A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 7
This is the fourth 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 story idea is how everyone in Hollywood short-hands your script.
From the first moment your script enters into submission process, where it’s covered and at the very top there is a logline, through the marketing of your movie, where posters, newsprint, radio, TV spots, and web content all derive from it, your story idea is the touchstone for everything that happens.
So over time, I think it is fair to say that story ideas have become the lifeblood of Hollywood, what people traffic in all day long. The more you can think like that, play to the way Hollywood people interact with stories, the better your chances of success in the business.
Today’s story idea: Witchita Boy’s Garage-Sale Buy Holds a Treasure For His Family:
Addison Logan, 13, probably wouldn’t have gone to the garage sale Thursday if he hadn’t broken his arm in a dirt bike accident a couple of weeks ago.
He probably would have been riding the bike.
Instead, Addison, who likes garage sales, was driving around to some of them with his grandmother, Lois Logan, in west Wichita. After three stops, he finally found something he wanted to buy. It was an old Polaroid camera at a house about a mile away from his grandmother’s house. He thought the camera was “pretty cool,” he said. He bought it for $1.
Back at his grandmother’s house, Addison got on the Internet to find out how to take a picture with it. When he removed the cartridge and opened it, he found an old photograph inside. He took the photo to his grandmother.
Lois Logan said she looked at the photo and saw her son, Scott, who died in an auto accident 23 years ago.
The photo showed Scott sitting on a sofa with a high school girlfriend, Susan. Lois guessed it was taken in 1978 or 1979, about 10 years before his death. She didn’t remember the photo, but thought it must be one of her old ones.
When Addison told her he found it inside the camera he’d just bought at the garage sale, she thought he was kidding.
“It was really weird,” she said.
Nobody else in the family could believe it, either.
“I’m just shocked,” said Scott’s brother, Blake Logan, on Friday. “The more time that passes, the more in disbelief I am. So many things have to come together for that to happen. It just seems supernatural.”
Blake and another brother, Jeff Logan, have speculated that Addison finding the photo might be a sign from Scott.
“It’s almost like he’s reaching out to us, saying he’s still with us,” said Blake, who is Addison’s father.
Let’s see if we can do a supernatural story. Of course, there is the famous “Twilight Zone” episode called A Most Unusual Camera:
When three dum-dum crooks get ahold of a camera that takes pictures of the future, they set out to make a quick fortune with their new toy.
But that’s about the future. What if someone stumbled upon a camera [or some other device] which was revealing a mystery from the past? Like the boy’s father suggested in the article above: A sign from someone who has died.
Of course, this could open up a can of worms, digging up skeletons in various people’s closest who don’t want events in the past unburied. Moreover what if the camera turns out to be an unreliable witness to events? And why did it ‘choose’ the Protagonist? Perhaps just some grand cosmic scheme to screw with the Protagonist.
If you’ve seen The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, you will remember that is about a 40 year-old murder mystery. And there is a photograph they discover along the way that provides a pivotal clue.
Here you throw in a supernatural twist: Camera as mysterious clue-giver.
How about you? What would you do with this premise?
Another idea for you. And it’s free!
Each day this month, I invite you to join me in comments to do 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. And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.
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