A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 17

This is the seventh year in a row I’ve run this series in April.

Today: Anarchist librarian kid.

This literally came across my Twitter feed last night and my mind went: It’s Dead Poets Society meets Pump Up the Volume. The former movie you all know. The latter maybe not. It’s a 1990 film starring Christian Slater. Logline: “Mark runs a pirate radio station and causes an uproar when he speaks his mind and enthralls fellow teens.”

Two things. First, what do adolescents love more than stories about defying authority. Second, if vinyl records can make a comeback perceived as retro and cool by young people, why not books?

My idea: Toby is a teenager. Smart kid, perhaps too smart for his own good. Combination of his intellect and his mouth get him to trouble. You see, he’s a reader. Voracious curiosity. Questions authority. Parents. Teachers. You name it, he has the instinct and book-learning to argue about and against almost any hypocrisy he sees. And he sees a lot of it in the world around him.

Parents who have tried everything in an attempt to wrangle their progeny latch onto a desperate idea: After he’s kicked out of public school due to continual disruptions, they enroll Toby in a strict private school.

It’s like death to Toby. He finds himself thrust into a world of Über Authority. Rules, rules, and more rules. Oh, yes, there’s a patriarchal headmaster who prides himself on ‘breaking’ wild youths forced into his domain. He’s a modern day Captain Bly. What he doesn’t know is Toby is about to create a mutiny on this here bounty.

How? Books. The list of books restricted by the school? Toby lines his locker with every single title. And like Red in The Shawshank Redemption, Toby soon becomes known as the guy who can get you things… literary things.

Other kids begin to take to this secret activity. Lunch time literary discussions. Handwritten notes passed in hallways in which students play a literary game of tag, one analysis added to another and another.

And Toby is their Svengali, their Nietzsche, their Kierkegaard. During the day, he swaps books, notes, and whispered insights into what students are surreptitiously reading. At night from the inner sanctum of his bedroom, he does Periscope musings like ‘Hard Harry’ From Pump Up the Volume.

Now it’s one thing to be a lone anarchist. But over time, dozens of Toby’s classmates take up the call and life at the school becomes a battleground of ideas and a test of wills.

Will the whole thing blow up and get out of control? Of course, that’s the fun part!

There you go: My seventeenth 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 doing 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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