Patricia Stoltey

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Finding Story Ideas in the Strangest Places

May 1, 2009 By: Patricia

Writers need to keep their eyes open and their wits about them at all times. A long day of travel and a middle seat in the back row of an airplane create opportunities to overhear interesting dialogue. Annoying people make excellent victims. A day in a hotel room with no window triggers a setting. People-watching leads to new quirks and habits for our characters.

So here’s the thing. The first victim in my next mystery will be a waiter, and I won’t say any more about that. I will have a young male suspect who wears his pants with the crotch hanging almost to his knees. One character will rub her nose and sniff a lot, and the protagonist will wonder whether she has allergies…or whether she’s a drug addict. And something will happen in a creepy hotel room while the writer is trying to update her blog.

Hmmm. That hits a little too close to home.

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Comments

  1. Sarah says

    May 2, 2009 at 11:30 am

    ok! you have me interested!

  2. Gayle Carline says

    May 2, 2009 at 8:29 am

    Very cool ideas. A day spent observing people anywhere is great research for a novelist – makes the task of populating our worlds so much easier!

    Gayle Carline
    http://gaylecarline.blogspot.com

  3. conarnold says

    May 1, 2009 at 7:03 pm

    Good writing when you scare yourself! Sounds like you have some interesting characters going there.

  4. Enid Wilson says

    May 1, 2009 at 3:26 pm

    I would have thought a waiter will be quite boring but you made him sound ominous. So victim as in he will die? or assaulted?

  5. Helen says

    May 1, 2009 at 1:53 pm

    Is that ominous, creepy music I hear in the background. If not, it should be. That story needs a soundtrack.

    Helen
    http://straightfromhel.blogspot.com

Meet Patricia

I read, I write, I blog, and sometimes I do the laundry and cook. My 2014 novel, Dead Wrong, was a finalist in the thriller category of the 2015 Colorado Book Awards. Wishing Caswell Dead (Five Star/Cengage, December 20, 2017) is a historical mystery set in 1830s Illinois in the fictitious Village of Sangamon. The novel was a finalist for the 2018 Colorado Book Awards for General Fiction. My most recent release, In Defense of Delia (Five Star/Cengage, November 2022), is available in hardcover and will soon be available in ebook and trade paperback. Read More…

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