A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 1

This is the fourth 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. For today, the most basic one:

If you have aspirations of becoming a professional screenwriter, you should be in the habit of generating story concepts.

Let’s say you write and sell a spec script. Congratulations. You’re the “flavor-of-the-week.” Your agent and manager set up meetings across Hollywood with producers and studio execs. The first words out of their mouths will likely be some variation of “Love your script ” (even if they haven’t really read it). The second thing they say will almost assuredly be, “What else have you got?” If you haven’t been developing other stories, that is likely to be a very short meeting.

There are many ways to generate story ideas. This month, I focus on one: Looking for ideas in news sources. Each of the items I’ll be posting for the next 30 days comes from a news site.

Today’s story idea: Creeped Out Yet? Private Prison Transports Roaming Around U.S.

Geo Corp is a world-wide privately owned prison operation. According to the company’s own history, it obtained its first prison contract in 1987, holding 150 immigration prisoners in Aurora, Colorado.

The company, operating though various subsidiaries, expanded to run prisons in various states in the U.S. as well as Australia, the United Kingdom and South Africa. The company fared well under both Democratic and Republican administrations, and came to be operating not only prisons, but also a drug rehabilitation center and a psychiatric hospital, all for profit derived solely from the public fisc, through the magic of crony capitalism.

By 2005, the company was holding over 48,000 people in various forms of custody. In 2007, the company set up Geo Transport, which moves prisoners from facility to facility throughout the United States.

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Originally transport was effected by federal employees. Now Geo Transport has taken over that task. The typical route from Oregon is simply north from Portland up to Tacoma on I-5.

Essentially with Geo Transport, a person accused of an immigration violation would spend very little time in ICE custody and almost the entire time in the custody of the private corporation.

Note the metal bars across the windows.

Okay, let’s stop right there. A bus filled with prisoners. Run by a private corporation. What can we do that idea?

* What if the corporation finds it more financially beneficial to keep the prisoners perpetually in buses, a permanent state of purgatory? What impact would that have on the prisoners? How might they react?

* What if the bus crashes in a small rural community, suddenly flooded with dozens of hardened criminals?

* What if a rogue prison official who goes off the deep end ‘kidnaps’ the bus to… what? Ransom? Free the prisoners in exchange for their help in ransacking a town?

* What if a grieving relative of a murder victim gathers members of his family to stop a bus full of prisoners in order to do vigilante justice on the killer?

Feels like an action-thriller, right? What would you do with this story conceit?

There you go: My first story idea for the month. And it’s yours. Free!

Each day this month, I invite you to join me in comments to do some brainstorming. Gender bend, genre bend, what if. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when we play around with it. These are all valuable skills for a writer to develop.

See you in comments. And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.

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