A supersoldier formula is invented. It’s only effective on women. It drives men mad when it doesn’t kill them outright.

Women are the weaker sex. That’s not a moral judgment. That’s if we just compare the average man to the average woman on a physical level. Let’s leave aside any questions of spiritual or emotional strength or the long term ability to endure pain. Or just to endure. The average man is bigger and stronger than the average woman.

Now, what if there were a way to make women faster and stronger than men? What if the process only worked on women? How many women would take advantage of it? What kind of people would they become when a big man is no longer something to be afraid of?

A wendigo is killing people in the Pacific Northwest. A detective teams up with a Sasquatch to hunt it down.

The wendigo is a hunger spirit. It is said to possess a man who eats the flesh of another human being. The wendigo comes from Algonquin mythology so it’s a little out of place in the Pacific Northwest but … Bigfoot vs. Wendigo? It’s a natural.

An offshore oil well opens a hole in a vast empty cavern and the world’s oceans begin to drain away.

I did say that some of these ideas would be kind of (really, really) stupid, didn’t I?

Could be a funny kids’ book. Could be the latest blockbuster from Roland Emmerich.

Jekyll’s formula is reinvented; it quickly becomes the most popular recreational drug on the market.

Not much to elaborate on here. There’s a lot of people in the world who would pay a lot of money to be someone else. Even if (perhaps especially if) that other person were an Edward Hyde.

Another, bigger, zombie apocalypse. ALL dead creatures revive to eat the living. I don’t see any happy endings here.

The zombie apocalypse has, as far as I know, mostly been confined to human corpses reviving. I’ve heard of one novel, and a video game or two, that had zombie dogs. But why should revival occur in just man and pooch? Why not all animals with a central nervous system? Zombie dogs, zombie cats, zombie cows, zombie salmon, zombie sharks, zombie sparrows, zombie hawks, zombie rats, zombie alligators, zombie snakes, zombie bats. Humanity would be so screwed.

God help us if ALL animals came back from the dead. How do you rekill a zombie cockroach?

(Suggested by Daniel Peace)

The zombie apocalypse is over in 3 weeks. The living win. Now what does daily life look like when the dead must be feared?

Even if the dead could come back to life as ravenous flesh eaters it’s hard for me to be worried about it. There just aren’t that many corpses lying around. Even if every bite turns the victim into another zombie it’s still unlikely that the undead would gain enough numbers to take out living society. We humans are ruthless creatures and we’re very good at killing other members of our species. In this case there’d be no need to dehumanize the enemy – the enemy is no longer human and wants to eat us. We’d have them chopped up and tossed into the bonfires in no time.

The question then is, what would society look like when a corpse becomes a threat? How would we treat the old and the sick? That homeless guy passed out on the street – no one is going to ignore that body. How would murder investigations be conducted? What kind of funerals would we have? 

21st Century astronaut lands on Mars, finds a pulp fiction world of red warriors, savage beasts and evil overlords.

One of the greatest things about the 21st Century is how much we’ve learned about our world and the universe. Unfortunately, in the process of unraveling all those mysteries we’ve removed the some of the possibilities for adventure. But what if, despite all evidence against it, a modern person (could be a man, woman or team) landed on one of our solar neighbors and found an Edgar Rice Burroughs world?

I’ve had a twitter account now for about a year. Mostly I’ve been using it to let folks know when I update my sketchblog. Storythinking, this blog you’re reading at the moment has been sitting fallow for far, far longer than that. I’d been intending to use this space to write essays about the process of fiction writing and storytelling. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to make the time to write any long form essays. This last Thursday I finally figured out a use for both accounts.

I know there are folks who claim that a good story idea is gold. Once in a great while it is. Once in a great while someone comes up with a story idea that is both original, unique and compelling enough that the resulting story/novel/comic/movie/tv series makes the originator of the idea a good chunk of change.

But that’s rare. Most story ideas are just that. Ideas. Seeds for stories. Whether or not they become stories is less the result of the idea than the execution of it. Dracula is a good example. The basic idea is “A vampire appears in modern day England and begins preying upon the populace”. But that’s not the first time the idea was used. It was the basis of The Vampyre and Varney the Vampire as well. Chances are, however, unless you’re a fan of vampire stories, you’re never heard of those earlier tales. Neither of them have made the ultimate transition to public awareness – there are no film or television adaptations of those works. Heck, neither has been translated into comics.

My point is that it wasn’t the idea behind Dracula that worked. It was how Bram Stoker executed the idea and told the tale. 78 years later Stephen King took the same idea, changed “England” to “America” and wrote ‘Salem’s Lot.

How many Coming of Age stories get told? How many Alien Invasion stories? Boy meets Girl, Girl hates Boy, Boy gets Girl anyway stories? Show me a storyteller with only one idea and I’ll show you a very, very unlucky storyteller who needs to practice his art more. Because ideas are easy. I’ve had more story ideas in my life than I’ll ever make use of. I’m not saying that because I think I’m special. Or brilliant. I’m also not saying that all (or even most) of my ideas are good ones. I’m saying I have a use for my twitter account.

I used to write my story ideas down and put them in a box. I’m pretty sure I’ve got the box somewhere. Probably in another box. The ideas were simple, one sentence story seeds. I rarely included any plot details. Plot and story get written together. I just wrote down the ideas to get them out of my head. And that’s what I’ll be using twitter for, for a while at least.

I’ll be tweeting 99 story ideas. They may be good. They may be stupid. They may already be the basis of a story or five somewhere in the world. With Twitter’s 140 character limit I’ll be keeping the ideas as streamlined as possible. I’ll just be tweeting the ones I’ve never run in to anywhere else. I’m using the hash tag #99stories to track all the entries. I’ll be posting the tweets (occasionally with comments) here at Storythinking for those who avoid Twitter.

If you’re a writer or an artist and want to use one of the ideas, be my guest. You have my blessings. You may have noticed that I spend a lot more time drawing than I do writing. I’d love it if you let me know and showed me whatever you came up with. If I post an idea that sounds like the basis of a story you’re read please let me know.

This should be fun!