Purely exploratory: how would you write a show named Growing Good?

IMO:

• It would be boring to have it start in hell with a vanilla bad dude. I would use a place that isn't native for good; like, sheep in the jungle.
• No sappyness. Our protagonist does something good a little tactically and a little accidentally, and it starts getting muscular behind his back. He finds himself doing, well, good, and it goes from there.
• The protagonist has a very cynically opportunistic take on being the good guy.
• When in doubt, don't treat it as a morality lesson and instead treat good as a philosophical exercise.

Thoughts?

 

I'd write a show about a drug kingpin who gradually gives away his ill-gotten fortune while incrementally removing himself from the drug business. While doing so, he strengthens his relationships with his wife, son, and in-laws. He grows gooder and gooder over the course of the story arc, eventually going completely legit as a high school chemistry teacher.

 

Sounds like a vehicle for a small time pot grower who works diligently to improve the THC content of her crop.

 

I see what you did there. But then, the idea is already implicit in the title, isn't it?

 

Despite every possible temptation to do more evil things. That's kind of the obvious Breaking Bad counterpart: continuing on a good path despite temptation.

... Not sure if I like it the best... sounds a little bit more like greatness, then goodness...

 

Well, it is great that she's growing the good s**t, right?

 

I would write a show about a boy who escapes a dying planet and lands on a farm somewhere out west, is brought up by the couple who own it, and must use his super powers to battle crop disease, pests and an evil mastermind.

 

How about a former evil warlord, the worst of them all, and let's make it a woman, who has turned over a new leaf and, with her naive sidekick (also a woman), decides to ride around the ancient Greek world fighting against the other evil warlords and throwing a steel ring that acts like a sentient boomerang. And yodeling.

I think the problem is the idea is too generic, it's really just "Somebody who Breaks Good". And the title makes it too obviosuly connected to Breaking Bad. You need to have more of an idea than that, something a lot more concrete, and then we could help you evaluate it and maybe work up more ideas. But you're essentially asking us to come up with story ideas based on a title that's already very derivative. That's early brainstorming stuff, you don't outsource that to a group of strangers.

 

You mistake me. I don't want to write this story; but if you can make this story fresh then you can definitely write some fresh good guy characters/scenarios.

A good writer should gimp himself. It's not all about the concept so much as the execution.

In my OP, I tried to avoid "break" and underline "grow." You're not looking at this as enough of a cynical bastard. Everyone knows the advantages of being good - it's about intelligently exploiting good, at a remove, and ending up good anyway.

It's like the opposite of Walter White going in blind to badness in Breaking Bad. This is more "enlightened amoralist" gets given the good guy stick.

 

Oh, ok, so it isn't to help you develop an idea for your own story, it's more like a prompt? I think you have a very complex and subtle idea around it, and that's hard to get across clearly. I sort of understand where you're coming from, but it's expecting a lot, for people online to understand something that nuanced and work with it. I think you're going to mostly get jokes and simplified ideas in response. That's just the nature of the internet when complex ideas are presented, unfortunately.

 

Honestly Xoic, all you need is provocation.

And Hammer, I'm simply developing my plot development.

 

I'm still crushed that my story of the grower seeking to break her THC content out of merely good to excellent was discounted. Field botanists simply don't get the literary attention they deserve.