Thursday Thirteen--plots I won't use
Some of these I tried. Some I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot-pencil. Bet you can't tell the difference. One or two I haven't actually given up on--actually I'll be working on one as soon as I finish this.
1. Guy breaks into woman's apartment to steal some letters for a friend. Later on becomes her babysitter to find out who was the guilty party--his pal or her?
2. Woman cleaning empty pool in a bear enclosure gets stuck and discovers secret passage way in the door to filtration system. The national zoo is a meeting place for spies from other planets.
3. Alpha male turned into a cat learns to enjoy purina cat chow and is almost ready to settle into the lazy lifestyle when he's turned back into a man (source? That "you shouldn't have had me neutered" joke)
4. Drab Regency companion acts as spy for her gossip-hound employer and reluctantly manages to blackmail a drunken lord.
5. Man channeling the voices of dying people thinks he's going nuts, then realizes he is learning important secrets from dying statesman. Or, then again, maybe he's going nuts.
6. Woman has to visit her nagging mother every six months or the world comes to an end. Literally.
7. Wealthy influential pundit wannabe politician takes on a bunch of sock puppet roles He hires people to post for him and tries to change the world by pretending that huge crowds admire him. It almost works when one of his sock puppets accidentally tells a blogger pal. WIP decides to have them killed.
8. Wild dog pack terrorizes wealthy suburban neighborhood--turns out to be all the Kate Spade handbag toting moms. They say they're going out to a book club meetings and instead morph into bitches, literally. Their goal: elimination a couple of their pain-in-the-neck bread-winning husbands and the unpopular city council members who just voted for higher taxes.
9. Network of squirrels, rats and pigeons plot to take over a city. First they have to figure out how to get into the municipal offices. A young orphan helps them.
10. Someone is targeting SUVs, stealing them and setting them on fire. Turns out to be whacked-out bike mechanic who was brain-damaged when he took header over a car door. He's also working with a doctor who's been secretly neutering patients with SUVs to keep them from breeding. Tentative title: "Road Rage."
11. Guy targets bloggers who write about their sex lives. Not sure if he targets them for sex or death, but bound to be one of those, right? (It's always one or the other or both)
12. Aliens take control of politicians in fairly subtle plan to take over the earth--until home-planet aliens get impatient and decide to move faster. One of the on-earth aliens has to slow them down or earths' governments will descend into chaos.
13. A mysterious disease is killing or crippling all the young people in a town and it might be the chemicals used for lawn maintenance at the high school, or it might be a fiendish plot by an unpopular piano teacher.
1. Guy breaks into woman's apartment to steal some letters for a friend. Later on becomes her babysitter to find out who was the guilty party--his pal or her?
2. Woman cleaning empty pool in a bear enclosure gets stuck and discovers secret passage way in the door to filtration system. The national zoo is a meeting place for spies from other planets.
3. Alpha male turned into a cat learns to enjoy purina cat chow and is almost ready to settle into the lazy lifestyle when he's turned back into a man (source? That "you shouldn't have had me neutered" joke)
4. Drab Regency companion acts as spy for her gossip-hound employer and reluctantly manages to blackmail a drunken lord.
5. Man channeling the voices of dying people thinks he's going nuts, then realizes he is learning important secrets from dying statesman. Or, then again, maybe he's going nuts.
6. Woman has to visit her nagging mother every six months or the world comes to an end. Literally.
7. Wealthy influential pundit wannabe politician takes on a bunch of sock puppet roles He hires people to post for him and tries to change the world by pretending that huge crowds admire him. It almost works when one of his sock puppets accidentally tells a blogger pal. WIP decides to have them killed.
8. Wild dog pack terrorizes wealthy suburban neighborhood--turns out to be all the Kate Spade handbag toting moms. They say they're going out to a book club meetings and instead morph into bitches, literally. Their goal: elimination a couple of their pain-in-the-neck bread-winning husbands and the unpopular city council members who just voted for higher taxes.
9. Network of squirrels, rats and pigeons plot to take over a city. First they have to figure out how to get into the municipal offices. A young orphan helps them.
10. Someone is targeting SUVs, stealing them and setting them on fire. Turns out to be whacked-out bike mechanic who was brain-damaged when he took header over a car door. He's also working with a doctor who's been secretly neutering patients with SUVs to keep them from breeding. Tentative title: "Road Rage."
11. Guy targets bloggers who write about their sex lives. Not sure if he targets them for sex or death, but bound to be one of those, right? (It's always one or the other or both)
12. Aliens take control of politicians in fairly subtle plan to take over the earth--until home-planet aliens get impatient and decide to move faster. One of the on-earth aliens has to slow them down or earths' governments will descend into chaos.
13. A mysterious disease is killing or crippling all the young people in a town and it might be the chemicals used for lawn maintenance at the high school, or it might be a fiendish plot by an unpopular piano teacher.
LOL Some of these are clever and some are just plain strange. I'm sure they've all been used at some point or another. That's the wonderful thing about writing fiction!
ReplyDeleteOh, please say you're going to write all of them!
ReplyDeleteI love #6. And #9. And #2. And #8. And...
I'm working on #6, sort of.
ReplyDeleteThe rest of your list is just sitting around avoiding #6 and a couple of others.
#8 is a winner! I might play with their motivations a bit, but the potential for satire is immense.
ReplyDelete