News of the Weird

This week's assignment - NEWS OF THE WEIRD

My favorite news stories are the ones too strange to make it near the front of the paper. The ones where people or circumstances are nearly too impossible to believe. I'm also a huge fan of The Darwin awards.

So, this week, use a "News of the Weird" story as a resource for writing a scene. You have a few ooptions when it comes to this...

1) Directly, a dramatization of the story
2) A scene that leads up to the story
3) A scene that deals with the aftermath of the story
4) The "Based On True Events" Hollywood way where you only use the thinnest thread of the original to influence your scene

Earlier this week, I used number four to write a scene called "Baby Milosh." In the original story, a guy in Sweden committed to pumping up his breasts in a 90-day experiment to see if he could produce milk. His intention, if successful, is to show that men have another avenue to get closer to their children at an early age. In my scene, a man trying to calm down his baby in the middle of the night stumbles upon offering his breast to his child. I chose that approach to the scene because I wanted more than anything to have a guy on stage trying to breastfeed an infant.

If you don't have a local newspaper that runs "News of the Weird" you can find them on-line. Here's a link to one source...

http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/article-8174-swedenrss-male-breast-feeding.html

See you Sunday at Metropolis!

- Joe