Story idea - Ideal Boy Meets Ideal Girl

Hook: The extreme fantasy - what every boy desires in a girl meets what every girl desires in a boy.

Story:

Boy lists out the ideal girl qualities - fun, smiling, supportive, cheerful, intelligent, daring, not stuck up, sports loving etc.

Girl lists out boy qualities rich, handsome, intelligent, sense of humour, caring etc.

Both meet. Somehow they see all those things they had listed in each other. Sparks fly after that. Push the fantasy. But will perfection hold?

To contrast we have their friends who have low expectations from their mates - find one another and seem to get along well - a nice warmth perhaps minus sparks.

To work on the romcom idea. Sounds cliched but worth a try.

Story Idea - The Inanimate World

Hook: Man gets depressed with lack of relationships in his life (thanks to social media and other distractions!) and takes to forming relationships with inanimate objects around him.

Story; Man finds human relationships more and more shallow and withdraws to a point where he is all alone. At a point when all seems hopeless he finds inspiration in some quote, or song, or book and seeks to find something to be grateful for. He looks around and finds that the only ones that are giving him unconditional love are the inanimate objects around him. He starts appreciating them for their love. He has names for them, starts treating them like old friends. Maybe we can have them talk to him as well.

Relationships develop. The home improves. Furniture and gadgets get better with repair and from being cleaned regularly. The atmosphere improves. While getting the furniture repaired he meets a fine young girl who shares his love for small things. His life gets better. He finds love.

Life's good again.

Story idea - First Strike

This is inspired by the gold heist in Hyderabad when the two young thieves returned everything and turned themselves in. They said they did it to expose corruption.

Hook:
Unknown thieves strike in huge and daring heists. Even as everyone is watching the loot is returned or found in the unlikeliest places - at the corrupt police station, at the corrupt official's house with a note. This is the loot he would have looted anyway - he can as well keep it and do some good work in public service.

Or a variant.

Have the thieves steal all the big bribe moneys and have it found at the recipient's house. Once public the money has to come back into the system anyway. Need to figure out a way of climaxing it all though.

Story Idea - Down Memory Lane

Chap is close to committing suicide when he remembers an old teacher of his who tells him to repay his debts - one way or another - before he dies. Even a kind word can help, a small deed can help, he said. He decides to meet the teacher to whom he feels he owes a debt. When he goes to meet his teacher he finds the teacher is dead. How does he repay the teacher's debt now?

I am not sure what he will do to repay the debt at this point but it does open up many interesting possibilities. 

Story Idea - The Losers Club

Hook: There is a bunch of losers who, after finally giving up on trying to be winners, decide to be really good at losing.

Pic: Satish N

Story: A small band is founded. These are the greatest losers who have some fine stories of how they lost repeatedly in many ways. They decide that they will get back at the world and somehow, one way or another, find the formula to win. However much they try - attend seminars, find coaches, etc - they lose in every single attempt. Until someone realizes that they should work on their strength - losing - to make the world a better place. So the losers find ways to make the other guy look good and do a good job of it. And make the world a better place for it.

Starting line of the movie - 'Let's go get pissed.' The losers are partying another great loss.

Story Idea - The Frames

Hook: Chap has developed a pair of glasses that can change the way one looks at the world. This pair of glasses can make people who are leading extremely sad lives feel as if they are actually living wonderful lives and vice versa. He hopes to dupe the entire world with these glasses but gets stuck inside them.

Pic coutesy Anjali Paruvu

Core idea: The world appears as we see them or as we are sometimes shown. By the power of external persuasion or a frame, we start believing its true. However once the beliefs set in, one cannot change them as the inventor finds out.

I think it should be a good one to blow up into a full-fledged story.

Story Idea - Three Kids

There are two kids who specialise in two distinct arts - both kids of famous parents. Both have been good friends but fall out after some argument about their parents and their virtues. The two vie with each other and try to outdo one another.

Years after, after their parents have died, the two artists are jolted out of their reverie. Now comes along one new talent who has an extraordinary skill of fusing both these distinct arts. Who is this new competition? The new phenomenon is taking over the space that belonged to the two stars. So much so that they conspire to eliminate him.

But doubts arise about the parentage of this new phenomenon. Could it be that their famous parents had an affair unknown to the world? How will they ever know the truth? Wait till the rest of the story is done to find out.

Story Idea - The Losers

This is the story of a bunch of forty five year old losers. Their marriages are on the rocks, their careers are the pits, they are perpetually broke and they have nothing but hot air between them. One of them is always scheming on how to get rich quick and has some of the most fantastic schemes that are just one step away. One of them has given up on life and is always throwing a dampener on things. One of them is always thinking of the good old days and is always stuck in the past. The last one is the narrator and he is the one who has a small job and seems quite happy with his life.

One day while dreaming up ways to spend the fortune that comes their way they actually do come across a fortune. How the four losers get rid of the entire fortune in a period of 24 hours and are back to square one and doing what they love doing best, talk about getting rich, is the rest of the story. Lots of gaps to fill but it could turn out interesting.

Story Idea - Cell Phone Attackers (or Married to the Mob)

This is more in the Jaws meets Sixth Sense genre. The story starts with a lot of mischief going on in people with their mobiles playing a lot of mischief. SMSs, calls, MMS clips going from the wrong person to the wrong persons all over the place and sending the world into a tizzy. The leaders of nations find themselves caught in compromising talks, quotes and acts and there is a threat of a global war with all this going on. At every level there is disharmony, banking getting busted, economies going crashing, private info out in public space, discontent as marriages are breaking up, business alliances busting up, education going topsy turvy.

Puzzled by the fact that almost everyone has been affected a mobile phone software expert (our hero) starts wondering why the mobiles could suddenly go so awry. He comes up with the answer soon enough, the mobile space has been taken over by aliens and they are using the mobiles to start controlling us. They are using mobiles as a drug and getting us addicted to them so much that we cannot live our lives without them, and once they have captured almost everyone in their net, they plan to use the mobiles to zap us out of existence. Humans versus mobiles, the race begins. How can we save ourselves? Or rather as most people of this generation would be more worried about this question - how can we save our mobiles? From identifying races that have been entirely untouched by mobiles, to understanding the depth to which we have committed our lives to mobiles, the story can keep us teetering on the edge of world war, a humans versus aliens story, a humans versus technology story and finally, a human understanding of overdependence on gadgets that seem to take over our lives.

I can think of many wonderful ways in which my mobile or anyone's mobile can play mischief if it starts thinking diabolically. I can think of many apps as well that will make this more interesting. Then the mobile can actually cause physical harm later on - imagine it slapping the user, of tweaking the ear, or making screechy sounds. Juicy stuff for someone like me who is rather tech challenged and who looks at mobiles as if they are little monsters anyway. But it would be great if it could get some of these kids who are stuck on their mobile phones all the time off it for a while, just as Jaws kept many of us away from water those days.

PS. Got a better idea (this is added as an afterthought). What if all the networks and all get corrupted and go haywire, before just slamming shut. We won't remember a single number, most names, have no one to sms, call. I mean that mobile could just drive you nuts by sending wrong messages, giving missed calls, redirecting calls. Man, it could be a scary movie.

Story idea - The Messy Messengers Mess

This is the story of two estranged lovers who cannot meet one another for some reason - let's say since they stay in different places and their parents are opposed to this. Also they are pretty rich!

The girl gets a male messenger to convey her messages to her lover without arousing any suspicion to others. The man also hires a female messenger to help convey his messages to his woman. All is well so far!

The problem starts when the four of them get tangled in a mess thanks to some miscommunication by the messengers. A message meant for someone reaches someone else. Lies are told, cover ups arranged but to no avail. By the time the mess is unravelled, all equations in the tangle are changed!

The idea of course is to develop it along as a comedy of errors. With romance and drama already in, this could be an interesting story to develop. On the other hand, what I started with was a romance where the female messenger falls in love with her subject and the other tw, the spurned woman and her male messenger seek revenge!

Story idea - The Anniversary

On every anniversary of his meeting his love, a young man, seeks out the girl of his affections across the world and proposes to her in many new ways to woo her to him. For the rest of the year he disappears and builds his life and business but for that one day, his birthday, and also the day she spurns his first proposal, he goes to meet his love and proposes to her.

He meets her without fail for twenty five years and one year he does not meet her on the anniversary. That sets the girl thinking. She has always told him that her life was something else when in reality it was not (need to build a back story). Now the girl sets out to find what happened to the man who wooed her for twenty five years without any response from her. In her journey she uncovers the truth behind that person.

I really like the idea of someone coming up like clockwork on every anniversary, proposing in a different and creative manner each time, in a nice way so that it brings a smile to one's face, just to say that someone is still waiting. I also like the prospect of the role reversal. Needs some work though.

Story Idea - The Team

Man gets a letter from an old team mate (perhaps a cricket team). Letter has some information which makes sense only to him, like a clue, which he has to fill in a jigsaw puzzle that is given alongwith, and a place and a time in the future. Curious the man gets to the appointed place and time and finds a couple more of his friends, rather team mates, from a cricket team that played together thirty years ago. They have similar notes - a time and a place and one incident in their life that fits into the jigsaw. As they wait they are joined by a few more. Comparing the notes, they realise that their old team mate is dead and he is apparently try to give them a clue to his death. Most land up, they have to find and motivate a couple and one or two are not traceable.

As they piece together the mystery that the man has knitted together so delicately that no one would be able to decipher it by themselves they realise that their old team mate dies because of a bigger conspiracy, an opponent so dangerous that he could kill. Now that they know the secret all of them are also in danger and their only hope is to find the killer before he finds them. The only problem is that the killer could be one of them!
Howzzat!

Story Idea - True Friend

This is the story of a group of friends. They have a great life together and when one of them dies after an accident, after a time spent in hospital reduced to a vegetable. They meet at his funeral and make a pact. That if anyone is incapacitated, the others would find a way to kill him off and reduce his or her suffering. They sign a paper to this effect.

As luck would have it the one who proposes the pact, suffers an accident and is paralysed head down. The dilemma when they all meet is, do we kill him off or do we let him continue as a vegetable. One of the friends wants to honour the pact because he loves his friend truly and does not want to see him this way. He agonises over their friend's condition and it does appear that he is truly convinced that his friend would be better off dead, as their other friend was.

The wife, a part of the group, does not want the husband killed as she believes that he still has a chance unlike the other guy. The group is undecided. When they talk to the injured person they see nothing but terror in his eyes as he knows what they are all discussing.

It is clear that one of them wants him dead. But is it merely for the love of his friend that he wants to kill him off? Was the accident a real accident or was there more? What does the incapacitated man know that he is facing death? (Possible resolutions - affair between accident victim's wife and the guy who wants him killed. Or, a suspicion that he pulled the plug on the first friend which makes his friend want to avenge him.) Kind of corny but a B grade material nonetheless.

Story Idea - Dead Man Live Man

This is a story of two people who land up to find some solace, maybe at a sanitorium of sorts. One is a young man who wants to commit suicide and the other is an old man who is terminally ill but desperately wants to live. The young man finds that the old man desperately wants to live to ensure that his wife and kids are taken care of, his things settled, and would do anything to live. The old man finds out that the young man has almost nothing wrong with his life and is committing suicide simply because he failed his exams and his girlfriend has ditched him. They spend a night together where they talk.

The old man tells the young man how he would do anything to get the young man's life, the one he was willingly throwing away, without knowing its value. The young man is interested and wants to know what the value of his life is. That starts the old man on his story of love and hate, of longing and parting, of beginnings and ends, of passion and deceit. He tells the youngster he will fund his family if he could find a way for the old man to live. (Here I am thinking we could have an angel of death joining them who has the power to switch their life spans if they wanted.) But as they tell each other their stories, would they really want to switch?

By day break, the old man understands that his life is over and he must move on, and the young man understands that he must face his life with more optimism. Dustin Hoffman as the old man and someone appropriate as the young man!

Story Idea - The Person Who Has Many Deadlines

Okay this is a half baked story as ususal but the general theme runs like this. Mr. Hero is rushing to catch a deadline he has, half way across the world. After much hardship he meets the object of his deadline - a beautiful, ex-celebrity he always admired - but one who has fallen into a lonely and sad life. He tells her of his love for her and they both have a good time and he movies on. And then to another deadline and so on and on. He meets some, he does not meet some, (the insecurities of the stars), some are non-celebrities, some are relatives, some are old friends, some old enemies, but he makes an attempt to meet everyone (One strain could be if he met all the people he hated or hurt - man that would bring on the drama).

Why is her meeting everyone? Because he has been diagnosed with a terminal disease and he realises that the only ay to survive is to forgive. But the race gets hotter as he gets worse and realises that the hardest ones to forgive are those closest to him, his family and himself!

Of course he gets well miraculously (doctor's drop jaws and he makes a call to his superior and says 'this is unbelievable') and so does everyone of the people whom he meets. And I hope so does everyone who sees the movie and reads the story as well. Alls well and that ends well after all the hectic running around and meeting strangers and people you hate!

Story Idea - The Missing Link

The silent bus travels on through stark country. Inside the bus is a motley crew - a young man who is losing his fiancee to some mystery disease, a man going to sort out a situation that is threatening the life of his brother, a woman trying to fix the broken marriage of her daughter unsuccessfully, a young man who has no money to pay his debt and is contemplating suicide (get the idea...all drama...perhaps I could make it more contemporary and address certain social issues). But the idea is that the ten-twelve people in the bus lurch and sway with the bus burdened by their own troubles. As the bus moves on, something or someone, a sight, a dialogue, a voice, a song, a face, a perfume, triggers a flashback in each of its inhabitants.

People are getting in and out as well until it suddenly becomes obvious to us that there is one person on the bus who can solve the other guys problem - like say one of them being a doctor with exclusive expertise in treating the dying fiancee etc etc. But no one is talking, sharing their problems and are merely sitting down in the silent bus. Help is next to them but they do not know, do not open their mouths and ask or share.

Into the silent ghostly and trouble ridden bus enters a happy chatter box (not sure if he is to be young, old but a chatter box nevertheless who is thick skinned to boot). He soon chats up one after another and loudly shares the information. The young lad figures out that the person who can save his fiancee appears to have got off at the last stop. Going in search of the one man who can save his fiancee the young man finds the doctor and his peculiar problem - and also that he can help the doctor. And so on and on, as the entire bus changes its route and goes about solving each others problems. All problems have solutions on board. And some problems as well (the villains).

And how about a twist in the end when the chatterbox exposes everybody's stories and helps them but he has a story that he has not revealed - one that reveals itself only when the last story is told!

Its a bit heavy but I see scope in the stories for sex, violence, romance, comedy and drama. Some women, a couple of villains in the group. Ah delicious possibilities!

Story Idea - The Murderous Air Hostesses

Thought of a story idea while flying the other day. A plane is highjacked and taken to a remote location with some high profile people on board. There are no demands forthcoming and it is obvious that the hijackers are playing for time. The chief air hostess negotiates on behalf of the airline and the government.

Until it is revealed (before the interval) that the entire drama is orchestrated by the murderous crew, each for his or her own gain. One for money, one for love, one for fame and so on. It is the movie star on board who has a huge fan in one of the air hostesses who shows up as the real villain but the stuntsman does the job and falls in love with the pretty lass and rescues the lot. Looks like a racy plot what with air hostesses, movie stars, politicians, hijacks and beautiful islands. Many fine options crop up.