How To Get Ideas For Stories! Stay Aware and Curious!

By Erika Hoffman

Driving down I-75 in Atlanta, a billboard blared: “Your Wife Is Hot!  And she’s getting hotter!”  In smaller print, the sign advertised an air conditioning company. I found the innuendo worth pondering.  The writerly side of me mulled over creating a flash fiction on the double-entendre of “hotness.” I’d begin by saying Leroy’s wife was leaving him because after all she was much HOTTER than poor Leroy. When you read on, you’d find, the Mrs. was leaving her conjugal nest, not for another fella, but for her mom’s house where the AC worked. This is how a nugget of an idea mushrooms into a vignette! Surprise twists make stories interesting. 

Later that day, I visited Bullock Hall in Roswell. I learned that Mittie Bullock was the mother of Teddy Roosevelt.  What fascinated me was the description of young Mittie during the 1850s as “the prettiest gal around,” a girl who liked to ride horses, and act a bit wild.  Furthermore, I learned that columnist Peggy Mitchell interviewed Mittie’s childhood friend and bridesmaid, Mrs. Baker. Although in her eighties, she vividly recited details of Mittie’s wedding to a New Yorker, Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., which took place in Mittie’s home with its white pillars and large drawing room. I read how the pocket doors opened to present a tableau of the wedding party, like a theatre curtain parting to reveal a scene.  In an upstairs chamber of the house dedicated to artifacts, Mittie’s photo stood out. She resembled the actress Vivian Lee. Did the reporter for the Atlanta Journal, named Peggy Mitchell, who wrote a column on Mittie’s wedding in 1923, swipe some characteristics of the home and happenings in ante-bellum Georgia to build the fictional Tara? Was Scarlet O Hara, of Gone with the Wind, based on Teddy Roosevelt’s mom, Mittie? Peggy Mitchell, the reporter, was one and the same as Margaret Mitchell, the author of Gone with the Wind. Pay attention when a tour guide speaks.  Jot down interesting tidbits. 

When I returned from my trek south, I spoke with my friend from Raleigh, who had just returned from touring England.  She told me of an unusual encounter she’d had with a guide at Chatsworth House, the mansion used in the filming of Pride and Prejudice.  The docent referred to my friend’s American-ness in her spiel to a gathered group. Then, the Brit aimed her remark at my pal, “You are going to get on your knees and beg my forgiveness when you hear what I have to say about what happened to one of our gorgeous panes in this lovely library because of an American lad’s carelessness!” The docent relayed that during the war a GI misfired his weapon, shattering an irreplaceable window in the library. Everyone in the group stared at my friend, the only American in the ensemble. My friend’s patriotic ire sparked! Rather than soliciting forgiveness for the soldier’s mishap, my pal delivered a tirade on how her dad and uncle were GIs in WWII and if it weren’t for them and boys like the soldier who accidentally destroyed the precious pane, this docent and her countrymen would be speaking German about now! The decimated Brit then said, “I then should beg your forgiveness. I must go home and boil my head!” 

What stuck in my mind was not my friend’s tearful indignation but rather an image of this Anglo librarian–docent boiling her bunned-head in a pressure cooker!  I’ll stow that expression away to use in a horror story! If a foreign expression makes an impression on your imagination, stow it away for further use as it will gussy up your writing. 

All writer conferees are instructed: “Write what you know.”  That admonition can mean to scribble down countless details of your own idiosyncratic world. On the other hand, it can mean taking note of what you’ve heard. The maxim about recording what you know takes on a broader meaning if you realize you know volumes besides what you’ve experienced firsthand. 

Find fodder for stories from places you frequent, random people you encounter, and observations you make by being conscious every moment. Anyone can do this. Live deliberately. Miss nothing.  Even take note of billboards!