A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2017)

An annual series I run every April: 30 story ideas I collect from news sources over the course of the year. These ideas are free for you to use, but more importantly, the series is a reminder about how important the story’s central concept is to the success of an original screenplay. Remember: The best way to come up with a great story idea is to generate a lot of them. Here are links to each of this month’s story idea posts:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17
Day 18
Day 19
Day 20
Day 21
Day 22
Day 23
Day 24
Day 25
Day 26
Day 27
Day 28
Day 29
Day 30

Frankly there are a number of ideas in this list I considered writing myself and if I weren’t a university professor full-time, I probably would have pulled the trigger. What that should tell you is this: There are some damn good ideas here. And if you can’t find something in this roster of concepts, how about links to the 7 previous years I’ve run this series?

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2010)
A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2011)
A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2012)
A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2013)
A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2014)
A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2015)
A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2016)

Unless they’ve changed math while I wasn’t looking that’s 30 times 8 equals 240 story ideas.

But again the most important takeaway: You should be generating story ideas regularly in order to maximize the chances when you sit down to write a script, you’re working with the strongest story concept possible.