A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 3
This is the 12th 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:
Being able to generate original story ideas sets you apart from writers who can’t.
Some writers can do it. Others can’t. The latter is resigned to doing adaptations, rewrites or taking a preexisting idea and writing that.
If you can develop solid skills at generating good story ideas, you give yourself a leg-up on your competition creating another opportunity to land writing gigs.
Today’s story idea: Scientists Have Unlocked the Secrets of the Ancient ‘Antikythera Mechanism’.
In the early 1900s, divers hunting for sponges off the coast of Antikythera, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea, discovered a Roman-era shipwreck that contained an artifact destined to dramatically alter our understanding of the ancient world.
Known as the Antikythera Mechanism, the object is a highly sophisticated astronomical calculator that dates back more than 2,000 years. Since its recovery from the shipwreck in 1901, generations of researchers have marveled over its stunning complexity and inscrutable workings, earning it a reputation as the world’s first known analog computer.
A digital model has revealed a complex planetarium on the ancient device’s face. “Unless it’s from outer space, we have to find a way in which the Greeks could have made it,” researchers say.
Unless it’s from outer space. That seems like a pretty cool access point into a science fiction story. Let’s say there’s this ancient artifact. The mystery of what it is and how it came to be has baffled scientists and academics for decades since its discovery a century ago.
Now the Big Announcement! Using the latest digital technology, an official statement: While an amazing device which causes scientists to reevaluate the understanding of ancient Greeks, the artifact is merely a tool which mimics the movements of the planets in our solar system. That’s it.
Now meet this person:
Anastasia Pejorka. A genius who got her Ph.D. in Astrophysics at the age of 16, she skyrocketed to fame among her peers as a result of her brilliant writings. That did not come without a price. A dynamic personality and also beautiful, a large faction of the scientific community pushed back against her theories, mostly out of jealousy that she was so famous… and that she resisted all of their amorous attempts.
She became quite a controversial figure and in her late 20s, she withdrew from public life. Many thought it was due to her inability to cope with so much conflict around her career, but in fact, it was a result of her obsession with solving the mystery of the Antikythera Mechanism. Now nearly a decade after her disappearance, there is this official announcement about the artifact.
At the news conference toward the very end of the presentation, there is a voice from the back of the room. “This is a lie.”
Heads turn. It’s Anastasia. Gasps! Can it really be her. Oh, but it is. And as she storms up toward the front of the room, she is a striking figure. Wild, flowing hair, attired in some sort of odd toga-like gown, and a determined strut.
“This mechanism is not man-made. It comes from an alien race.”
Over the next several day, news stories present Anastasia’s theory, based upon her immersion into the area of nonlinear physics: The mechanism is a tool sent from aliens who exist in a parallel universe. In fact, the device is a means by which humans can travel into this alternate reality.
Okay, that’s my setup. You can go a lot of ways with this. Drama: A scientific battle between Anastasia and the leader of the anti-Anastasia scientific, a man she spurned as a lover. Thriller: Anastasia works with a group of thieves to steal the mechanism and she travels to the parallel universe. Horror: In traveling to the parallel universe, Anastasia opens a portal for monsters there to rampage in our world. She was right about the portal… but did not foresee the fact that the mechanism was a not a gift from the alien race. Rather, it is a means by which the aliens could enter our world and conquer it.
Take your pick. Or come up with something else.
There you go, my take on the 3rd story of the month.
What would you do with this story concept?
Each day in April, I invite you to join me in comments to do some brainstorming. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when we play around with it. These are valuable skills for a writer to develop.
See you in RESPONSES to hear YOUR take on this story idea. And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.
