Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Oh, the things you will see!

by Rick Blechta

Every writer who does their work on a computer knows how useful having an internet connection can be. Need an airline schedule to get a character from point A to point B at a certain time? You can look it up on one of the airline schedule aggregators. That’s just one tiny “for instance”. I can spend a lot of time looking at street maps when I’m doping out scenes set in real places.

Of course, with everything there comes a downside. For nearly everyone — not just writers — the internet can provide hours of useful fun looking up, well, just about anything in the real world — and fantasy worlds too, for that matter. I am as guilty of this as anyone, probably more guilty…

Anyway, here are some things I’ve read about lately. They’re all probably useless factoids but I suppose some of them could be used in a plot somewhere.
  • Bunny Show Jumping: Really? Something like this exists? Apparently so… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM9YWm6T_hc
  • Cheese Rolling: The Brits seem to delight in doing odd things and this is one of the oddest.
  • Strange Food Addictions: I happen to enjoy eating bacon and doughnuts together. Some people look askance at this. I’m thinking I’m rather normal after reading this page.
  • From the Odd Pet Department: Okay NOW I’ve seen everything!
And I could go on.

I’m thinking of a character for my work-in-progress who is deep into the world of bunny show jumping and can’t stop eating drywall.

Think anyone will buy it?

3 comments:

Sybil Johnson said...

I have heard of cheese rolling, but bunny show jumping? I'm in!

Rick Blechta said...

I'm thinking of opening a training stable.

Thomas Kies said...

I am so easily distracted by the internet.