A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 13
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: Obituaries.
When it comes down to it, people live extraordinary lives. And obituaries summarize those lives in nice, neat packages. This is an one I love and if I had 12 more hours a day in my life, I might pursue this as a spec script.
So if you’re stuck for story ideas? Just hit the obituaries in your local fish-wrap.
Today’s story: Woman gives birth after Rolling Stones concert.
The main event at Glastonbury 2013 may have been the Rolling Stones, but one couple welcomed a far more important guest to Worthy Farm in Somerset when their baby was born unexpectedly soon after Saturday night’s headline gig.
Possibly responding to the frenzy surrounding the appearance of the Stones for the first time in the festival’s 43-year history, Heidi Wesson, 33, from Leicester, went into labour two weeks early.
She and her partner Sean Crothers welcomed their baby daughter at 3am on Sunday morning at the medical centre on site at Glastonbury.
A spokesperson for the festival confirmed the birth — one of only a handful in the Pilton Pop’s extensive history- and said: “We’d like to send our congratulations to the family. We look forward to welcoming them back in future years. We’ve had babies born here that are now grown-ups. They still come every year. That’s a beautiful thing.”
Miss Wesson reportedly told well-wishers of her joy at the event, confirming that she and the baby are “fine and fabulous”.
Friends and family took to the social networking site Facebook to relay the news. Rebs Morris-Richardson wrote: “Am absolutely chuffed to pieces for Heidi Wesson and Sean Crothers on the birth of their baby girl at Glastonbury, welcome little one and congratulations, whoop whoop,xx
In addition to sending Wesson into labor, Mick Jagger and company shattered Glastonbury records by drawing 100,000 concertgoers to the main Pyramid Stage on Saturday. Meanwhile, 2.5 million viewers tuned in to BBC to catch a small portion of the show.
For visual context, here is some video the Rolling Stones at the 2013 Glastonbury Festival:
I mean, seriously. Dudes are older than sin and they still kick ass! No wonder the Mom-To-Be became a Baby-Mama-Jama before her due date, rockin’ out to that performance.
My mind is reeling with a variety of possibilities:
* A day in the life of a young couple going to see their beloved Rolling Stones, they get into a fierce argument to the point of breaking up, she gives birth, couple reunites.
* A compressed time story featuring several different subplots, one of which is a nineteen year-old girl who is eight months pregnant. Boyfriend gone with the wind. She’s come to the concert with her sister, the mother to be’s last chance for fun before she gets chained down by parental responsibilities. She meets a guy who looks like he will become a part of her life and learns through her experiences to embrace the role of motherhood. Oh yeah, she gets to meet her idol Keith Richards.
* Let’s switch perspectives to the baby and with it the time-frame. A young hippie couple attends a Rolling Stones concert. Maybe something famous like Altamont in 1969. While someone actually dies there, the couple also ends up welcoming their baby into the world.
How would that story ‘brand’ that child as she grew up? It’s almost something out of a myth. Seriously, you were born at a Rolling Stones concert? How would that affect her (for some reason, I envision this as a female character — let’s call her Ruby)?
Maybe Ruby tries to ‘run away’ from her parents’ hippie past, renounced rock and roll and becomes a straight-laced middle class American.
Cut to 2015. That would make Ruby 46. She has a couple of kids of her own, both grown and out of the house. Maybe she discovers her husband having an affair. She is entering menopause.
In other words, Ruby’s well ordered life is crumbling around her. She needs to change. And I’m imagining her destiny is to get in touch with her rock and roll spirit, lying latent all these years.
I remember hearing a story on NPR, many years ago. An expectant couple was feverishly attempting to prepare the baby’s room before the child’s birth. As they went about painting, putting stencils on the wall, laying down carpet, and buying furniture, they kept listening to Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” album, over and over as they worked on the room.
The baby arrives. And like many babies, the child is prone to bouts of crying. Seemingly no reason. And try as they might, the couple simply can’t find a way to soothe the baby’s jumbled emotional state.
Then by chance one day, while listening to the radio, the baby bursts into one her crying fits. “Born to Run” starts to play on the radio. Immediately the baby quiets down.
The couple discovers that every time the baby starts to cry, if they turn on Springsteen, the child settles down.
It’s as if The Boss’s music was imprinted on the very consciousness of the baby from in utero.
What if Ruby has some sort of strange emotional reaction to Rolling Stones music? Perhaps she begins with a knee-jerk response whenever she hears them on the radio, immediately turning the station. A rejection of her roots.
But just as Luke Skywalker (Star Wars) has Jedi blood coursing through his body… and Will Turner (Pirates of the Caribbean) has pirate’s blood in his…
What if Ruby has rock and roll in hers? Specifically the Rolling Stones?
Here are the lyrics to “Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday”:
She would never say where she came from
Yesterday don’t matter if it’s gone
While the sun is bright
Or in the darkest night
No one knows
She comes and goes
Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday
Who could hang a name on you?
When you change with every new day
Still I’m gonna miss you…
Don’t question why she needs to be so free
She’ll tell you it’s the only way to be
She just can’t be chained
To a life where nothing’s gained
And nothing’s lost
At such a cost
Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday
Who could hang a name on you?
When you change with every new day
Still I’m gonna miss you…
There’s no time to lose, I heard her say
Catch your dreams before they slip away
Dying all the time
Lose your dreams
And you will lose your mind.
Ain’t life unkind?
Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday
Who could hang a name on you?
When you change with every new day
Still I’m gonna miss you…
Clues to a story perhaps? And of course, our Ruby in the story was born on a Tuesday…
There you go: My thirteenth story idea for the month. And it’s yours. Free!
What would you do with it?
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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