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Fiction Corner

Alison Hawke

Never throw anything away

Before you take my subject this month as an excuse to hang on to that three-year supply of outdated magazines, I'm talking about ideas. Things we can use in stories are everywhere. The hard part is remembering them long enough to use them. This is where the Raw Material Mine comes in handy.

I've got a folder on my computer called Raw Material, where I store stuff that might come in handy later. Right now there are six different sections:

• Characters
• Song Lyrics
• Quotes from people
• Quotes from television and film
• Metaphors and Similes
• Words and phrases

In my characters section I have an archaeologist. He used to be on the payroll of a big company, excavating sites before they got built on. He was downsized when they wanted to save money and these days he works in my local mall bookstore. I couldn't have made that one up, and I swear he's a real person. He's also a Doctor Who addict like me, which comes in handy when I want to get the latest book in the series. I don't know where I'll use him yet, but he's way too good to forget.

Have you ever been in the car thundering along the interstate with the radio on when you hear something so perfect it begs to be captured? This happens to me a lot, and my lyrics file contains words from bands as diverse as Eve6, Barenaked Ladies, Caedmon's Call, Bon Jovi and Nelly Furtado. Places like Lyrics.com are great for tracking down where that perfect line came from. Search engines like Google work well if you search for the exact phrase (put the phrase inside quote marks).

What's a good place to find excellent quotations? Email signatures. Another is Bartleby.com, which lets you search through collections of quotations. Good old eavesdropping works nicely too, that's where I got one of mine below. My Quotes from people file has some real gems such as:

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence. Napoleon Bonaparte Can I get you ladies some caffeine? Waiter in Denny's The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) But "That's funny..." Isaac Asimov

Other good places to look for quotes are The Quoteaholic and Quote Geek

My quotes from television and film file is one I started as I was writing this and looking for where to put a Red Dwarf quote. I couldn't let this one go:

Holly (ships' computer): Rude alert! Rude alert! An electrical fire has knocked out my voice recognition unicycle! Many Wurlitzers are missing from my database! Abandon shop! This is not a daffodil. Repeat: This is not a daffodil! Rimmer: Well, thankfully Holly's unaffected. Red Dwarf season V: Demons and Angels

My metaphors and similes file only has a few entries in it so far. The best one I found on a chalkboard in the café at Borders: cool as the other side of the pillow.

The last file is where everything else ends up. Rational Rose is the name of a visual modelling tool (no, I don't know what that means). I liked the sound of it and stuck it in my words and phrases file. It'll come in handy somewhere in the future, along with "retail therapy," something I picked out of a magazine. Ideas, words and quotes are everywhere. All we need to do is pick them up and store them for later. Have fun!