Looking for Story Fodder?

This is the fifth in a series of story prompts: not just a couple of sentences but a comprehensive outline you could use for subplots or entire novels.

We’ve All Watched the News Broadcasts

Police are sure they see a gun in someone’s hand, and they shoot the person, only to discover that it was

• a bottle of beer
• a bottle of cologne
• a bottle of pills
• a broomstick
• a cellphone
• a cordless drill
• a flashlight
• a hairbrush
• a sandwich
• sunglasses
• a toy truck
• a walking cane
• a water-hose nozzle
• a wrench

… and many other objects.

This Is Regarded as Confirmation Bias

confirmation bias: the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories.

Police are trained to respond quickly. Their threat radar is always on alert. A wrong move or hesitation could mean their death or the death of a fellow officer. They must react — now — based on what they “see.”

Their reactions could be colored by prior confrontations, racial profiling, poor training, and a host of other factors.

Consider a Cub News Reporter Named Annie

Annie receives a phone call from a friend who tells her he just saw Bonnie Lewis enter a restaurant.

Annie shrugs. She has never heard of Bonnie Lewis, and decides the information is useless. She has been asked to write too many fluff pieces lately. Besides, it’s quitting time.

That evening she gasps as she watches a newscast about Fani Willis and for a change pays attention to the ticker … Oh, crap! I missed the chance for what could have been a career-changing interview.

Annie has seen the name Fani in print and pronounced it Fannie. She doesn’t have any acquaintances with the last name of Willis but does know a couple of Lewises. She filtered her expectations through her own experiences. In other words, her brain made her ears hear what seemed to make sense.

Confirmation Bias Affects Eyewitness Reports

Memory is imperfect. Eyewitnesses form fake memories based on evidence that supports their ideas.

• If they expect women to be weak, they might identify a woman as a victim even though she is the assailant.
• If they’ve had a run-in with a homeless person, they might be more likely to identify that person as the robber of a convenience store than the polite gas station attendant from across the street.
• Since 9-11, many people who look like they might be Middle Eastern have been viewed with suspicion.

Any of the preceding situations could provide a story prompt.

Tunnel Vision Is Related to Confirmation Bias

Someone afflicted with the medical condition known as tunnel vision suffers from a drastically narrowed field of vision that makes everything seem as though it’s viewed through a tube or tunnel.

However, this post refers to the following definition.

tunnel vision: inability to see what’s right in front of you; narrow-mindedness; prejudice; bigotry

Someone with tunnel vision sees the world through the narrow distortion of their unrealistic beliefs. Those beliefs can be mild or extreme.

Correlation vs Causation

Correlation searches for a relationship between two variables. Sometimes analysis will determine that Variable One is caused or affected by Variable Two. The relationship is often coincidental.

However, highly suggestible people are easily swayed. They assume that all correlations are in fact, causations. That’s where many incorrect assumptions and conspiracy theories are born.

More Story Prompts

• A character wins _____ every time he wears a blue shirt. He correlates the blue shirt with victory, and avoids all other colors. He bets several thousand dollars on _____ only to lose. What happens next?
• A woman expects her significant other to return home at a specific time. She cooks a gourmet dinner, fills the dining room with flickering candelabras, and turns off the lights. A stranger enters the dining room and _____. Your first reaction might be to make this a home invasion. Can you morph it into humor? The “stranger” could turn out to be [a long-lost relative, a neighbor, a chimpanzee, a parent].
• A patient visits the emergency room of a hospital seven times during one week, complaining of _____. On an eighth visit, the doctor declares the condition benign and sends the patient home. The patient returns in two hours with an internet printout that says the condition is actually _____. Note: Medical staff would be unlikely to ignore chest pain.
• A homeowner hears screeching in the yard and assumes it’s a neighbor’s cat. However, it turns out to be [a cougar with an injured paw, an electrical lineman who has fallen off a pole, an alien, a clown who has stepped on a nail].
• An alien with preconceived notions that have branded humans as stupid [watches a magician, mistakes an AI for a human, monitors a chess game and can’t understand it].
• A person who has been maimed in a dog attack fears all dogs. What happens when the person [comes upon an orphaned puppy in the woods, hears an obviously pregnant dog whining at the door, witnesses a dog being struck by an automobile]?
• After consuming Chinese food, a woman falls ill with the classic symptoms of food poisoning. Even though she ate a soggy cream puff with a sour smell from her own fridge, she blames the Chinese food and vows to never eat it again as long as she lives. What does she do when [her daughter, her mother, her father, her boyfriend] orders Chinese food for her birthday?
• Three people witness a crime committed by someone with a tattoo on his neck. One describes the tattoo as a snake surrounding a star, the second as a circle around a pentagram, and the third as an ivy looping around a clematis blossom. What could account for the description disparities?

What About Your Experiences?

Have you encountered an event that made you react at variance with the facts? Could you leverage it as story fodder?

If you create a story or poem based on something you read in this post, I’d love to hear from you in the comments area or via the contact form at the top of this page.

Good luck with your writing!