Computer, down to five.

Discarding the story lines I don't like, I'm left with

2 Someone who looks at tourist attractions but never goes out to look around.
This might carry. Someone looking at the Taj Mahal but not smelling the orient.
He has just returned from a walk along the Great Wall and his partner wants to tell him about someone they met, a gypsy or someone from a strange place.  She wants him to taste a delicacy the stranger gave her. It must finish with him going to a local beauty spot.

3 Someone who buys antiques on the web.
Maybe they could find treasure, or a money bag. Where did it come from? The Romanovs? The Mafia? A robbery? Or just an old family heirloom, maybe someone from the old family is ill and needs treatment, which would make a crisis of conscience.
Two possibilities, the money belongs to crooks, the family sold the item to gat money for the operation. Maybe there is a third, it's the title deed to the site of Buckingham Palace or the Albert Hall, even Westminster. I like this, it has real humour possibilities; he could eject both houses of parliament. 

6 Someone researching history who finds themselves in an extremist group who hate bowler hats or something.
This might be funny but not easy. I'll keep it for now. This is an allegory for violent extremism and needs care.

9 Someone who gets hypnotised on line and robs a bank or gets married, or speaks another language.
I like this because it could happen. Gets married to someone from Russia maybe and they can't understand each other. The newcomer is a spy but finds Britain better than his old home, more tolerant maybe. This could be good. 

12 Someone researching fairies and they take them away.
Fantasy and a good fantasy. Keep it in. Fairyland turns out to be a slum somewhere and they want him to sort things out. Maybe he lands up in the middle of a war, or an election with candidates that are caricatures. I'll pursue this it could be good satire. 




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Did the trees talk to me?

Image
  For Bees in my Bonnet, I wrote a short story about trees thinking. It’s called Have a Good Day because it purports to be a conversation between the President and two scientists, who wish each other ‘Have a good day.’ It was speculative, but then I came on Peter Wohlleben’s book, The Secret Network of Nature and read that when Roe Deer bite the bark off a tree, they leave saliva, the tree detects the saliva and produces bad tasting sap. If the scientists just broke a piece off leaving no saliva, the tree just produce healing fluid. I then realised I’d inadvertently been working on a really possible scenario. It seems the trees also communicate to other trees when they are running short of water, allowing the others to reduce their intake and conserve the resource. Wohlleben comments that unfortunately pests tune in to this communication and attack the trees in trouble. Harping back to my story, maybe trees do talk to me after all. http://sullatoberdalton.com/pen-sullatober/s...
Read more

Ghost writing

Image
 I’m moving along to do some non-fiction again because it opened up so many character sketches and short story lines as well as being enjoyable and getting me involved with other people. Let me do a bit of show don’t tell – I was researching the history of a wine farm and went to interview one of the past owners to get some colour. She told me it had been hard making the place pay and that the farmhouse was haunted. Someone had been sitting sewing in the front room when a young woman dressed in the style of the early 1800’s walked through. The person sewing had asked everyone in the house who it was, but no one else had seen the young woman. They realised it had been the ghost of the original occupant, who died as a young woman in the house. A spirit on a wine farm was too good a promotional gimmick to miss so the owner and her partner, glad of anything that would help bring in money, spread the news around. Unfortunately, at that time, the fashion was to pick the grapes at midnigh...
Read more

Muse Fuse.

Image
Dead or dying I’d have described my muse over the last year or so but my Writing Group triggered a remarkable recovery with a challenge to write a short story on the subject of photography. I struggled for a while but, as a last resort, used this mind mapping thing and found several story lines. There was a kind of James Stewart Rear Window, where the cameraman saw something that have a clue to some criminal activity; petty or otherwise according to choice. Then there was the bride who fancied the best man and as the cameraman, or woman, checked the focus, they saw them smile to each other – had the groom been set up for a scam? In this focus moment, there are other interrelationships that could be seen, jealousy between the bridesmaids maybe, even the in-laws. In the end I settled for a group all smiling until the lawn sprinkler at the reception venue came on and created a rainbow effect – beautiful picture but it makes the mascara run. I don’t know if it was having to dig for a s...
Read more