A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 2

This is the eighth year in a row I’ve run this series in April. Why a story idea each day for the month? Several reasons which I’ll work my through during this series of posts.

Here’s another one: The only way to find a great story idea is to work your way through a bunch of crap ideas.

Ira Glass (“This American Life”), arguably one of the most knowledgeable people around today re storytelling, said this:

“You have to record and get rid of a lot of crap before you find something special.”

Same thing with screenwriting: You have to generate a bunch of crappy ideas before you find something special. Still don’t believe me? How about the wisdom of Linus Pauling:

“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.”

And Linus Pauling should know, one of the few people to win multiple Nobel Prizes.

So why focus on generating a bunch of story ideas? Because most of the ones you come up with will be crap. However somewhere along the line, you’ll find some that a pure gold.

Today’s story idea: The curious life of urban Christmas tree sellers.

The link takes you to The Week’s “Seven-Minutes Explainers” podcast. It tells the story of a young woman (Nicole) from Austria who on a whim traveled to New York City to sell Christmas trees. She sleeps in a van. Twelve hour work shifts. Bathroom breaks, as she says, are “very interesting”.

One throwaway line in the podcast caught my attention: “With the help of fellow tree sellers, Nicole managed a fairly regular routine.”

Christmas tree sellers are people we intersect with one time per year. But who are they? Why do they do what they do? In fact, they represent their own unique subculture and as far as I’m concerned, any unexplored subculture offers an opportunity to explore a possible story for a movie or TV series.

What could a writer do with a character or characters part of the Christmas tree seller subculture?

My first instinct was comedy. A woman in her mid-40s has been selling Christmas trees since she worked for her father when she was a child. She has an established way of doing things and a loyal customer base.

Then along comes a new guy:

He sets up his own Christmas tree selling locale, actually horning in on the woman’s long-standing sphere of influence. They become rivals. I see one attempt to screw with the other after another, completely NOT in the spirit of the season. Probably brooding sexual tension between them. Certainly two different world views about business, what they do why they do, and, of course, Christmas.

Title: “War on Christmas”.

Another idea is a small indie drama. Once a year, a character with a mysterious past emerges from the depths of a lifestyle cut off from people to sell Christmas trees. This represents all of the annual income he will make.

Enter another character who becomes fascinated by the tree seller. What occurred in the character’s past which drove him to desert living with other people? A friendship ensues. Love story?

You could also do a family movie: A child befriends a gruff Christmas tree seller.

But the thing is, it’s a unique subculture of people and something you, as a writer, can exploit — in a good way.

Some other articles on the special subculture of Christmas tree sellers: here, here, and here.

How about you? What would you do with this for a story setup?

There you go: My second story idea for the month. And it’s yours. Free!

Each day this month, I invite you to click on RESPONSES and join me to do some further brainstorming. Gender bend, genre bend, what if. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when you play around with it. These are all valuable skills for a writer to develop.

See you in comments. And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.

For other posts in my A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2017) series, go here.

UPDATE: Some people have commented via Twitter of some movies which have been done in this space:

Supposedly also a Hallmark Channel movie. Response:

• Since no movie with Christmas tree sellers as achieved any significant penetration with the movie-going audience, that means there is still room for something with a different spin.
• Speaking of which, this is a good time to remember that ‘Similar But Different’ has been Hollywood’s movie-making mantra every since the first decade of the 20th century as noted in this blog post.
• Besides every story has already been told. It’s the unique combination of narrative elements and the writer’s voice coming through in the script pages which make it possible for a story associated with an old movie to feel new.

I mean, what if Jon Lucas and Scott Moore had hit on the concept of The Hangover, then realized that Dude, Where’s My Car had the same exact story conceit? Not write The Hangover? No, they improved on the concept by raising the stakes: It’s not just a car, it’s a groom about to get married. It doesn’t take place in the characters’ home town, it happens in Las Vegas.

So I still say Christmas tree sellers is a story space worth exploring. There are limitless variations one could conjure up. Off the top of my head:

• What if criminal elements threaten Christmas tree sellers, perhaps ‘protection’ / extortion scheme or drug peddlers? And now these disparate group of tree sellers have to band together to fight back.
• What if children come to believe that Santa Claus is working just down the street as a Christmas tree seller. Indeed, is he or isn’t he?
• What if a white collar Wall Street type loses everything on a short sale gone south, gets royally plastered one night, ends up face down in a puddle of a Christmas tree lot? He takes a job there to try to put his life back together again.

Yes, for a writer to take on this type of project, they would have to do their research on what similar movies had come before it, but frankly any writer on any project would have to do the same thing. And the reality is there’s hardly any subject area which has not been explored in a movie before.

It’s incumbent on the writer to come up with a unique take on the material, then write the hell out of it.

How would YOU spin Christmas tree sellers as a potential scripted project?