15 Ideas: Supernatural Season 16
Welcome to this week’s writing exercise!
EXERCISE: Think of a favorite long running TV show. If someone wanted to create a new season, what do you think would be the biggest obstacle to making it work/keeping it fresh?
Think of 15 ways to overcome that obstacle.
On the Story Grid podcast, Shawn Coin recommended an exercising for solving a problem in a story.
If you’re struggling to come up with a solution to a particular problem, he said, brainstorm 15 different ways to do it.
The first half you come up with will probably be crappy or boring stuff everyone expects, but then you might find yourself getting into the good stuff.
I recently watched Supernatural (I know, I’m late to the show) and loved it.
The lead actors teased the possibility of a season 16 and I, along with a lot of fans I’m sure, started thinking about what story the extra season(s) could tell.
Both of the leads’ deaths are shown in the finale.
The leads died a lot during the series, so bringing one back seems like it would be no big deal. The problem is the series ended with the two reuniting in heaven after one grew old. It might come off a little flaky to have Dean come back alive if he just reunited with dead-old-Sam in heaven.
I’m going to try this “15 things” exercise to see what else I can come up with. Mostly, I wanted to practice this exercise on something random before I apply it to a problem in my WIP, where I feel a bit more pressure to come up with something exciting.
Thankfully, no one is counting on me to solve this Supernatural Season 16 problem ;)
Alternate Universe starting at a specific episode. Just pick an episode fans love, start there and then twist the episode, and the season arc, to something completely different. (The French Connection would be a good one - when they come back from Jared/Jensen land, things could go in a diff direction than the original season. Start episode with them diving through the window into Jared/Jensen land then change things from there?)
The series ending was a hallucination - a jin, perhaps? Start in that “heaven” from the series finale, and then show Dean or Sam or both strung up in a jin’s lair.
Season 16 starts after Episode 19, but before the finale - the episode isn’t crystal clear on the time gap here, so could be plenty of story to tell in between.
Future season’s are with Sam’s son as lead, could do side by sides of him hunting with older Sam and similar hunting trips (that we haven’t seen yet) from Dean & Sam. The bigger arc would surround Sam and his son, with the Dean & Sam stuff being more about supporting that story and giving us some extra stories we haven’t heart from the past.
Start with Dean & Sam & Bobby in heaven talking. Sam mentions that Dean visited Sam and his family often throughout the rest of Sam’s life and helped them on hunts. Dean doesn’t know what he’s talking about since he just got to heaven. Bobby says “you probably just haven’t done it yet. “When the boys are confused he reminds them time works differently there. From here can tell Sam & son hunting stories with Dean included potentially.
Sam & Dean get pulled from heaven by Jack and asked to help with some big thing happening in 2026 (or whenever.) They’re told to avoid present-day-Sam. Probably would need to run into present-day-Sam, which could be fun episode.
Story just stays in heaven. Some kind of problem with heaven, monsters maybe are infiltrating and Jack nowhere to be found? So heaven starts to look a little like old earth with monsters to fight and people dying (and going who knows where!)
Hell attacks heaven.
Start season with something in heaven (like ideas 7 and 8) then pivot to them getting pulled to Earth mid-season, or an 2/3 point.
Start season with Sam and Dean in normal lives with no recollection of their hunter lives. (a little like the episode where Zachary put them in those office jobs and had them thinking they were normal joes and not brothers, could do “not brothers” for this too or even have them grown with living parents)
Supernatural things start happening. They start remembering bits of their old lives. Turns out they’re still in heaven, but someone is messing with heaven somehow - maybe Jack’s in trouble.Alternate universe where John’s Dad didn’t die. Pick up at present day if John had been raised in Men of Letters. Dean never died.
Pivot to a 1/2 hour sit com show with a comedy bent instead of drama. They each have families and regular jobs plus they take hunting trips on the side.
Heaven gets destroyed somehow so everyone comes back from heaven at once and is dropped into a particular year, causing much turmoil. People who hadn’t died yet just wouldn’t come back so there wouldn’t be any doubling up, solves Sam problem because he’d just be whatever Sam version was on earth at the time.
Drop Sam & Dean into the future just after old Sam dies (could be for any number of reasons - maybe happens after one of the above ideas about trouble in heaven), freaking out his son and then he adjusts and they all hunt together
Dean in heaven driving baby, before the bridge scene, then suddenly he’s in apocalypse world. Maybe it somehow survived or God just preserved it because he liked that little world where the only thing different was that Sam and Dean weren’t born. They save Crowley, who survived there because he’s a cockroach, and then get back to the regular world. Will have to avoid present-day-Sam. OR there’s only one Sam, he doesn’t have his family yet at this point and once the reboot is over, Dean can die again and plop back into baby driving in heaven - everything ends the same way except after they hug on the bridge they go to the bar and see all their friends and family for a true finale.
Any other ideas?
Exercise reflections: I can’t wait to do this with my work in progress. When I thought about this problem, I have a bunch of ideas, but when I sat down and made myself type out 15 possible solutions, the wheels really started turning.
I actually could have gone on for a lot longer and I started to have more ideas about meshing some of these ideas to work together.
Since I’m not in charge of idea generating for Supernatural, I quit at 15. For my current work though, I will be using this to come up with ways to make my manuscript unique and fun and, hopefully, unexpected.
Happy Writing!
— Stevie