Trolling for Inspiration in News Stories

Ever searched sources of truth for inspiration for fiction? Just a line, a bit of a statement, part of an explanation, when viewed with the right mindset, can provide immense inspiration for current and future stories. A couple weeks ago I heard a story on NPR's "The World" and one single line from the story stuck out to me as a promising start (or addition) to a story. It was something about how the fighting was so intense between the three warring parties that an independent priest had to carry the only set of keys and lock and unlock the local church each night.

Fiction from Nonfiction? Absolutely!

Here are some promising statements I dug up after a quick search of today's new stories:

"The immediate problem is that the body can't be found."


"It's one thing to be the rabble-rouser. It's quite another thing to be the leader."


"She seemed genuinely surprised when [he] informed her she was being held for investigation of attempted murder. She bent her chest into her knees while sitting, and cried."


The person who signed it "Pie Fairy" also wrote: "My wings are shorter now and I am a little too fat to fly anymore. But I still love you!!"


Doing too much too soon is a common mistake. Injuries and burnout are often the result.


Along the way, someone else nearly always got an invitation to ride with him, whether it was a student on the way to school, a person going to work or someone waiting for a bus.


"It's just surprising when design finally meets toilet paper — that's sort of the final frontier," Adamson said.


She was fat. She could see it in the mirror.


"Part of my job is trying to convince that 85-year-old woman that she really should start weight lifting," says Dr. Dennis Kerrigan, senior exercise physiologist 


yet on the tsetse-fly scale of restaurant years, it was many mutations ago. Things have changed.


 He lived outside conventional ideas, he implied, because “I live alone mostly, in the middle of nowhere.”


But these young people are not battling alcohol or drugs. Rather, they have severe cases of what many in this country believe is a new and potentially deadly addiction: cyberspace.


What could possibly justify such an early wake-up call? 


Among them are foot stomping, tail flagging, head bobbing, ear twitching, hoof pawing and nose licking; lunges, charges, chases, pokes and antler thrusts; and aggressive sounds he describes as grunt-snorts and grunt-snort-wheezes. There are also alarm snorts and bawls and less disturbing sounds, like social-contact grunts between does (deer). 

Pulled from KSL, Deseret News, NPR, and NY Times.