Find It, Save It

So here at GITS, we’re in the midst of the annual insanity known as A Story Idea Each Day for a Month in which I ‘give away’ 30 news items that caught my eye over the last year. I say ‘give away’ because they’re not mine per se, I just happen to have seen them.

And that’s kind of the point: As the Bible says, “He who has eyes to see, see.”

The world is full of content we can use in our writing. Not just story ideas either. For example, I’m reading the local newspaper today, an article about Bubba Watson who won the Masters Golf Tournament over the weekend. Check out a few of his comments:

“I never got this far in my dreams.”

“I dreamed about it [the winning putt]… I just never made it.”

When confronting a really bad lie in the rough: “If I have a swing, I have a shot.”

“I don’t play the game for fame. It’s just me. I’m just Bubba.”

This single article tells us one thing: Bubba Watson is a quote machine.

More than that, I look at those lines, and I think dialogue. And so I open my trusty “Miscellaneous Dialogue” Word file which I originated in 1989 [not kidding] and copy/paste Bubba Watson’s lines into the now 78 pages of content.

Find It, Save It. That’s my motto when it comes to the daily search for writing inspiration and resources.

Story ideas? Dialogue? Themes? Situations? Description? I try to find it. Then I save it.

You never know when one or more of those items will pay off.

You know why I started that Miscellaneous Dialogue file in 1989? Because of a movie that came out that year called Sea of Love. In it, the eventual bad guy [Terry as played by Michael Rooker] tells a joke in passing. Here’s the joke:

So the emcee asks, “What’s the most romantic place you’ve ever made love to your wife?” And this guy’s thinking, he’s got a brain like a pea, but he’s thinking, and he says, “In the butt!”

When I saw that movie and heard that line, it was a revelation: I had heard that story in reference to “The Newlywed Game” a zillion times before, but the punch line was always, “In the butt, Bob.” And here is the screenwriter of Sea of Love — Richard Price, no less! — completely cribbing it as a line of dialogue.

Well, I figured if Richard Price could do it, so could I. Hence my Miscellaneous Dialogue file. And hence me walking around every day, listening for dialogue, reading for dialogue… and story ideas… and themes… and situations… and description…

Find It, Save It.

By the way, that line is grounded in reality. Here’s a clip from “The Newlywed Game.” At the 2:04 mark, the wife’s response to the question, “What specifically is the weirdest place that you personally girls have ever gotten the urge to make whoopee” is a bleeped out. It’s the word “ass.”

Here is Bob Ewbanks’ memory of the moment in which he confirms the story: