Week 80.5 – Read all about it…

Finally, here is the post I promised about news articles!  I’ve had to change it a bit to make it more up to date since I started 😉

I’ve often suggested reading the newspapers for inspiration.  This is something that was suggested when I studied creative writing and it is a rich source of ideas.   For me, the trick is to find the weirdest stories – the ones when my immediate reaction is either laughter or amazement, but some people might like crime cases or romances or science stories…

So I thought I’d look at a few stories, and give examples of the ideas that came to mind.  Please don’t take them too seriously!

1. The Horsemeat Scandal.

There has been a Europe-wide issue with the discovery of horsemeat in a number of beef products.  I don’t want to go into the ins and outs of a subject that’s been in the press for over a month (you can check out the link if you want more info), but suffice it to say there has been a lot of discussion, a fair few pretty terrible jokes, and a great deal of concern.

This seemed like the kind of story that could trigger a novel.  It’s so wide-ranging that it could cover almost any genre:

For the crime novelist, there could be international gangs of horse thieves, smuggling horses from stables to tables…

For the political novelist, perhaps there’s a cabal of secretive, shadowy types controlling the supply of food.

For a sci-fi writer this could be the starting point for a future where food production goes into the labs – only a terrible disaster destroys the production and people have to start surviving like the hunter-gatherers of the past.

For a romance novelist, how about some activists fighting for some truths about those food cabals, who meet at a rally?!

2: The retirement of Pope Benedict XVI

When the Pope decided to stand down, there was a great deal of surprise expressed in the media.  I knew that this was unusual, historically speaking, but I was not aware until I looked into it how unusual it was – you have to go back 600 years to see anything similar.

So of course this got me thinking about historical novels.  Perhaps one written from the point of view of Pope Gregory XII back in 1415, or it could be about the nature of the church at that time – or a simple person caught up in some way.  Or it could have nothing to do with the pope, and focus on something else at the time – eg the Battle of Agincourt (this is timely, as I’ve recently booked tickets to see Shakespeare’s Henry V for the first time – more on that another day!)

3: Discovery of a tiny planet

One close to my heart here – the has been a new planetary system found as part of the Kepler mission, orbiting a star similar to our sun.

This one is of course spurring thoughts of Star Trek-type interstellar travel, and the various inevitable challenges that would lead to.  It could also lend itself to a futuristic story based on Earth as we seek more resources to keep our 9 billion plus population safe and fed…

Or perhaps you could approach it as a poem – I like space poetry anyway but you can imagine the tiny planet, like a drop of water in a huge universe, and write about its potential – unfulfilled though it may (currently) be…

So there you go – a few examples of how I get from news article to writing idea.  Of course there are hundreds of stories to read every day, and some will be more enticing because you know the characters, or the place, or the subject – just go wherever your inspiration takes you.  Worst case scenario, you are better informed about something!

Please feel free to share some stories you’ve found interesting, you never know who might be inspired!

Happy writing

EJ

🙂