A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 9
This is the seventh year in a row I’ve run this series in April. Last week I provided a daily explanation about why you should make it a habit to be generating story ideas. This week, I’ll give you some tips on how to come up with stories.
Tip: Look at news sites.
I’ve been demonstrating that in this series, every idea from a news article. While you can surely keep an eye out when reading the NY Times or LA Times, you’d better believe there are plenty of writers already eyeballing those pages. So troll smaller newspapers. Offbeat news sites. Have you ever checked out Weekly World News? I used to subscribe to the print version way back when and actually wrote a spec based on one of their articles: “Couple Adopts the Child From Hell.” Unfortunately the spec script “Problem Child” beat us by 2 weeks: same premise.
Today’s story: A creepy clown in an orange jumpsuit is haunting one Wisconsin town.
If you want to freak America out, the easiest way is to just be a clown in a public space.
Local TV station WISN reports Waukesha, Wis., residents are rattled over sightings of a person wearing a plastic clown mask and an orange jumpsuit near the campus of Carroll College.
Police told WISN they know the identity of the mystery clown, and that he’s a local “developmentally delayed” teenager who is just trying to get people to react (mission accomplished).
“Both he and his parents were advised several times it would really help us out if he wouldn’t stand out there doing that,” police told WISN.
I kicked around the idea of a dark comedy whereby some lonely dude started dressing up as a clown and standing on a street corner to get a reaction, and that brought him a kind of perverse enjoyment. But what if another dude took up the act. And another one. So the presumed threat of violence toward innocent bystanders transforms into violence among this weird cabal of clowns, pissed off at the competition.
But look at those photos. I mean, come on, this has got to be a psychological thriller, if not a full-blown horror movie, right? Imagine looking outside your window and there across the street is that guy in the top photograph… just standing there… staring at you. You go to work. There he is down below on the sidewalk, peering up at you. Shopping. He’s in the parking lot. You confront him. He never says a word.
You come home. Have things been moved? Strange sounds outside the house at night… then inside the house.
I ain’t a horror writer, but there are plenty of them. We’ve already had the 1988 movie Killer Clowns from Outer Space. But a story with a more psychologically based fear factor, a freaking clown who stalks your every move…
Sounds like a movie to me.
There you go: My ninth 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.
See you in comments (hit Reply to join the conversation). And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.
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