A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 19
This caught my eye awhile back — The Shadow Scholar:
The request came in by e-mail around 2 in the afternoon. It was from a previous customer, and she had urgent business. I quote her message here verbatim (if I had to put up with it, so should you): “You did me business ethics propsal for me I need propsal got approved pls can you will write me paper?”
I’ve gotten pretty good at interpreting this kind of correspondence. The client had attached a document from her professor with details about the paper. She needed the first section in a week. Seventy-five pages.
I told her no problem.
It truly was no problem. In the past year, I’ve written roughly 5,000 pages of scholarly literature, most on very tight deadlines. But you won’t find my name on a single paper.
I’ve written toward a master’s degree in cognitive psychology, a Ph.D. in sociology, and a handful of postgraduate credits in international diplomacy. I’ve worked on bachelor’s degrees in hospitality, business administration, and accounting. I’ve written for courses in history, cinema, labor relations, pharmacology, theology, sports management, maritime security, airline services, sustainability, municipal budgeting, marketing, philosophy, ethics, Eastern religion, postmodern architecture, anthropology, literature, and public administration. I’ve attended three dozen online universities. I’ve completed 12 graduate theses of 50 pages or more. All for someone else.
You’ve never heard of me, but there’s a good chance that you’ve read some of my work. I’m a hired gun, a doctor of everything, an academic mercenary. My customers are your students. I promise you that. Somebody in your classroom uses a service that you can’t detect, that you can’t defend against, that you may not even know exists.
I work at an online company that generates tens of thousands of dollars a month by creating original essays based on specific instructions provided by cheating students. I’ve worked there full time since 2004. On any day of the academic year, I am working on upward of 20 assignments.
In the midst of this great recession, business is booming. At busy times, during midterms and finals, my company’s staff of roughly 50 writers is not large enough to satisfy the demands of students who will pay for our work and claim it as their own.
You could go a lot of ways with this one:
* In and of itself, it’s the basis of an interesting character. Someone really smart, a good writer, but has some issues which keep them doing this type of work instead of their own creative writing. Perhaps the central figure in a small indie movie where they break through their writer’s block.
* What about a group of these people who work for the same company? In the vein of St. Elmo’s Fire or Reality Bites, each of them smarter than hell because of their own educations combined with all the stuff they learn doing research on bogus papers. However as much book knowledge as they have, they have little in the way of life-wisdom. Lots of Tarantino-esque type exchanges, both brilliant and inane. Perhaps a love triangle at the heart of it. Or how about this twist: Figuring everything one needs to know can be found on the Web, they decide to cash in by learning the ins and outs of white collar thievery.
* What about a guy who writes a seemingly harmless bogus paper, only this one turns out to be for a guy who is a terrorist. The terrorist commits a crime. The feds investigate paper trail leading to our guy who now goes on the run. Or ala Three Days of the Condor, the paper the guy writes digs up some information he shouldn’t have known about or publicized.
* Or a guy writes a paper for a student… then falls in love with her. Or switch it: A girl student needs a paper for her English class on an e.e. cummings poem. When the paper arrives, it’s both profound and beautiful. Moved she tries to track down the writer. Has to buy his services for another paper. This becomes her way of ‘dating’ him. Complication: He turns out to be a she.
What would you do with this germ of a story idea?