A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 8

This is the sixth 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:

You always need more than one in your gun.

Want that explained? Go here to read a Business of Screenwriting post.

Today’s story idea: The Six Phases of Getting Dumped.

I know that getting dumped sucks. But just like with moving or giving birth (I think), I forget just how profoundly it sucks except when I’m experiencing it or witnessing a close personal friend experience it.

Yes, breakups are unpleasant for both parties (I’ve even written a blog post to that point). Dumping someone is difficult during the breakup and in certain moments after. You miss having someone to cuddle with. You miss having someone to tell everything to. But ultimately you believe that your ex should not be that someone and that you are both better off apart. You are sad, but you are courageously moving forward. Maybe you already have someone in mind to move forward with.

Bla, bla, bla. Boo hoo. That is nothing compared to the gut retching devastation of being dumped.

This is how it usually goes…

The Wallowing Phase

The Bleak Projections Phase

The Trying to Convince Myself I’m Better Off Phase

The Wahhh, I Want Him Back Phase

The Desperately Active Phase

The Snapped Out of It Phase

The original article goes into great detail about each phase, so click on the link above to check it out.

Let me say, I’m not the biggest fan of romantic comedies, but I’m always looking out for ideas that lend themselves to a narrative structure. So when I ran across these six phases, I immediately started thinking of script sequences: Each phase could stand as a segment in the story, a set of scenes with a beginning, middle and end, one leading to the other with a transitioning plot point.

Moreover if Scream took a meta view of the horror genre and commented on its tropes, why not do the same thing with rom coms? The Protagonist suffers through each phase while her girlfriends act like a sort of Greek chorus, analyzing why and what she’s enduring a la the ‘wisdom’ they have picked up via movies. Uh-oh, you’re going into the I Want Him Back phase.

In fact, a writer who knows the rom com sub-genre could generate even more phases — The Dating Phase, The Meaningless Sex Phase, etc. — and really blow out the whole post-modern / meta thing.

Another thought: What if you wrote this as a dual Protagonist story. A Girl. A Guy. And each is going through their own getting dumped phases. There could be near misses between them playing off our inevitable sense that the story couldn’t possibly involve these two and not have them eventually intersect.

Maybe they do in the end. Maybe they don’t. Depends upon how post-modern you want to go.

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

Now it’s your turn. What would you do with this story setup?

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.

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