Forum Friday: What’s in your story cellar?

I keep notes in many scattered places on things– places, events, phenomenon, mythology, unsolved mysteries, diseases, science, etc.– that I think would make for a good story, or else that fascinate me and would therefore be interesting to use in a story.

Among them:

• The fact that false memories can be fabricated.
• Scholomance, a fictional school in the black arts run by the devil
• 10 interesting facts about ravens, including that they can imitate human speech and that they “roam around in teenage gangs.”
• The Pythagorean Cup, also called the Greedy Cup, which is a real historical artifact that prevented the drinker from filling their cup with more than a certain amount of wine. If that amount was exceeded, the liquid would flow up through a line of plumbing in the stem and spill out on the drinker.
• 5 advanced structures that should not even exist. Enough said.

Since these things are “fermenting” in my subconscious (or perhaps more accurately, my hard drive) like grapes into the wine that is stories, I am calling the collective of such lists my story cellar.

What about you? What are some of the ingredients steeping in your story-crafting cellar?

Advertisement