A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 15

This is the sixth year in a row I’ve run this series in April. Each day, I’ll give you some tips on how to come up with stories.

Tip: Public domain

Laws vary from country to country, but if a person, event, book is considered to be in the public domain, then from a writer’s perspective, it is free content, you don’t need to secure any rights.

You want to adapt “Romeo and Juliet” into a contemporary gang shoot-em-up love story, you can do that.

You want to turn Abraham Lincoln into a vampire hunter, you can do that.

Straight adaptation, genre bend, gender bend, whatever you want to do, you can do it with a public domain entity. Plus the added benefit: Pre-awareness.

Today’s story: Why a millionaire hired a Seal to kick his butt.

On a freezing 5-degree day in December 2010, Jesse Itzler found himself waist high in a frozen lake in Connecticut.

“We’ve got five minutes till frostbite … GET OUT NOW!” his Navy Seal house guest yelled at him.

Jesse didn’t know what to think.

“Don’t touch your skin to the ice as you get out — it’ll stick,” Seal barked.

Jesse grabbed his sneakers and used them as gloves, climbed out of the hole in the ice, and crawled across the frozen lake with his bare feet sticking up. It took him two minutes to get to land. He had about three minutes left until frostbite. Jesse started to run up a snow-covered hill barefoot and managed to get about halfway to his house when he heard:

“Don’t worry, the snow will dry out your feet. We’ve got two minutes. RUN!”

Jesse has a list of accomplishments a mile long: He co-founded private-jet-card company Marquis Jet, then sold it to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, and helped pioneer the coconut-water craze by partnering with Zico, which they then sold to Coca-Cola. He’s a former MTV rapper, who currently is an owner of the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks and is married to Spanx founder Sara Blakely.

Yet for some reason, he decided to hire a Navy Seal to kick his butt.

The actual millionaire and the actual Navy Seal

Tell me that photo doesn’t look a movie poster! Put The Rock and Will Ferrell together… BOOM! Hit movie!

So fueled by that fantasy, how could we connect these two? Ferrell is successful at business, but unsuccessful at love. The woman he imagines is The One is in great shape and works out hard to stay that way. She’s a believer in an active lifestyle. She likes Will… a lot. But he’s a burger-and-fry-eatin’-beer-drinkin’-sittin’-on-his-ass-on-the-phone-makin’-deals-all-day-long-kinda-guy.

When The One becomes the object of pursuit from a billionaire, owner of a world famous sneaker company (think Phil Knight of Nike fame), it’s now or never for Ferrell. He thinks the only way he can possibly compete for his beloved’s affection is to get his body into shape.

Enter The Seal. 30 days to whip Ferrell’s flabby ass into buns of steel. Why 30 days? Because there’s a charity event involving some sort physical challenge (e.g., triathlon, marathon, decathlon) and The One is participating as is The Rival.

There’s your set-up and the focus of Act Three (the competition). I’d say my work is done here.

There you go: My fifteenth 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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