A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 10
This is the third year in a row I’ve run this series in April. Last week 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 #2: Look at magazines.
I love magazines. Or at least I used to. Before at one point, I had over 30 subscriptions! [Now I’m down to 2: The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books].
The thing is if you’re trolling magazines for possible story ideas, you have to avoid the biggies like People, US, Time, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, GQ, Esquire, and so on. You can be sure that Hollywood studios and producers cover those regularly. Indeed more and more magazine writers tailor their stories as possible movie projects.
No, you need to dig deeper and go wider with your research into magazines. Fast Company, Smithsonian, New Scientist are some good ones.
Then think regional like Southern Living. Or foreign like Der Spiegel. Or really odd like Miniature Donkey Talk Magazine.
Again there are plenty of story ideas out there, especially in magazines. You just have to look for them.
Today’s story idea is similar but different to yesterday’s story about dating: Second Love at First Click:
NATALIE FRIEND, a marketing contractor at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., was 65 and twice divorced when she decided to try online dating. “My daughter met her husband,” she explained, “my friend’s son met his wife, my cousin met her husband — all online.”
She said she was looking for a “playmate” when she joined SeniorPeopleMeet.com, not husband №3. But a couple of months and $14.95 later, she met Mr. Right.
Make that Mr. Wright. Frederick Wright, 74, was twice widowed and living in Virginia Beach. He joined SeniorPeopleMeet.com to find a companion who, like him, enjoyed travel and the arts. In October 2009, Ms. Friend met him for dinner. He was a bit older than she desired. But he loved opera. He seemed honest. And he had just sailed his boat around the world. The date lasted six hours.
Ten months later, Ms. Friend and Mr. Wright married at the Boxwood Inn in Newport News, Va.
“At our age,” she said, “you don’t have much time to waste.”
If you think online dating is the domain of the young, maybe it’s time to check in with your mother. Now, people 55 and older are visiting American dating sites more than any other age group — up 39 percent in the last three years, according to the Internet tracking firm Experian Hitwise. The №2 group? Singles 45 to 54. According to IBISWorld, a market research firm, and the United States Census Bureau, about 37 percent of people 50 and older are unmarried. And the divorce rate among the 50-plus demographic is high. With so many older Americans unattached, living independently into their later years, and increasingly comfortable using the Internet, they, too, are logging on for love.
Here are some facts:
* Baby Boomers are a huge demographic group.
* Baby Boomers have more disposable income of any demographic group in the U.S.
* Baby Boomers are obsessively self-absorbed.
* Baby Boomers grew up with movies and still love them.
* Baby Boomers are the fastest growing demo group to use online dating services.
I have been making this point the entire time I’ve run GITS as I did here. In fact, I contend if some mini-major had the balls enough to focus their development slate targeting Baby Boomers, they would succeed [assuming they made good movies].
So this story idea seems like ripe one, especially with the success of movies like It’s Complicated which did $219M in worldwide box office, a movie that basically was about a Baby Boomer dating.
I’m thinking you channel your inner Richard Curtis and come up with a great ensemble rom-com with the hook being a dating service for Boomers. Check out the possible cast here.
Or you know what: You can even skew older. Yes, I thinking counterintuitive here, but Cocoon meets Love Actually? A bunch of cute old folks trying to find love in their seventies, even eighties. Bette White! Andy Griffith! There’s a start right there.
Think of it as counter-programming if you will. But I bet someone is going to do this movie.
Maybe you.
Tomorrow: Another story idea.
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