What we have done here is barely touching the surface of what could be done around Flashpoint.
It’s easy to talk all day about the show but if you don’t write that spec, it’s pointless.
The hardest step is to finish that first draft, so just do it!
Ideas for your Flashpoint spec can be found anywhere. The show is often based on real-life cases.
For instance the pilot episode was inspired by an ETF sniper shooting.
I would probably avoid however basic hostage situations as it has been done and redone on the show.
The teaser is a crucial part of the show and its structure. It must hook the reader/viewer.
Someone holding someone else at gunpoint also has been quite done on FP so be careful on not recycling stories.
The most important part of the story are the characters.
Linking the story to them and making the audience care is a crucial part.
As seen previously, the background of the SRU members has been well developed, so you can maybe tap into that for your spec.
Choose wisely the SRU member you want to center on. The whole thing must make sense (at the very least thematically).
Create interesting antagonists that we will root for or against.
Don’t make a happy ending for the sake of it, but don’t kill everyone in a big atomic explosion.
Everything must happen for a reason.
For more info on the show you should also look for interviews with the writers.
Jill Gollick has several of those around the creation of the show.
Actually, she even made a much better breakdown of the pilot episode than mine (with character beats et al.). So definitely check that out.
Why not as well go on fan forums and official boards (such as CTV’s) to garner even more info (from the fans’ POV).
The series is fresh enough that you can get away with almost any storyline for the moment, as long as the characters and their actions are believable and interesting.
Trust yourself, trust your writing, and write it.
Good luck!
On the topic of Flashpoint specs, I was interviewing creators/second season showrunners Mark Ellis and Stephanie Morganstern last week. I asked them about the second season story room and they mentioned that they have one freelance script still unspoken for, but several people in the running for it. One is a contender on the basis of spec Flashpoint spec. Of course it goes against everything we know and believe to send a spec to the series but it worked in this case. Even if the writer doesn’t get that gig, at least he or she got onto the show’s radar and that’s the kind of work we want our specs to do for us, no?