Got That Itch Again

Hey, get your mind out of the gutter! I'm disease-free! It's a different kind of itch.

The writing itch!

I honestly don't know why I got it back -- maybe it's all this self-discovery I've been doing and all the emotions I'm unbottling and trying to figure out -- but I feel like writing. Hell, I just don't feel like it...I did it! I got an idea for a short story/stageplay last night and stayed up til 2 AM to bang out a (shitty but therapeutic) lil' 11-page two-character, one-scene short about two friends and eHarmony. Art imitating life? Of course!

Anywho, I pulled out my "writing box" from the bottom of my closet and revisited some old story ideas, skimmed through a couple good scripts submitted to me by two friends who are great writers in their own right and I even looked at some of my own unfinished (or barely started) pieces of literature. Some of the ideas I still think have some legs under them and I could piece together a good story, some of the plots are rather weak and/or passé and I scrapped them and I even put pen to paper (well, more like finger to keyboard) and jotted down a couple new ideas:

Old ideas I'm still interested in
Fictional baseball movie set in a 1960s prison. Think "Major League" meets "Cool Hand Luke". Still passionate about this idea, even after recent similar productions, namely this book and this documentary.

Stage play based on events surrounding Spur Posse incident. I can almost picture my favorite playwright, Neil LaBute, doing something exactly like this. With a subject like the Spur Posse, this could be a powerful and dark work that people would definitely talk about.

Thriller about a young voyeur who witnesses an affair and a violent crime and gets caught up in the incident. Think "Following" meets "Rear Window". It's a thriller plot line that has been done before, but I think it' s something that can still be done again (and well.) I'm thinking of tweaking it to be about a college student who stalks his ex-girlfriend's boyfriend and finds out about his infidelity and dark side and thus, chaos ensues.

Old ideas I no longer am interested in
Political thriller about a Secret Service agent who takes a bullet for the President only to find out the U.S. government was the assassin. Think "In The Line of Fire" meets "JFK". I think it's a somewhat original idea and could be done really well, but I don't know if I have the chops to pull it off.

Thriller based on the Stanford Prison Experiment. I learned about the Stanford Prison Experiment during my freshman year of college and fell in love with the story and the potential of a movie about it. Unfortunately four years later, "Das Experiment" was released.

New ideas to write about
Thriller/drama about a man who's wife dies in a car crash and the man is able to go back in time to save her...however she's not the woman he used to know. Think "What Dreams May Come" meets "The Butterfly Effect". Sounds interesting, right?

RomCom about a young man who meets a girl on vacation but she loses his phone number and his life turns into a quest to find her. They both spend the next ten years leading ordinary lives, only to find out they live across the street from each other. Think "Before Sunrise" meets "Serendipity". Hey, my lone effort into the romantic comedy genre. Two of my favorite plots -- coming-of-age and the idea of soulmates -- converge into one story.


So whatta think? Lemme know what story lines intrigue you and would be worth reading and please tell me which ones don't sound so promising or fresh!