Organisms from sponges and jellyfish to alligators and orangutans fill us with wonder. And new creatures continue to be discovered in remote deserts, rain forests, and the fossil record. What will we discover tomorrow? The following scenarios should pique your storyteller’s imagination.
SITUATION 1: Several dogs genetically enhanced for a secret military-combat operation have disappeared. Special agents must locate the animals and retrieve them before they fall into the wrong hands. Locating them is one challenge; retrieving them is quite another.
SITUATION 2: While visiting an African wildlife preserve, a photographer tries taking close-up photos of an unknown creature when it suddenly attacks her. She escapes and later returns to the site with natives who are familiar with the region to help track down the strange creature.
SITUATION 3: An elephant zoologist searches for a special young elephant with telepathic powers that escaped after realizing that there is a whole world outside of the zoo. When the zoologist reconnects with the elephant, now hiding in a dense forest outside the city, the elephant begs him leave him alone.
SITUATION 4: Investigators search for an escaped chimpanzee. The animal fled a research facility that specializes in DNA mutations, and doctors had just injected the animal with what investigators believed to be the DNA of a “missing-link” type of animal. The investigators cannot determine the results of the injection unless they recover the chimpanzee.
SITUATION 5: A botanist searching for new species of edible plants (in order to help alleviate famine in an African country), finds a strange moss-like substance that tastes delicious, but soon proves to cause bizarre side effects.
SITUATION 6: When a biologist disappears after studying dangerous pathogens in his lab, the biologist’s former lover sets out to find him. When she does, she realizes that he is infected with one of the pathogens and may have infected someone else—someone he did not want her to know about.
SITUATION 7: Astronauts search for primitive life in Martian soil, but their search becomes complicated when they find an object that appears to be the petrified remains of some creature. They bring it into their compound for further study: a big mistake.
SITUATION 8: After a UFO crash-lands in the Sahara Desert, several search groups scramble to locate it. The group that gets there first is mystified by what they find and must work with the other groups to make sense of the discovery.
SITUATION 9: Undead beings that were once Jack the Ripper and Lizzie Borden terrorize the country. It is up to the narrator, who learned from a shaman how to stop such beings, to destroy them. But the shaman’s techniques don’t work, so he must figure out what to do on his own.
SITUATION 10: The insane Roman emperor, Caligula, has been catapulted into the present day by a sorcerer, and he proceeds to wreak havoc everywhere he goes. The world’s best-known expert on Caligula’s life searches for a way to stop him.
The following scenarios will help you take your readers on a treasure-hunting adventure. If the object of the quest is not a magic ring like the one in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, then maybe it’s a lost manuscript or an object that someday could become a treasure.
SITUATION 1: Two archaeologists search in exotic locales for the manuscript of a lost biblical episode that would reinforce or invalidate extant texts dealing with those episodes (e.g., Noah’s Ark, the Exodus into Egypt). Their efforts are undermined by one who is intent on destroying the manuscript for the same reason.
SITUATION 2: A child who witnessed a member of a satanic cult (her neighbor) worshipping a sacred artifact has been kidnapped by the cultists to prevent her from giving away their secret. Her parents suspect the neighbor and fear that the cultists will try to brainwash her into joining their sect.
SITUATION 3: Divers scouring a shipwreck find a vellum map sealed in a ceramic jar. It directs explorers to a cache of pre-Colonial artifacts—some of which could change history profoundly. Their biggest challenge is to deliver the artifacts to safety before thieves (who know about the find) try to get a hold of them.
SITUATION 4: A parent searches for the lost diary of their runaway teenager, hoping for clues that will help them find her. They eventually do find clues, but they reveal unexpected and disturbing reasons for why she ran away. And she included a warning: Do not search for her.
SITUATION 5: A newly excavated map etched in stone contains a clue to the whereabouts of a trove of unknown sacred scrolls. However, the scrolls (according to the map) are buried in enemy territory. Even so, the discoverer knows someone there who (he hopes) will assist him.
SITUATION 6: Archaeologists from the future search for ancient technological artifacts in a region once known as Silicon Valley. One of the archaeologists fears that some of the artifacts they discover there could cause their society to devolve into slaves controlled by supercomputers.
SITUATION 7: An anthropologist, following clues taken from a recently excavated Mayan burial site, searches for what may be a lost city on the Yucatan Peninsula. But superstitious villagers near the site do all they can to keep the scientists away and for good reason.
SITUATION 8: An artifact discovered inside an Egyptian sarcophagus releases a zombie pandemic that mystifies scientists. The scientists search desperately for the one Egyptologist who might know how to stop the plague.
SITUATION 9: A monastery in sixteenth-century England is destroyed, and the monastery’s librarian searches the ruins for a magic book—one that contains a spell that could prevent the monastery’s destruction.
SITUATION 10: A literary scholar teams up with an archaeologist in the search for a lost play of Sophocles that, according to clues recently unearthed, could lie beneath a church in Athens. The challenge will be obtaining permission to excavate inside the church or doing so without being detected.
We associate elixirs with magic—they are nectars or foods that will restore youth or youthful vigor, heighten perceptions, or bestow immortality—but elixirs are part of everyday reality too—vitamins, for example. Catholics restore their state of grace by ingesting an elixir of “the body and blood” of Christ through the Eucharist. Here are ten situations for taking readers on an elixir search.
SITUATION 1: A geneticist searches for a gene responsible for aging. After finding it, she manipulates it to extend a friend’s life—but with unexpected negative results. She must now search for an antidote.
SITUATION 2: After someone steals an elixir capable of restoring one’s youth, it is up to the protagonist to recover it. But the thief is reputed to have demonic powers, including the power to reverse the elixir’s effects and accelerate age.
SITUATION 3: Biologists in a rain forest search for an elixir that enhances one’s sexual drive. They find one, but others get a hold of it and misuse it.
SITUATION 4: People are searching for a self-proclaimed sorcerer who is said to have discovered an elixir with the power to rid people of terminal illnesses. When they finally find him, he is near death. They realize he is dying from an unknown disease that, ironically, is resistant to his elixir; it is up to the protagonist to find a way to prolong his life using everyday medicines.
SITUATION 5: Villagers have lost track of a snake whose venom, if injected in tiny quantities (by a shaman), imbues one with supernatural strength. A herpetologist (the narrator) is recruited to search for it—a daunting assignment because the rain forest is filled with a similar species of snake and the missing snake’s bite is lethal.
SITUATION 6: An ancient document said to contain recipes for becoming invulnerable to deadly diseases has been discovered. However, the recipes include rare herbs, which a group of researchers set out to find in a remote rain forest. One of the scientists worries that some recipes may have undesirable side effects, and they soon discover this to be true.
SITUATION 7: A recovering alcoholic searches his home desperately for the liquor-cabinet key that his wife hid. When his wife returns home and finds him trying to destroy the cabinet to get to the liquor, she takes the step she always dreaded taking to ensure that he stays on the wagon.
SITUATION 8: After years of searching for a way to enhance intelligence, a psychologist succeeds in ways he never anticipated—first with animals, then with humans. But when the public learns the details of his project, there is widespread outrage. But the human patients step up to support the doctor’s unorthodox methods.
SITUATION 9: Medical researchers create a drug that dramatically improves memory, but there are painful psychological side effects because the drug prevents users from forgetting anything. A search is launched to neutralize the drug before users lose their sanity.
SITUATION 10: In the near future, after marijuana becomes fully legalized, botanists cultivate a superpotent version of the drug that offers great medical benefits but is also as addictive on the level of much harder drugs. Efforts to find a way to counteract the addiction are met with fierce resistance because of the extreme euphoria the drug produces.
Fugitive-hunting situations make for suspenseful plots, often with dead ends, false clues, and harrowing chases. Here are ten scenarios for creating gripping twist-and-turn stories—perhaps emulating Marlow in his search for Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
SITUATION 1: A police detective searches for a serial killer who has escaped from prison and is stalking victims in upper-class neighborhoods and nightclubs in a posh city. The problem is that the killer is female, well-mannered, attractive, and has a knack for altering her appearance.
SITUATION 2: A posse is organized to search for an arsonist who has been burning down Western towns. The leader of the posse (the protagonist) also tries to figure out the arsonist’s motive and is shocked by what he discovers.
SITUATION 3: Police search for a charismatic cult leader who, like Charles Manson, is able to brainwash followers into committing acts of brutality and murder. When an undercover investigator finds him, he must risk becoming brainwashed himself.
SITUATION 4: The teenage daughter of a mob boss is kidnapped. No one knows who the kidnappers are, except for the narrator, who fears that sharing his hunch could threaten the daughter’s safety and bring suspicion upon himself. He sets out to find her as a way to pay back the mob for a favor they rendered years ago.
SITUATION 5: CIA agents search for a former agent who has infiltrated an enemy organization by luring them with top-secret information. Is she a traitor, or is she merely using the classified documents as bait?
SITUATION 6: When an enemy-encrypted transmission is intercepted, the only cryptologist who can decipher it disappears. Because the message is time-sensitive, a search is undertaken to locate the cryptologist, who may have been an enemy agent all along.
SITUATION 7: Two children who possess the ability to read minds escape custody (or were they abducted?) before they are recruited (and given posthypnotic suggestions) to track down perceived enemies of the state. The recruiters find one of the children and send him on their manhunts.
SITUATION 8: A serial killer escapes from confinement and evades every effort to find him. As a last resort, the protagonist—an ace fugitive finder but a highly unstable personality with a criminal record of his own—is recruited to track him down through the most dangerous neighborhoods of the killer’s hometown.
SITUATION 9: How does one find a fugitive who is a master of disguises? That is the challenge for the narrator, a detective who is tracking down an assassin who seems to be able to impersonate almost anyone, even the detective, which makes him a suspect in the case.
SITUATION 10: An art thief who has served her sentence for grand theft is hired to track down thieves responsible for stealing paintings from the local museum. Many, however, worry that she might collaborate with the fugitives to pull off an even more ambitious art heist.
Those who live and work in urban areas know how easily one can become detached from the natural world and how rejuvenating it can be to reconnect to the Earth. Here are ten situations that dramatize the need to simplify one’s life—following Thoreau’s ideal—to restore one’s sanity before it is too late.
SITUATION 1: A latter-day Thoreau quits his high-pressure job and searches for a way to follow the great naturalist’s precepts. But no matter how cleverly he tries to sever his connections with the corporate world, his old habits keep coming back—until he tries one more strategy, one he learned from a Native -American tribal leader.
SITUATION 2: In a fast-paced urban world, the protagonist searches for ways to slow down. She seeks out sanctuaries of peace and quiet, including cloisters, houses of worship, and libraries. After frustrating outcomes, she finds her ideal sanctuary in an unlikely place.
SITUATION 3: Tired of urban life, a business executive takes his family on an extended vacation in the wilderness but with unanticipated complications—not so much from animals or from difficult terrain or weather but from other vacationers.
SITUATION 4: No matter how cleverly an aspiring career woman negotiates with her controlling but otherwise good-hearted husband, she cannot convince him to stop micromanaging her every move. Finally, she tries one last unusual ploy before seeking a divorce.
SITUATION 5: During a stressful period in his life, the narrator finds refuge from the real world in a fantasy world he creates based on childhood daydreams, but he decides that the real world offers plenty of opportunities for solace. However, when he tries to return to the real world, he cannot.
SITUATION 6: In a postapocalyptic world, surviving families struggle to regain self-sufficiency without resorting to savagery, but on certain occasions, many families decide that a few desperate measures have to be taken. One woman, however, looks for ways to keep her family from resorting to savagery.
SITUATION 7: An astronomer searching for remnants of the Big Bang stumbles upon what appears to be proof of a Divine Being. Despite his colleagues’ taunting, he insists his findings are correct.
SITUATION 8: After living most of his life in big cities, the narrator seeks a simpler, quieter life by taking over her brother’s farm. But before she can have a simpler and quieter life, she needs to learn a few lessons about farming.
SITUATION 9: No longer finding pleasure in what he sees as a sterile, mechanized world, an aspiring artist is determined to find fulfillment in painting. Ironically, his artistic impulses drive him back to the frenzied modern world—but with a transformed perspective.
SITUATION 10: After the Civil War, a freed slave who had learned to play his former owner’s piano struggles to find work as a musician in a land still dominated by racial discrimination. Through his dazzling performances, he manages to cut through most but not all of the prejudice.
Who am I? The question lies at the heart of much literature, from Hamlet to Alex Haley’s Roots. The easiest, if not the most reliable, means of discovering one’s identity is by consulting family records—diaries, photographs, other memorabilia—another is through oral histories. The scenarios that follow will help you shape stories centered on the search for identity.
SITUATION 1: When a relative gives an unemployed drug addict a document showing that the addict’s missing father is/was a military hero, he sets out to find the man, despite his own precarious health and drug dependency.
SITUATION 2: A teenager living with his adoptive father sets out to find his birth father after finding evidence that his birth father, a successful business executive, gave him up for adoption when he was an infant. He is concerned, however, that his birth father will think he is only tracking him down because of his wealth.
SITUATION 3: A ghost visits an abused child to tell him that he is an exiled king from a magical world and that his kingdom desperately needs him to return and restore order. Alas, the portal to that magical world has been lost, and it is up to the child to find it. The spirit has only a few meager clues to offer, but it’s enough for the child to get started.
SITUATION 4: After tracing his ancestry, an American citizen born in Britain uncovers a clue that suggests his father may be the illegitimate son of the royal family and therefore he deserves a share of his royal father’s estate. But first, he must find harder evidence to validate the claim.
SITUATION 5: A sick and homeless Oglala Sioux man learns that he is the descendant of Sitting Bull. He vows to restore himself to health and lead the people on his reservation to a better life, but the odds are against him because of his advanced age.
SITUATION 6: After the narrator discovers records revealing that she is not who she thinks she is, she embarks on a quest to discover her true identity. However, someone unexpected is taking pains to ensure that she does not discover the truth about herself.
SITUATION 7: The child heir to a powerful kingdom is kidnapped by an enemy and becomes the adopted son of the enemy king. Years later, the grown son launches an attack against the other king, his birth father. A former childhood friend learns of the attacking prince’s true heritage and attempts to fight through enemy lines to convince him of that truth.
SITUATION 8: An orphaned girl in ancient Rome becomes the servant of an aristocrat who secretly knows that the girl is the illegitimate daughter of the Emperor. The girl finds out and demands to know why her lineage has been kept a secret—but her master refuses to tell her.
SITUATION 9: When a white supremacist discovers that his paternal great-grandfather was an African-American slave, he vents his rage against his father for keeping the matter secret, but as he learns more about his great-grandfather’s life, his sentiments change.
SITUATION 10: A retired German architect orphaned at age four has no idea of his lineage—genealogy searches always turn up blank. Finally, he conducts extensive research and arranges for a DNA analysis. He discovers to his horror that he is an illegitimate son of Adolf Hitler. Suddenly, his life is in danger.
The scenarios that follow will help you set up stories about people who are missing against their will—those who are lost or kidnapped. Think of the 1962 film, The Manchurian Candidate, based on the novel by Richard Condon, in which a man is abducted and brainwashed to be an assassin.
SITUATION 1: A disgruntled CIA agent steals classified information and blackmails the organization, but just as the issue is resolved and he agrees to return the materials, he vanishes. It is up to the protagonist, a current CIA agent, to find him. It appears that an unknown third party has abducted him.
SITUATION 2: Twins capable of feats of magic go missing. Their parents, who had abandoned them when they were infants (fearing they were possessed by evil spirits) and are no wracked with guilt, search everywhere for them. In a last desperate measure, they ask a sorceress to help find the children.
SITUATION 3: Agents search for one of their own spies, one of the world’s cleverest computer hackers, who has stolen secret information and disappeared. It is believed that the spy may have been kidnapped years prior and was brainwashed by a terrorist group to sabotage computer systems vital to national security.
SITUATION 4: The protagonist hears a rumor that a woman capable of performing health-related miracles has vanished, and she sets out to find her. But there are some who wants to make sure no one ever finds her.
SITUATION 5: In medieval France, an old woman is accused of being a witch and is hunted down. The protagonist risks his life to save her from being burned alive, convinced that the witch is actually a miracle worker. He hopes to prove her authenticity before they are both caught and executed.
SITUATION 6: A mentally unstable engineering genius vanishes into the wilderness just when her insights are most needed to solve a potentially disastrous communications network malfunction. The protagonist and a partner work around the clock to determine her whereabouts.
SITUATION 7: A pilgrim to the Holy Land follows clues in search of a seer whose extraordinary visions might hold the secret to peace in the Middle East. The only problem is that the seer is extremely reclusive and has hired guards to keep people away who determine his whereabouts.
SITUATION 8: Everyone assumes that the maternal grandmother of the protagonist is penniless, but after she disappears, rumors that she stashed away a vast fortune emerge. Some family members believe she ran away and set out to find her, while others believe she is being held captive.
SITUATION 9: The adopted daughter of a CIA agent is kidnapped by the daughter’s biological father. The ransom is a certain top-secret document. Instead of giving in, the agent uses tenuous leads to search for his daughter.
SITUATION 10: A botanist vanishes in a Central American rain forest while searching for new species of medicinal plants. When his son, who goes searching for him, encounters militants in the process of deforesting the region, he begins to suspect foul play.
People in power sometimes mistreat those under their control. If the mistreatment goes unchecked, as is often the case with prisoners (think of the film The Shawshank Redemption, based on a Stephen King story), rioting can break out. The protection of basic human rights prevents such abuses of power from occurring.
SITUATION 1: When factory workers, led by a charismatic organizer, strike against their supervisors, the factory’s CEO searches for a peaceful way to end the conflict without a strike—but the organizer will not relent. Finally, another worker comes up with a plan that just might satisfy both parties.
SITUATION 2: A prison warden tries to prevent an impending riot by negotiating secretly with one of the prisoners who is respected by most of his fellow inmates. The prisoner is torn between loyalty to his fellow prisoners and wanting his sentence reduced.
SITUATION 3: During the witch-hunting in late seventeenth-century New England, a woman accused of witchcraft must prove she is not a witch. But what seems to her compelling evidence is to Cotton Mather an excellent reason for condemning her.
SITUATION 4: In 1964, during the Civil Rights movement in the South, a white high-school teacher tries to change the racist thinking of his students after an African-American student joins his class. However, he find that even his closest friends and loved ones cannot agree with his enlightened thinking.
SITUATION 5: After rioting breaks out in a community in reaction to the government’s oppressive policies, a civic leader struggles to find common ground between the community’s demands and the government’s policies.
SITUATION 6: A tribal leader tries to defuse a growing Native-American rebellion, the aim of which is to regain land lost to them more than 150 years ago. At the same time, he is motivated to improve living conditions for his people through legal means.
SITUATION 7: In the future, two lunar colonies threaten to go to war to resolve disputes over natural resources. An emissary from Earth uses diplomacy to try to broker a truce, but all of his efforts fail ... except one that could backfire.
SITUATION 8: During a human-rights protest in a dictatorship (past or current), the protagonist attempts a peaceful protest march—but halfway through it, police try to disperse the protesters with tear gas and a riot breaks out.
SITUATION 9: In a village plagued by superstition and fear, unmarried women who are being persecuted as witches plan to revolt against the (all-male) clergy—many of whom, ironically, have been secretly engaging in sorcery. One of the men tries to prevent the revolt.
SITUATION 10: Because of escalating gang wars, a retired police officer is determined to search for creative ways to diffuse the hostilities, disarm the gangs, and even disband the gangs themselves—but the gang leaders offer formidable opposition to her plans.
Steven Soderburgh’s 2011 film Contagion riveted moviegoers with its disturbingly real dramatization of the rapid-fire spread of a lethal pathogen. Novels like Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain have had a similar impact. Such stories remind us of our vulnerability to infection—but also of the need to maintain good health habits. The following situations involve health crises that could become the basis of riveting stories.
SITUATION 1: A recreational drug that drastically (and possibly permanently) alters the personalities of its users becomes widespread. The protagonist searches for an antidote (as well as a way to sabotage existing supplies of the drug) before it’s too late.
SITUATION 2: Severe pollution in a large metropolitan area is causing widespread and unusual respiratory disorders—and there seems to be no solution to the problem until the protagonist discovers a promising fix. However, the fix requires a major sacrifice.
SITUATION 3: A deadly epidemic is sweeping the country. The protagonist, who thinks she can stop it, is kidnapped by members of a terrorist group responsible for spreading the virus.
SITUATION 4: When a love drug is made available, millions take it to experience or re-experience romance with their significant other. However, the drug has unforeseen side effects that are problematic enough to incite researchers to search for an antidote.
SITUATION 5: Medical researchers rush to create an antidote to a mutated syphilis bacterium resistant to existing antibiotics. The head researcher discovers a possible antidote, but it is highly controversial.
SITUATION 6: Someone has contaminated a community reservoir with a chemical that is causing people’s faces to change. The narrator searches simultaneously for the culprit and an antidote to the contaminant’s effects.
SITUATION 7: The suicide rate is becoming alarmingly high among business professionals. A clinical psychologist, with the help of his wife, a corporate executive, embarks on a search to discover the cause.
SITUATION 8: People everywhere are losing their memories, and psychologists search simultaneously for a cause and a cure. Things become even more confusing when people begin experiencing false memories.
SITUATION 9: An artificial antiviral agent, originally designed to give people lifelong immunity to all types of flu, mutates inexplicably, causing grotesque physiological changes in those who were immunized.
SITUATION 10: Mosquitoes carrying the dengue-fever virus proliferate inexplicably and migrate to northern latitudes. The narrator, an expert on this infectious disease, must find an antidote before hundreds of thousands of people perish.
Stories of war, criminal investigation, or espionage, often involve the search for a weapon and thereby generate the suspense readers crave. A good cinematic example is The Hindenburg, a 1975 film, which speculates that the cause of the destruction of the German zeppelin was a bomb planted by an anti-Nazi spy. Here are ten scenarios for you to develop into nail-biting suspense.
SITUATION 1: A group of domestic terrorists announce that they have planted a bomb somewhere in the protagonist’s large city and will detonate it unless the government ceases all efforts to restrict the use of petrochemicals. The protagonist and her team use scant clues to search for the bomb.
SITUATION 2: After a scientist entrusted with top-secret information about a new military weapon vanishes, an agent is recruited to find her. However, the scientist has begun to send media contacts pieces of information about the program, and the military decides to not just find the scientist but dissolve the program and make everyone who had anything to do with it disappear, including the agent.
SITUATION 3: Demolition experts venture into enemy territory in search of a missing nuclear warhead that the enemy stole from a botched secret-ops mission. The narrator must resort to unusual infiltration methods to obtain information leading to the hiding place.
SITUATION 4: When a highway construction crew unearths a strange device, experts fear it may be a weapon—but no one is certain what kind or how lethal it might be. Archaeologists are brought in to determine the manufacturers.
SITUATION 5: Someone has contaminated a municipal water supply with a chemical that heightens aggression and makes people lose their ability to think rationally. An enterprising detective searches for the culprit as well as an antidote, but he must hurry: He drank from the water supply himself.
SITUATION 6: After a domestic terrorist hides a bomb in an office building and makes demands, he is killed in an unrelated incident. The protagonist must locate the bomb before it’s too late.
SITUATION 7: Robots with advanced artificial intelligence plant a doomsday weapon designed to eliminate all human life on earth. It is up to a small group of humans who have escaped from roving armies of robots and who learn about the weapon from a robot defector to find the weapon before it detonates.
SITUATION 8: A powerful bomb, presumably left over from a recent conflict, is found partially buried just outside a busy marketplace. The protagonist, a demolition expert, fears it may be remote-controlled and was deliberately buried.
SITUATION 9: An arsenal of nuclear warheads for missiles vanishes. A domestic militia is responsible for the theft. Eventually they announce that they are planning to launch an attack against a government institution unless their demands are met. It is up to the narrator, a CIA agent, to stop them.
SITUATION 10: Someone has placed a bomb in Jerusalem’s Old City. An encrypted e-mail sent to the Israelis, the Palestinians, and the U.S. Embassy warns that the bomb, capable of destroying the Temple Mount, will be detonated unless a lasting peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians is established.