that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to put in the effort to be the best player I can be,” he told me. “I don’t want to be wasting time hemming and hawing thinking about it.”

Most of Stoddard’s teammates are at least two decades younger than he is; at first, they thought of him as something of a sideshow, but Stoddard’s commitment to training earned him respect: “They see me on Instagram at the gym at 5 a.m., and they see me in practice every day, and they understand how dedicated I am to the team.”

According to Trevor Costello, Algonquin’s head coach, “All Dan cares about is getting better and better. This fucker is constantly in pain. He sprained his ankle before last Christmas, and after a twelve-hour shift driving a bus, his foot down on the ground the whole time, his foot was the size of a watermelon. He’s just so dedicated. Fuck, if he was a real stud, he’d get us thirty points a game. But he’s working — he’ll be better next year.”

This one seems pretty straightforward: The Natural meets Back to School. Only in this case, our Protagonist (Don) does not have natural God-given talent. What he does have is a zealous belief in his destiny to make it as a pro basketball player. I imagine something like this: He survived a cancer scare. Given a second chance at life, he decides to follow his childhood dream: basketball.

There is the FOOW (Fish Out Of Water) dynamic, an older guy (39) on a collegiate team with dudes half his age.

There is the Officer and a Gentleman dynamic, a coach who wants nothing more than to grind this freak seeking his 15 minutes of fame to a pulp.

There’s a possible love interest.

So you see the movie, right? Well, I’m gonna give it a twist. Let’s gender bend this sucker.

Meet Vicky Oganyan. She is a 40 year-old freshman at Glendale College. Let’s tell her story. Her dream: Playing in the WNBA.

She’s the one who survived cancer and decided it was God’s sign that she pursue her childhood dream.

She’s the one who suffers under the harsh treatment of the college coach intent on squashing this player who he (yes, HE) perceives is making a mockery of the sport.

She’s the one who finds romance in college… a professor… who identifies as female. Now that’s a problem. They’re both 40 years old. In the real world, they could date and fall in love, no problem. Not if Vicky is a student and the professor is her teacher.

There you go, my 9th story idea of the month. And it’s yours. Free! What would YOU do with it?

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8

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.