Looking for stories

[Succubus]

If it's to be a novel, why not just make up the stories you need?  That's what writers do, I'm told.

Boru

Because using shit that actually happened can really add to a story’s verisimilitude and actually make it more relatable?

Then you're effectively rewriting a bunch of poorly written anecdotes in order to make them readable. Why not save a step and just make shit up?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Because using shit that actually happened can really add to a story’s verisimilitude and actually make it more relatable?

Then you're effectively rewriting a bunch of poorly written anecdotes in order to make them readable. Why not save a step and just make shit up?

Well, then you couldn't say "Based on a true story!"

[Succubus]

Hmm, That never stopped Spike Milligan.
'Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall.'

[Rev. Rye]

Because using shit that actually happened can really add to a story’s verisimilitude and actually make it more relatable?

Then you're effectively rewriting a bunch of poorly written anecdotes in order to make them readable. Why not save a step and just make shit up?

Because you can give fiction a ring of truth that allows it to resonate more fully with the reader.

Case in point, here are some scenes from The Boondocks that Aaron McGruder took directly from shit that actually happened (excluding the one long Breaking Bad reference in the first clip) that only shows to underscore how bizarre the world (not only in the cartoon, but in real life):




Other scenes based on really fucked-up real life incidents not included in this video:

• An episode where Riley gets a teacher in trouble for using the N-word (after he says it repeatedly) that frequently takes a famous video about a similar incident, at times, even taking it verbatim, adding the context of the rest of the show to make it more hilarious (like the fact that Riley and his family say the N-word so often he apparently thought it was his name until he was three).
  
• An incident where Ed Wuncler III (basically George Bush as a wigga Iraq veteran) tries to get a kid to give up the location of some jewelry by threatening to smash a child's testicles, in words eerily similar to words spoken by John Yoo, who worked in the Justice Department during the Bush administration and gave it the all-clear to use enhanced interrogation techniques.
  
• A man in prison who proclaims that "booty, a man's butt, is more important than drinking water," was based on an actual convict, Fleece Johnson, and even ended up getting known as "The Booty Warrior." He ends up as the main antagonist in an episode called "A Date With the Booty Warrior."
  
• A depressingly racist news story about people getting pissed off at a Popeye's Chicken running out of chicken, was changed (but not without some of the complaints in that story used verbatim) into an incident at a KFC that incited the events of "The Fried Chicken Flu."
  
• A racist country singer named Jimmy Rebel who once put out a record called (and I'm not making this up) "Some Niggers Never Die, They Just Smell That Way," based on an actual singer named Johnny Rebel who put out a single with that exact same name.
  

Naturally, in all these cases, they took these ideas and ran with them, taking an entertaining show and managing to give it an aura of truth that keeps the show interesting even as the Bush years start fade from memory and/or relevance.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

If someone reliably relates an experience then the author can relay it with a ring of truth.

[Rev. Rye]

Hence, why he’s asking for experiences he can reliably relate.

[brewer]

I'd like a story where after shunning the atheist looses his mind, starts setting fires and torturing small animals, develops necrophilia, and then goes on a killing spree................... cause, you know, no god=no morals.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

If it's to be a novel, why not just make up the stories you need?  That's what writers do, I'm told.

Boru

Because using shit that actually happened can really add to a story’s verisimilitude and actually make it more relatable?

I don't think that's necessarily true.  I think that a novel which depended heavily on the anecdotes of strangers (which is what the OP asked for) would come off more as reportage than as fiction, especially as the anecdotes wouldn't be the product of the author's imagination.

Boru

[Rev. Rye]

I don't think he said he was just going to collect stories and turn it into a book. I think he was asking for stories to use as a jumping off point to build off of. I know I tend to do that. Granted, I don't always ask for them, but I do look for them, like if I'm writing a story where a main character is a recovering alcoholic, as a teetotaler, I realise I may need more information about how things work in AA. Granted, the overall trajectory of the story remained roughly the same, but I do think looking into it enriched the characterisation.

[Losty]

I don't think he said he was just going to collect stories and turn it into a book. I think he was asking for stories to use as a jumping off point to build off of. I know I tend to do that. Granted, I don't always ask for them, but I do look for them, like if I'm writing a story where a main character is a recovering alcoholic, as a teetotaler, I realise I may need more information about how things work in AA. Granted, the overall trajectory of the story remained roughly the same, but I do think looking into it enriched the characterisation.

I agree with you. I think people are not taking it seriously because a stranger came in and basically asked us to do his work for him. He could have easily searched the forum without saying anything and found what he was looking for but instead he made this thread. So people are kinda like 🤨🤷🏼‍♀️