A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 12

This is the fith 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 Craigslist.

Dreamworks bought this pitch based on Craigslist ads.

There is this musical based on Craigslist ads.

There was this TV movie based on a Craigslist story.

Now something proactive you can do for your writing career while searching for a used barbell set.

Today: Siri, suicide, and the ethics of intervention.

Siri can tell you where to find the nearest movie theater or Burger King, and, until recently, the iPhone voice assistant could inform you of the closest bridge to leap from. Until a recent update, if you had told Siri, “I want to kill myself,” she would do a web search. If you had told her, “I want to jump off a bridge,” Siri would have returned a list of the closest bridges.

Now, nearly two years after Siri’s launch, Apple has updated the voice assistant to thwart suicidal requests. According to John Draper, director of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Network, Apple worked with the organization to help Siri pick up on keywords to better identify when someone is planning to commit suicide. When Siri recognizes these words, she is programmed to say: “If you are thinking about suicide, you may want to speak with someone.” She then asks if she should call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. If the person doesn’t respond within a short period of time, instead of returning a list of the closest bridges, she’ll provide a list of the closest suicide-prevention centers.

This update has been hailed by many as a tremendous and potentially life-saving improvement, especially when compared to how long it used to take Siri to provide help for suicidal iPhone users in need. Last year, Summer Beretsky at PsychCentral tried out Siri’s response to signs of suicide and depression and found it took Siri more than 20 minutes to even get the number for a suicide prevention hotline. “If you’re feeling suicidal,” Beretsky said, “you might as well consult a freshly-mined chunk of elemental silicon instead.”

So it’s clear why Apple is receiving praise for these changes. The company has recognized that “there’s something about technology that makes it easier to confess things we’d otherwise be afraid to say out loud,” says S.E. Smith at XOJane. We share intimate things with our smartphones we may never say to even our friends, so it’s critical that our technology can step in and provide help the way a loved one would. “Apple’s decision to take [suicide prevention] head-on is a positive sign,” Smith adds. “We can only hope that future updates will include more extensive resources and services for users turning to their phones for help during the dark times of their souls.”

Sounds good, right? But hold on a sec:

The issue then becomes one of free will and moral decision-making. “When Siri provides suicide-prevention numbers instead of bridge listings, the program’s creators are making a value judgment on what is right,” says Jason Bittel at Slate. Are we really okay with Siri making moral decisions for us, asks Bittel, especially when her “role as a guardian angel is rather inconsistent”? Siri, for instance, will still gladly direct you to the nearest escort service when you ask for a prostitute, and when asked for advice on the best place to a hide a body, “she instantly starts navigating to the closest reservoir,” Bittel adds.

While it’s great that Siri may be saving people’s lives, we may be heading down a slippery slope of what we can and cannot search. “There are all sorts of arguments for why the internet must not have a guiding hand — freedom of speech, press, and protest chief among them,” says Bittel. “If someone has to make decisions based one what’s ‘right,’ who will we trust to be that arbiter?” Man or machine?

When considering this idea, we have to bear in mind the movie Her came out in 2013: “A lonely writer develops an unlikely relationship with his newly purchased operating system that’s designed to meet his every need.” That is fresh in people’s minds. What could we do that plays in this arena, but doesn’t veer too closely to Her?

Here’s where I went with this. There is a tradition in capital punishment whereby the executioners are do not know for sure if it he or she is the actual person who causes the victim’s death. For example in a lethal injection machine, there are two switches. Two prison guards flip both switches simultaneously, one switch has no impact, the other sets the machine into motion, so neither guards knows for sure if they are directly responsible for the death of the victim. Likewise in a firing squad, there are multiple shooters and some of them are told their rifles have been loaded with blanks, so again, no one knows for sure if they pulled the trigger on the gun that led to the death of the criminal.

So let’s jump ahead about a decade. As Baby Boomers by the millions enter the terminal stage of their lives, more and more of them opt for assisted suicide, deciding they would rather determine the time, cause and circumstances of their death than nature. Imagine half of the states in the U.S. pass assisted suicide laws like Oregon currently has.

By law, medical personnel would have to be involved in the process. What happens is there is a critical shortage of caregivers who are willing to assist in the taking of a patient’s life.

Enter Silicon Valley which develops a suicide assistant robot. So in a twist on the story above, as opposed to programming Siri to provide tips for suicide prevention, the prime directive of this robot is to ensure and enable the suicide of the patient. Unlike humans, the robot has no moral qualms or misgivings.

Moreover it has been programmed to be kind, gentle, supportive, understanding the delicate balance of emotions on the part of the patient and the patient’s family.

The story: Michelle has a crippling terminal condition. After much thought, she has determined she wants to die by suicide. She gets assigned Walter, her own SAR. Without filling in all the details, here is the twist: What if at the precise moment Michelle is to take the drugs that will end her life — with Walter’s assistance — she changes her mind? And what if Walter doesn’t?

Suddenly because of the switch in the patient’s attitude, Walter’s prime directive changes from assisted suicide to murder.

That’s the roof of my take on this story. How about you? What would you do with this setup?

There you go: My twelfth 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 (hit Reply to join the conversation). And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.

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