Sometimes people ask me where I get ideas. All you need to do is watch the news, or read a newspaper or online newspaper, or just watch what's happening around you.
Did you hear about the case of the porcelain dolls being left on the doorsteps of girls to whom they held an eerie resemblance?
At least eight families received the dolls, and all of the girls were around 10 years old. It turned out that an older woman who attended church with the girls, and she wanted to give her collection away in what she thought would be a fun surprise. But what if someone else was behind
it? Wouldn't that be a great beginning to a book?
Or how about this story from the Oregon coast? A few months ago, KGW reported: "A retired police officer found a decomposed human hand while he was walking along the beach in Gearhart with his 9-year-old granddaughter Friday evening, police said. He moved the hand away from the approaching water before calling police so it wouldn’t wash back into the ocean." In real life, it turned out to be a decomposed seal's flipper.
But what if it hadn't been?
Or how about the clean up on the campus of the National Institutes of
Health which turned up vials of live smallpox virus, forgotten since the 1950s. Smallpox is only supposed to be in two sanctioned high-containment labs in the world - and that certainly wasn't one of them.
So what if a bad guy were to figure out there were other forgotten vials?
Or this story, about a local 17-year-old girl who left a message in her journal before vanishing:
“If you’re reading this, I’m either missing or dead." (She was eventually recovered
, but it sounds like she was sex-trafficked, told by her abusers that her parents and boyfriend would be killed if she didn't cooperate.)
I'm not sure I would do it from the girl's POV, but what if she had a friend who tried to find her? Once on my run, I saw a bored security guy standing on the sidewalk outside a condo. He told me the parking garage's gate was broken, and until it was fixed, they would have security stationed outside 24 hours a day. He wasn't armed, just a guy in uniform with a clipboard.
What if he saw something a little strange, a little off, across the street? Not strange enough to require the involvement of the real cops, at least not yet, but enough that he decided to do a little investigating of his own...?
Last month, David Pogue, the New York Times tech guy, had a story about how after someone stole his phone, he used his Find My iPhone app and his 1.4 million (no, that’s not a typo) Twitter followers and a nice cop to get his phone back after it was stolen on an Amtrak train.
You can read the whole story here.
Our exerience
A few months ago, Teen got her phone and wallet stolen while she was at a all-ages venue. The next morning, we used Find My iPhone to track it to a very sketchy area in outer SE Portland. It was at an apartment complex. Sadly, the app isn’t so granular that it will show which apartment it is in, so we were reduced to going door to door and asking tenants if they knew who had “accidentally” picked up her phone. Most of them spoke Korean, Spanish, or Russian. Or they asked their five-year-old to translate. Or the only person who answered the door was a five-year-old, with no adults in sight.
We did not recover the phone.
What has dozens of yellow cars parked in front of it?
That night, Teen checked it again. It had moved to a new location. Satellite view showed it was a building with a couple of dozen yellow cars parked in front of it. We did some Googling and figured out yellow cars = yellow cabs = Broadway Cab. The phone did not move, so we thought it must be in someone’s personal car. I tried talking to the dispatcher, a crusty old guy, and told him the address. He wasn’t able to help me, but he did say it was policy for cabdrivers to turn in anything they found.
By the next morning, the phone was back at the apartment again. This time we went back with a question: does anyone in this apartment building work for a cab company?
And they all pointed at the same apartment in the corner.
Eventually we were able to talk to the taxi driver on Teen’s phone. He offered to give it back to her for $50. (I think it's likely that whoever stole her phone left it in his cab.) I thought about protesting, but it seemed likely that the phone might simply disappear or end up in someone else’s hands. So we got $50 from an ATM.
The handoff
Teen had arranged to meet him in front of The Hilton. She was afraid he might turn tail if he saw two angry parents waiting with her, so she wanted to do the trade herself. I told her, no matter what you do, don’t get into his car. I don’t care what he says, or what he does, or if he says the phone is in another location - do NOT get in his cab.
We parked up the block. I gave her my cell phone. She walked down to stand in front of the Hilton, while my husband waited on the corner opposite with his cell phone.
A yellow cab pulled up. A guy got out and started talking to Teen. I couldn’t see any detail - not what he looked like, not his license plate, not his cab number.
But what I did see was: Teen getting into the back seat of the car.
My heart nearly stopped. But it turned out she had called and cleared it with my husband - she wanted to check to see if her stolen wallet was there, too.
What if...?
So it all turned out okay. But can’t you see it as the great beginning to a book - the door slams, the cab takes off, the girl is gone. Why would someone take her? Was it all a carefully planned ruse to get the girl by getting her phone first? Is she even the real target? Or is it one of the parents, who can only get her back by turning over money or a secret or....
That’s how all my books begin. Thinking “What if....”
Every single one of my books has started with a "What if?" I hear people talking about other ways to begin, but I can't imagine it. Begin with a character? I've read about people who dream about, say, a little girl who is crying. And they can't get that image out of their head. But when they think about it, it seems like a "What if?" would have to follow quickly on that image's heels. Like, "What if her daddy just died and she doesn't have any other family?" or "What if she's a vampire and she doesn't want to be one?"
My last couple of What ifs:
- What if a good girl got sent to an overseas boot camp? (Shock Point,2006)
- What if a girl joined the Enviornmental Liberation Front - only she's working for the FBI? (Fire, Kiss, Electric Chair, 2008)
- What if a blind girl was kidnapped and had to escape? (Shadows Walking Backward, 2008 or 2009)
What's your What If?
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