Greetings Lovely Readers!
This is Shelley, writing today about finding mystery story ideas in unlikely non-fiction places. I'm not talking about a "true crime" narratives or newspaper stories. I'm talking about pop science, pop psychology, or any other pop non-fiction books. Health and wellness? Personal finance? Technology? Yup, yup, and yup.
I've found ideas for various fiction stories from books on all three of those last topics. Today a mystery plot blazed into being while I was reading a book about technology. The 2018 book, Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms, led to a eureka moment this morning while I was casually drinking my coffee and reading on my balcony.
In Hello World, author Hannah Fry wrote about how supermarkets first began using customer reward cards to collect data, the success of which led, eventually, to the huge data broker businesses and affairs we've heard about in recent years, including the infamous Cambridge Analytica scandal. Basically, we are being tracked everywhere online and then fed advertisements that our data indicates will most likely result in a sale.
Or a vote, as it turns out.
But I'm not here today to talk about political shenanigans. It was a supermarket data collection example Fry gave that set my author antennae vibrating. Early on, sending coupons via email was a tempting and useful marketing strategy for supermarkets and other retail stores (still is, judging by my inbox). Data analysis gave retailers a way to pinpoint what offers and coupons to offer to which customers. But they didn't stop to think about how these rewards programs and subsequent offers would impact humans on the other end.
One story was about an angry father who telephoned a company that had been sending pregnancy-related product coupons to his teenage daughter based on her online searches for products like vitamins and moisturizer for stretch marks. He accused the company of "encouraging teenage pregnancy." The company apologized and took a note to stop sending the coupons.
I bet you know where this story goes.
Yes, he called back later and said he'd had an interesting discussion with said daughter. In other words, the retail store knew before he did that he was gonna be a grandaddy.
Immediately, an idea for a murder mystery short story popped into my head with the "twist" being that a "wronged" person finds "incriminating" email offers sent to someone in his family and takes drastic action...but of course, he's misinterpreted why his family member was getting those offers and he's now grievously ruined his family and his life. Now I just need to figure out who is solving the crime.
I could write it from the criminal's pov. I've never tried that. On second thought, I think it might be more fun for someone else to figure it out. I don't do police procedurals. Maybe I'll try an amateur sleuth.
As authors we have to make all these decisions. It's hard to know ahead of time what will work unless you have a large body of work and a readership that expects a certain type of story. Then they might be upset if you tried something new.
So, you see, there are pros and cons to every success or lack of.
The point is, stories are everywhere, and fiction writers might think they are wasting time if they read about topics seemingly unrelated to their genre. Yes, we definitely should read great fiction in the crime genres. It's essential to do so if we want to improve on our craft.
We also should consider cleansing our creative palates with some non-fiction every so often, as well. I think it stimulates brain activity in different ways. You never know when the next exciting plot will pop up in the pop non-fiction section of your local library, bookstore, or bookswap.
Check out my revamped blog/writer journal at shelleyburbank.wordpress.com where I wrote more about my non-fiction reading this week.
Also, check out the new look of my website, shelleyburbank.com. I'll write more on this change in my next Type M blog. I think this is going to be an exciting chapter in my writing life. Stay tuned!
