{"id":9418,"date":"2022-01-05T08:15:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-05T13:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9418"},"modified":"2022-01-05T08:14:20","modified_gmt":"2022-01-05T13:14:20","slug":"random-story-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9418","title":{"rendered":"Random Story Ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignleft size-full is-resized\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/ball-ga2da8fbb5_640.jpg?resize=374%2C283&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-9419\" width=\"374\" height=\"283\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Buried in newspapers (online, of course), news magazines, advice columns, and every other account of real-life people and situations is a motherlode of story ideas. Here are a few I\u2019ve been&nbsp; hoarding that gave my internal story manufacturing machine a jolt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Story Generator #1<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIn 2001, following the accounting scandals at Enron and other companies, a publication called <em>CFO Magazine<\/em> quietly abandoned its annual Excellence Awards, because winners from each of the previous three years had gone to prison.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Story Idea:<\/em> Final meeting of the CFO Excellence Awards committee, harassed by pleas NOT to receive the award, nicknamed \u201cKiss of Death.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Source:<\/em> Evan Osnos article about white-collar crime, <em>The New Yorker<\/em> last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Story Generator #2<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In response to employee work-at-home demands, designers envision a virtual representation of an entire office showing who is \u201cat work,\u201d wherever they are. It \u201ctracks key team members and contacts based on (meeting room) reservation systems to ensure they are \u2018showing face\u2019 even when absent from their desk.\u201d [<em>sic<\/em>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Story Idea:<\/em> The flowering of system gaming strategies; or, the Return of Big Brother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Source:<\/em> The Perkins Eastman Design Strategy Team \u201cdream office\u201d article in <em>Metropolis<\/em>, Sept\/Oct 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Story Generator #3<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">An obituary describing the deceased\u2019s high school baseball career at length, naming team members, and recoungting highlights from notable games. Family gets a mention; career a sentence. Deceased is 76.<em>Story Idea:<\/em> If an eighteen-year-old knew that, 60 years later, tonight\u2019s game would be the high point of his life, what would he do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Buried in newspapers (online, of course), news magazines, advice columns, and every other account of real-life people and situations is a motherlode of story ideas. Here are a few I\u2019ve been&nbsp; hoarding that gave my internal story manufacturing machine a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9418\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Where story ideas come from -- news, commentary, obits. Yes. \n\n","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[174,35,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-draft-blog","category-real-life","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2rU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9420,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9418\/revisions\/9420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}