A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 10

This is the fifth 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: 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: 11 Dating Tips from Ovid’s Ars Amatoria.

Before the days of Match.com and Facebook stalking, singles mixers and even personal ads, there was a love and marriage guide for ancient Romans that rivaled anything Oprah or Dear Abby could have cooked up.

Ovid’s Ars Amatoria is a colorful three-part book on how to catch ’em and keep ’em for both men and women. The author of the Metamorphosis (the mythological record, not the giant cockroach exposé) includes instructions on how to be a gentleman (brush the dust off her robe even if there’s none there), where to meet girls (the theatre, obviously), and even proper dating hygiene (don’t smell like your livestock).

Here are some of those pieces of advice:

The theater is a great place to pick up girls.

Beautiful women were apparently everywhere in the ancient world (if surviving sculpture is anything to go by), but the go-to place for a veritable “galaxy” of beauties was a good play. There, a Roman could find “crowds of lovely women, gaily dressed,” in search of art and culture. And quite possibly scads of bachelors hoping to score before intermission.

Never judge a man, or a woman, by candlelight.

That Adonis or Helen gyrating under the strobe light may be a gorgon under the sunshine the next morning, both in looks and, more importantly, in personality. Ovid warns against an ancient form of drunk goggles as well: “Bringing love and wine together is adding fuel to the fire … If you really want to know what she [or he] is like, look at her by daylight, and when you’re sober.”

Personal hygiene is always important.

Research has found that humans are attracted to each other by hormonal scent patterns, but locker room etiquette suggests that you keep at least some of them under wraps. In addition to avoiding strutting out “reeking like a billy-goat,” keep your clothes, hair, teeth, and nails well-groomed and clean. And trim that nose hair.

Study that Greek and Latin.

Seagoing hero Ulysses was eloquent (as was James Joyce, who appears to also write in ancient Greek), and so fluent in ancient tongues and storytelling that he had two goddesses after him. Studying the “refinements of life” in language and history just might land you your own voluptuous island sorceress like Circe. And who doesn’t find dead languages titillating?

Fortune, and Venus, favor the brave.

Be bold. It helps that the Goddess of Love and all her minions are on your side, but whether your talents lie in translating Latin poetry or unclogging the office paper shredder, you can use them to pursue and woo the one you set your sights on.

Be persistent.

“Love is like warfare … The night, winter, long marches, cruel suffering, painful toil, all these things have to be borne by those who fight in Love’s campaigns … If the ordinary, safe route to your mistress is denied you, if her door is shut against you, climb up on to the roof and let yourself down by the chimney, or the skylight. How it will please her to know the risks you’ve run for her sake! ‘Twill be an earnest of your love.” Just check for burglar alarms first.

Pay your lovers in poetry.

Finally, Ovid says, the best way to flatter, thank, praise, or seduce anyone is by a good piece of homemade literature. Even if you’re too poor to afford anything else, a few heartfelt words will let your beloved know how much you cherish him or her, and how much you’d like to keep hanging around for the long run. And even if you haunt the wrong places, can’t speak Greek, fall through the skylight, or smell like a goat, they’ll have at least one good reason to remember you.

Do you remember the 1984 movie Revenge of the Nerds? Plot summary:

At a big campus, a group of bullied outcasts and misfits resolve to fight back for their peace and self respect.

Eventually these male ‘nerds’ win the day — and the girls — by using their smarts, capped off by their performance at the talent show:

Some months ago when I flagged the article above, I included this note: What if nerd teenagers find this book and use it to guide their attempts at dating… and succeed?

Easy to imagine how they run across ‘Ars Amatoria’: In the Latin Club of which they are the only members. They’re privy to Greek and Roman mythology, how gods and goddesses were getting all sorts of hot celestial love. Who better to learn the ways of amore than from ancient Romans?

What is the modern equivalent of the theater? Perhaps a movie theater.

And maybe they step it up in terms of personal hygiene.

But I think it’s in the areas of persistence, boldness, and using poetry where they could score some points. What girl — or boy — wouldn’t be won over if a suitor kept rhapsodizing over them day after day after day, no matter the humiliation or even bullying, declaring their earnest, deep and thoughtful feelings, compared to say jocks… especially if the suitors drop some Greek and Latin on them.

By boys and girls, I’m thinking… why not have some girl nerds? Why not have some gay nerds?

At the end of the day, the biggest lesson everyone can learn is this one: Never judge a man, or a woman, by candlelight. While at the beginning they may be dazzled by the thin veneer of beauty, what if they learn to look for more authentic and meaningful forms of ‘beauty’ such as empathy, reflection, and friendship?

Okay, so I went a little PC there, however this feels like it has the makings of a good teenage sex comedy.

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

Now it’s your turn. What would you do with this story setup?

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 (hit Reply to join the conversation). And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.

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