A new use for all those unsold Davy Crockett hats

Idea Prompt for 11/5/2009

THE SOURCE: MAD magazine, issue #100, dated January 1966. Staff writer Dick De Bartolo wrote a number of humorous ads for ‘re-packaged’ items. The imaginary products were inspired by outdated fads from the 50s and 60s.

WHAT WAS I THINKING… MAD magazine has created parodies that just don’t get outdated. Flip through any issue from the 60s, as I’ve been doing, and you’ll find a couple articles that could easily be transported to the 21^st Century, with only the names changing.

IMAGINE… finding new uses for fads that have passed their expiration date.

…THE POSSIBILITIES: Among the products repurposed by MAD were hula hoops, coonskin caps and 3D movie glasses.

THE EXERCISE: Think of what were the fads of the past 10 years. Internet fads don’t count, because they’re not solid objects that can be repurposed. Go to BadFads.com for a list of out-of-date fads. Pet rocks, pogs and superballs, anyone?

NOTE: If you’d like to develop these Ideas further, just leave a Comment and share your work.

THE SOURCE: I was flipping through an old issue of MAD magazine (#100, Jan. ’66.) The article that caught my eye was titled “A Look at Future Broadway Musicals.”

WHAT WAS I THINKING… Even in 1966, Broadway was lampooned for its reliance on old familiar source material. It’s far worse today, of course.

That means that you still can score big if you can find a classic that hasn’t been copied yet.

IMAGINE… turning a great classic work into a Broadway Musical

…THE POSSIBILITIES:

Ironically, two of the classics that MAD featured in its article have already been adapted in the intervening 43 years: A Tale of Two Cities and Tarzan. That still leaves the other two examples, Julius Caesar and Moby Dick.

THE EXERCISE: Pick a classic book, perhaps something from the “classics library”… sketch out a Broadway version of the plot

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THE SOURCE: Watching the new Ricky Gervais film, The Invention of Lying

WHAT WAS I THINKING… In the opening voiceover narration, Ricky gave away the secret of many a great movie. Many a film have begun life with the words, “Imagine a world…”

The whole movie builds upon this simple thought experiment. ‘Imagine a world that knew no deceit.’

IMAGINE… a world without something we’ve taken for granted all our lives.

…THE POSSIBILITIES:

How many ‘alternative worlds’ can you conceive of? Admittedly, his concept covers a lot of ground, for in a society built upon observational truth, there’s no religion, no Madison Avenue, no Hollywood. That doesn’t leave much left for us to consider.

So, for this exercise, we’ll stick with Ricky’s World, just without Ricky.

THE EXERCISE: Write a film treatment for this concept, but with someone other than Ricky Gervais invented the first lie.

A Criminal? Or, a do-gooder? How about an Entrepreneur? What if someone other than Ricky figured out this lie thing.

NOTE: If you’d like to develop these Ideas further, just leave a Comment and share your work.

THE SOURCE: My youth.

WHAT WAS I THINKING… When I was a kid, I used to look out the window as we were driving the back roads of Southeastern Pennsylvania and think to myself, ‘This would be a great place for a battlefield.’

You see, I was a HUUUUUGE Civil War buff. Nothing happened in our neighborhood, but we lived just a couple hours from Gettysburg.

I have a vivid imagination and I could see battlefields wherever we drove. They got tired of hearing it, believe me.

IMAGINE…. your neighborhood was the site of a pitched battle.

…THE POSSIBILITIES:

I was fortunate, as I lived less than an hour away from an important battle of the Revolutionary War. But no matter where you live, there could have been a battle in some conflict.

You’ve got a choice of one of the many “Indian” wars, Revolutionary War, Civil War, Mexican War or a number of non-military actions like labor wars, range wars

THE EXERCISE: Tell a little tale about a battle that occurred in your neighborhood. What was the terrain like, and how did each side use it in their battle plans? What time of year did it happen? What was the weather like? Describe what your neighborhood looked like back then.

NOTE: If you’d like to develop these Ideas further, just leave a Comment and share your work.

THE SOURCE: A recent trip online to idly surf among Star Wars stories created by fans. This genre is called fanfic (short for ‘fan fiction,’ of course).. My first introduction to it was about 10 years ago when I came across a subgenre of fanfic called MiSTings, inspired by the format of Mystery Science Theatre 3000.

WHAT WAS I THINKING…

This genre is mostly the province of diehard fans of a fabulously popular film or TV show. But I think it’s a genre that even a serious writer, even one with little exposure to pop culture, should dabble in.

Yes, there’s no money in it, but there is a lot of passion, which is what your writing should always have anyway.

IMAGINE…writing another episode of the original short-lived Star Trek series.

Whatever cultural touchstone you have a passion about, you can write a story based on it. You needn’t fear of being sued for copyright issues, because you’re under the radar and under the protection of “Fair Use.”

…THE POSSIBILITIES:

Star Trek – Write a story about one of the characters in any of the series, or create your own new spinoff show.

Harry Potter – There’s a whole wizarding world to be explored, and many opportunities to fill in gaps in Rowling’s history.

Disney – Far less of this than you would think, in part because Disney doesn’t much appreciate amateurs handling their properties.

THE EXERCISE: Write a two-character story in the sub-genre called slash fiction, which refers to the slash that comes between the two names in a couple. Slash fiction most often refers to homosexual pairings, though it could be applied broadly to any couple.

For example, in the Star Trek world, the most popular pairings are Kirk/Spock and Capt. Janeway/Seven of Nine.

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THE SOURCE: Can’t really tell you how I came up with this. It’s just something I’ve done most of my movie-going life.

WHAT WAS I THINKING… Next time you’re watching a beloved movie classic, think about minor characters and what their stories are. What happens to them after they leave the screen?

Why not make them major characters in their own story? I’m not talking about a prequel or sequel, as those words apply to the protagonist. What I’m talking about they do on TV all the time: a spinoff.

IMAGINE… giving your favorite supporting character a movie of their own.

… THE POSSIBILITIES:

Casablanca: After Bogart and Rains fled into exile,“Rick’s” was reopened under new management. Sydney Greenstreet now ran the place, with all the old familiar characters sticking around, including Sam the piano player. The time is just after the Allies land in Africa and the Germans are hurredly preparing to flee.

The Godfather: Tom Hagen has quite a colorful part to play in the Corleone saga. The horse’s head in the bed is worth a separate story all its own. His being the lone non-Italian non-Jew in the family makes him a unique character. You’ll want to fill in Hagen’s backstory when you research the real life mobster that Hagen is patterned after, Murray Humphreys.

Wizard of Oz. From Toto’s point of view. Seriously.

THE EXERCISE: Create a concept for a favorite character in a famous movie. Start with AFI’s Top 100, and look for characters whose stories haven’t yet been fully told.

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THE SOURCE: Prentice-Hall Encyclopedia of World Proverbs, page 167.

What the quotation is saying, in other words, is “There’s no time like the past.”

WHAT WAS I THINKING… Think of the various “Golden Ages” that social historians refer to: the Golden Age of Comics, Golden Age of Hollywood, Golden Age of Porn.

Did you notice that every Golden Age is in the past, not the present? Nobody says “The Golden Age is Now.” (Well, Sports Illustrated has said that, but that was in 1954.)

The sentiment was amusingly presented in a show tune, as the devil from Damn Yankees, lamenting how the good guys seem to be succeeding against his wishes, pined for the “Good Old Days.”

What would you say this is the Golden Age of?

IMAGINE…. a future history that looks back on our present time as the Golden Age.

Just what would this be a golden age of? A future where we look back on the Bush II era as ‘the good old days’. How bad would things have to get for future historians to take that view.

…THE POSSIBILITIES:

CGI Films: Just as the 1940s were the epitome of hand-drawn animation, so, too, will our day be seen as the Golden Age of CGI film. Soon we’ll experience the Hanna-Barberization of Pixar’s craft, all for the sake of saving a couple million bucks.

American Football Running Backs: With talk of longer football seasons, there is an attendant discussion of redesigning training regiments to produce lighter, tighter players who will better withstand the longer season. Rather than scampering around slow, heavy linemen, running backs will soon be running for their lives against equally fleet opponents.

THE EXERCISE: Write a couple paragraphs from a future history outlining just how the early 21^st Century was the “Golden Age…”

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SOURCE: The witty New York theatre critic, George Jean Nathan, who offered it to a moribund Broadway that kept trying to resuscitate vaudeville in the early 1940s.

Nathan was reviewing a lame piece of nouveau vaudeville called New Priorities of 1943. Tired of tiresome skits and schtick, Nathan – in his patented droll way – suggested a half-dozen sketches that would be a welcome addition to any of the numerous failed attempts at bludgeoning a dead horse.

O'Neill

WHAT WAS I THINKING… The only intriguing entry in Nathan’s facetious suggestion was the first one: “A sixteen-minute sketch, one long, uninterrupted howl, consisting of that portion of the dialogue and business which Eugene O’Neill cut out (on the ground that it held up the play’s movement) of the dinner-table scene in his Ah, Wilderness! It is as funny as all get-out and should be sure-fire.”

IMAGINE… a farcical slapstick scene dropped right in the middle of a morbidly serious play.

…THE POSSIBILITIES:

Burl Ives as Big Daddy

Take Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. On his deathbed, Big Daddy (played by Burl Ives in the original movie) could be reminiscing about the

Victor Buono as Puff Daddy

good ol’ days of minstrel shows, recounting his favorite blackface blackout, even acting it out in a mincing, Victor Buono-like way.

Or take a darker play, one of Ibsen’s… Mrs Alving and her son Osvald could have a running conversation about their dysfunctional household that would do Neil Simon proud.

You could even throw a stand-up routine into Brecht or Beckett and you wouldn’t miss a beat.

THE EXERCISE: Nathan had a pretty good idea. Let’s use it to lighten up the morose plays of the 20^th Century. I’m sure Albee won’t mind.

NOTE: If you’d like to develop these Ideas further, just leave a Comment and share your work.

SOURCE: The classic short story, “The Man Without a Country.” It’s not my intent to synopsize it, but you can check it out at the library, or read it online at Project Gutenberg.

By the way, this is not the Vonnegut collection of essays, A Man Without a Country.

WHAT WAS I THINKING… The story I’m talking about was written by Edward Everett Hale in 1863. Hale may have had a forgettable career, but his blood connection to über-patriot Nathan Hale, and the timely topic of Principle Punished, make this story worth repeating. Plus, it’s in the Public Domain…

A quick summary: Innocent man is accused of consorting with treasonous types. Denounces country. Exiled to sea, doomed to never set foot on his homeland again. Repents on his deathbed. (Not entirely accurate, but close enough for our purposes.)

IMAGINE… how you might update the classic novella “Man Without a Country”

…THE POSSIBILITIES:

#1: It’s the 1950s and and a Naval officer is falsely accused of being a Communist. He rashly denounces the country he has served all his adult life and is sentenced to wander the oceans… in a submarine. The entire plot could be lifted wholesale from the original, with Alger Hiss stading in for Aaron Burr.

#2: Focus on the ‘never-set-foot-on-American-soil-again’ aspect of the story and set the tale in Canada, where a draft dodger from the Vietnam War era is not allowed back into America. He’s in his 60s and has a terminal disease, but he can never go home again.

#3: Turn this into a warped G. W. Bush-era tale of Vice-Presidential vindictiveness. A former supporter of Bush denounces the President’s actions in Iraq. Cheney engineers the man’s kidnapping and spirits him away to an off-shore oil rig, from where he’ll never be able to return to America.

THE EXERCISE: I’m sure you could come up with a couple more variations of this classic. It doesn’t seem like anyone else has jumped at the chance to update this 146-year-old short story, so it’s all yours!

NOTE: If you’d like to develop these Ideas further, just leave a Comment and share your work.

SOURCE: Descriptionary: A Thematic Dictionary, page 455. I randomly chose “rapier,” a weapon frequently used in hand-to-hand combat.

WHAT WAS I THINKING… Since it’s the weapon of choice for swashbucklers, how can this cliche be avoided by a writer searching for new ideas? Well, what are some uses for a rapier that don’t involve hurting another person?

Say a collector had a few rapiers hanging on his walls, yet he was short on practical implements around the home. How could he repurpose a rapier to be more useful?

Still, if you want to exercise your mental muscle, stick to a rapier’s original use.

IMAGINE… a swashbuckling fight with rapiers a-flashing!

… THE POSSIBILITIES: Many a Romance novel incorporates hand-to-hand combat, especially with swords, so it’s useful to be familiar with weapons like the rapier.

Research the weapon. Compare some Errol Flynn movies (with relied mostly on foils) with the Richard Lester Musketeer movies (which used rapiers). How does fight choreography change with the difference in arms? What are some basic tactics when dueling with rapiers?

In your writing, describe the sound of steel on steel, how it feels in a person’s hand when striking another’s weapon.

THE EXERCISE: Create three original reasons why two people would engage in a swordfight.

NOTE: If you’d like to develop these Ideas further, just leave a Comment and share your work.