Stumbled into a used bookstore on Main Street and got a whole story idea from a random footnote

I was browsing just to kill time last Saturday and picked up this old history book about shipwrecks. One footnote mentioned a diary found in a bottle that washed ashore 40 years later. The diary had like 3 pages left, all water damaged. I couldn't stop thinking about who wrote it and what they were trying to say. Has anyone else found a weird detail in a non-fiction book that sparked a full plot?

2 comments

2 Comments

emery96515d ago

That detail about the diary with only 3 pages left is the kind of thing that keeps a writer up at night. The thing that strikes me is the practical side of it - what kind of person carries a diary into a shipwreck and actually seals it in a bottle while everything is sinking around them? Most people would be focused on staying alive, but someone took the time to write their last thoughts and make sure they'd be found. That says a lot about their character, maybe a historian or someone who knew they weren't going to make it. The water damage is the cruelest part, like the ocean was jealous of their final words.

lily39415d ago

Huh, I never really thought about it like that? But you're right, the fact that they stopped to preserve their words instead of just panicking really changes how I see the whole thing.