Writers can find amazing plot ideas through everyday happenstance, like when a typical outing takes a strange turn…
Everything can change in a heartbeat–the premise of most plot ideas. The sharp reality of life is that we have very little control over it. And often, it’s the unexpected event that impacts everything after it.
Picture this. A normal Saturday. Grocery shopping at Sam’s Club. Two aisles from checkout with a full cart, the intercom comes on. A staticky voice says there’s an emergency and the store must be evacuated. This surprise is quickly followed by employees filtering into the lanes. “Leave your carts,” they say, pointing toward the front doors.
No alarms sound. There’s no visible threat. But a million possibilities stream through our thoughts. Gas leak. Crazy person. Bomb threat. Even the ordered chaos of a few hundred people vacating the front doors and driving from the lot as emergency vehicles streamed in offered its own worries, frustrations, and what-ifs. Our lives did not change that day… but they could have.
Later, the news reported that smoking kitchen equipment caused fire concerns. But there was no fire. Better safe than sorry, surely, and all it cost us was our groceries.
It could’ve been worse.
In fiction, the life-changing event is often the inciting incident that gets the rest of the story started.
- A plane crash (The Lord of the Flies, Hatchett, that Tom Hanks movie…)
- A car accident (Misery, If I Stay, Age of Adaline)
- A death (The Lovely Bones, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, any murder mystery)
- Happenstance (Die Hard, many zombie movies like Shaun of the Dead, The Wizard of Oz)
I’m beating myself up over examples I can’t remember… Anyway, you get the idea. If you can think of more, please share them below. It’d be fun to create a real list.
And what about, specifically, stores or businesses that feature in the crisis? What plot ideas could come from being in the wrong place at the wrong time?
We happened to be at Sam’s Club that day. That got me thinking about both reasons to evacuate and what if we couldn’t. Our regular ol’ shopping trip could’ve turned into a…
- Robbery, assault, store shooting, or domestic situation turned deadly, public encounter. There have been many domestics-turned-deadly at Walmarts.
- A quarantine situation like in Stephen King’s The Mist (God, I hated that one!), and strangers are stuck together until it’s safe to go outside. Or a toxin’s been released inside, and the government keeps the infected trapped. Or the store’s mannequins come to life and lock the humans in… Was that an episode of Doctor Who? Or, on an overnight reset of the store, the American Dolls come to life… which is fine as long as they can’t escape.
- A fire, earthquake, or tornado. I remember a tornado splitting a Walmart in half in Colonial Heights, VA; people were trapped behind the debris for hours.
- A hostage situation, with a villain strung out on drugs, or desperation, holds customers to get money, freedom, his ex-wife’s attention, and the customers must keep their wits about them to survive.
- A missing child. A quick-acting store manager could lock the doors and keep all the suspects inside to, at least, rule out people in closest proximity to the abduction. Can you imagine how pissy some people would get in that situation, especially if the police are coming and they have something to hide?
- A car-jacking, boat-jacking, bus-jacking, house-jacking. What if your main character is forced to harbor a criminal for several hours or even days? How might she use her wits to defuse the situation and outsmart her captor?
For any of these, writers must develop characters quickly to add suspense. It’s a challenging task, but when done right, it can springboard into a great, edge-of-your-seat story.
And it doesn’t always have to be dark, thriller-style material.
Two of my all-time favorite reads that rely on happenstance involve people in crisis in interesting places and have a comedic, heart-warming tone.
First, in a book called Anxious People by Fredrik Backman, an apartment’s open house is taken over by a bank robber on the run. The unique personalities stuck together in this off-the-wall event create a wildly entertaining story that mostly takes place in a single room or two. I still laugh out loud at some of the situations in that story, and it’s been nearly a year since I read it.
Second, in Where the Heart Is by Billie Letts, Novelee Nation is a young, pregnant woman stranded at Walmart by her deadbeat boyfriend. With no money and no one to call, Novelee lives in the store and cleverly keeps up her careful occupation until she can’t any longer… the baby is born on aisle… can’t remember, just not seven. If you haven’t read the book or seen this movie, do it. It’s such a heart warmer. And the movie’s just as good as the book. Plus, Novelee’s unique living situation revealed amazing things about her character, like her honesty in keeping a running tally of everything she consumed or used (to pay Walmart back one day) and her ingenuity in keeping it a secret for so long.
For a fun writing exercise to generate plot ideas, look around at the people with you next time you’re at a store, and imagine a what-if that you might face together.
Or take your existing story (especially if you feel it’s missing something) and throw it into an unexpected event (like a Plot Gremlin). Even if you don’t keep the situation, you’ll learn much about your characters by imagining how they react. Or take a plot formula like a Meet Cute and throw in a twist–a Meet Strange.
Share your happenstance ideas… stores you’d like to live in… and books and movies like this below.
For more writing prompts, motivation, and other writerly things, check out my blog.
