A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 11

This is the eighth 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: Halliwell’s Film Guide.

This is based on the anecdote I heard about Woody Guthrie. Having written 4,000 songs in his life, he was asked how he came up with so many melodies. His answer: “Well, I take a melody I like, and I change it a lil’ here, and change it a lil’ there, and I make it my own.”

Same thing with Halliwell’s. You can read a post I wrote about it all the way back in November 2008, how you can read through the 24,000 movie listings — each with a logline — then gender and genre-bend your life to creative bliss.

Today’s story: Inside Japan’s booming rent-a-friend industry.

It’s muggy and I’m confused. I don’t understand where I am, though it was only a short walk from my Airbnb studio to this little curry place. I don’t understand the lunch menu, or even if it is a lunch menu. I’m new in Tokyo, and sweaty, and jet-lagged. But I am entirely at ease. I owe this to my friend Miyabi. She’s one of those reassuring presences, warm and eternally nodding and unfailingly loyal, like she will never leave my side. At least not for another 90 minutes, which is how much of her friendship I’ve paid for.

Miyabi isn’t a prostitute, or an escort or an actor or a therapist. For the past five years she has been a professional rent-a-friend, working for a company called Client Partners.

My lunchmate pokes daintily at her curry and speaks of the friends whose money came before mine. There was the head of a prominent company, rich and “very clever” but conversationally marooned at “hello.” Discreetly and patiently, Miyabi helped draw other words out. There was the string of teenage girls struggling to navigate mystifying social dynamics; at their parents’ request, Miyabi would show up and just be a friend. You know, a normal, companionable, 27-year-old friend. She has been paid to cry at funerals and swoon at weddings, lest there be shame over a paltry turnout. Last year, a high schooler hired her and 20 other women just long enough to snap one grinning, peace-sign-flashing, I-totally-have-friends Instagram photo.

So why does she do it? Miyabi puts down her chopsticks and explains: It helps people — real and lonesome people in need of, well, whatever ineffable thing friendship means to our species. “So many people are good at life online or life at work, but not real life,” she says, pantomiming someone staring at a phone. For such clients, a dollop of emotional contact with a friendly person is powerful, she adds, even with a price tag attached.

So this isn’t secretly about romance? I ask. Not at all, she replies.

There are two rules: No romance; No lending money. Also: Be ready for all types of clients. Widowers who need someone to watch TV with. Shy guys who could use a dating coach. Shy gals longing for a shopping companion. And that one dude who just wanted a friend who’d do him the solid of waiting seven hours outside Nike to snag these fresh sneakers for him when they went on sale.

Then there are the fake boyfriends. At 35, “Hayato” had been facing intense pressure to find a wife and start a family. But it wasn’t happening, so he started a charade instead. A visit to his parents’ home was coming up, and with Miyabi’s help he concocted a whopper: that she was one of Hayato’s employees at his company and they had fallen in love. The two hunkered down in cafés to practice. Biographical details were learned, romantic quirks rehearsed. (As long as she was telling lies, he decided some general flattery wouldn’t hurt: Hayato’s so great and kind at the company, everyone there loves him.)

The faux friend / boyfriend / girlfriend / husband / wife conceit is a familiar one in movie history. Off the top of my head, these come to mind:

Can’t Buy Me Love (1987): A nerdy outcast secretly pays the most popular girl in school one thousand dollars to be his girlfriend.

The Wedding Date (2005): Single-girl anxiety causes Kat to hire a male escort to pose as her boyfriend at her sister’s wedding. Her plan, an attempt to dupe her ex, who dumped her a couple years prior, proves to be her undoing.

The Proposal (2009): A pushy boss forces her young assistant to marry her in order to keep her visa status in the U.S. and avoid deportation to Canada.

Just Go With It (2011): On a weekend trip to Hawaii, a plastic surgeon convinces his loyal assistant to pose as his soon-to-be-divorced wife in order to cover up a careless lie he told to his much-younger girlfriend.

The Wedding Ringer (2015): Two weeks shy of his wedding, a socially awkward guy enters into a charade by hiring the owner of a company that provides best men for grooms in need.

And so many more. So not an area to explore for possible stories?

On the contrary. Similar. But. Different. That is Hollywood’s business ethos. The suits are so risk-averse, the more similar to previous movies, the better.

So this rent-a-friend conceit has legs.

Here’s the difference: This could be a movie about someone who is a rent-a-friend to MANY customers, not just one.

I’m soooo tempted to go with a comedy, but how about a thriller?

Our Protagonist — let’s call her Marissa — is quite content with her life as a rent-a-friend. She likes the flexible hours. She likes the money. She likes the variety of gigs she gets. I’m thinking she is a young woman who probably double majored in college: English and Psychology. Perhaps she has a plan to use what she learns in her job to feed her novel.

Everything is going along swimmingly.

Then things start to happen. Weird things. Mysterious text messages. A feeling that things in her apartment have been moved around when she’s gone. Is someone following her or is that her imagination?

Then an assault by a mysterious attacker.

Talking with the cops. Is there one person behind all these events? And if so, who? She has a client list dozens of names long.

I think there has to be several twists and turns, but it feels like a strong setup for a thriller.

Sure, I could do a comedy. I could concoct a dramedy — an American traveling in Japan falls into the rent-a-friend world. But why not a thriller?

There you go: My eleventh story idea for the month. What would you do with the story concept?

Each day this month, I invite you to click on RESPONSES and join me to do some further brainstorming. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when you 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.

For other posts in my A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2017) series, go here.