Wednesday 18 June 2008

Finding Ideas for Writing - Here, There and Everywhere

I was sitting having lunch in the bistro today, and I couldn't help overhearing a couple of ladies chatting at the next table. One of them was telling the other how she had met a man on a train and got chatting to him.

She'd said to him, 'Do you believe that some people are psychic because I'm getting all sorts of information about you?' Then she proceded to amaze him by telling him lots of facts about himself, all of them true.

In fact, she was just playing a trick on him. Someone she knew had told him that a friend of hers was going to be travelling on the train, and the description fitted him so perfectly that she guessed it must be him.

It got me thinking though. That was just a normal lunchtime, but what a great story! Just think of how you could incorporate some of that true life tale into a fictional piece!

It could focus on the conversation between the woman and the man - maybe with a supernatural twist for Hallowe'en. It could lead on to a love story in which the two people do have some sort of close, almost telepathic bond. Or it could lead you to write a story about someone who deceives someone else, either from the point of view of the person doing the deceiving or from the point of view of the person who's duped.

You could write an article about people playing tricks on other people. Or you could do some research on paranormal activity to see whether some people do have psychic information about strangers and how they get it. You could write a crime story where the woman uses her knowledge to win the man's trust, start a relationship, and then con him.

All these ideas, just from a lunchtime conversation!

Now do you see why writers should carry a notebook at all times?

Just for the record, I think she did eventually tell the man that she wasn't actually psychic; they just had a mutual friend.

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