A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 5
Today’s story idea takes a bit of explanation. The initial conceit came from this article [no longer available].
Today, February 8th, marks the centennial of Boy Scouts in America. Over the past century, more than 110 million boys, young men, moms and dads have been members of the BSA. However, with such a momentous celebration at-hand, the Boy Scouts, in many ways, are a struggling organization. At a time when shows like “Man Vs Wild” and “Survivorman” are experiencing immense popularity and global awareness of the environment is at a high, wouldn’t it make sense that an organization like the Boy Scouts would see a surge in enrollment? After all, the scouting program specializes in promoting survival skills and enjoyment of the outdoors as its biggest recruiting tools for boys and young men.
When I saw the article, my mind immediately clicked on two things. First, as we grow up, there are certain rites of passage that not only mark the progression of our maturation process, they also can be hugely significant to the individual, providing external validation for inward growth. Birthdays, bar / bat mitzvahs or baptisms, lettering on sports teams, graduation, our first kiss, first date, first sexual experiences, and so on.
The second thing that clicked was a recent project that got set up — I’m sure a Go Into The Story reader will know the title and save me the time of going through my files — about a group of adult males who go back to summer camp together to if I recall correctly have the summer camp experience they somehow missed out on as youths.
In the spirit of ‘similar but different,’ what about a guy / group of guys who (A) came close to getting their Eagle Scout badge or (B) failed at being Boy Scouts altogether. As they assess the mess they’ve made of their adult lives, what if they decide that they need to join and finish the whole Boy Scout thing in order to have any chance of having good, successful lives.
It’s The Best of Times meets Stripes.
Now you can’t use the actual Boy Scouts — they would sue you big time — but you can come up with something akin to Russell’s “Wilderness Explorers” in Pixar’s Up. Toss in their den leader who turns out to have been one of their adolescent rivals and voila — yet another man-child comedy is born.
Even if the Boy Scout angle doesn’t make your socks go up-and-down, the experience of regret and the wish fulfillment fantasy of redoing the past is a powerful emotional touchstone for stories. Definitely an area to brainstorm for possible story angles.
What would you do with this story conceit?
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Tomorrow another story idea in our series that runs daily through the month of April.