Did you know that a third of Americans have been implanted with RFID chips during dental treatment and most are not aware of it?
Did you know that Facebook has a new feature on its smartphone app that will allow them to record all your conversations?
No? That's because these stories are bogus. However, they are making the rounds of the internet, two of many hoaxes, scams, and myths that a lot of people pass along to everybody on their email list, believing them to be true.
I used to consider these kinds of stories junk littering the internet but they could have another use: as the basis of a novel or screenplay.
The notion that people are unwittingly getting RFID implants during dental work at clinics set up for welfare recipients, or at a high-end clinic used by members of Congress or Parliament, for instance, could be the basis of a good conspiracy thriller. So could the idea of a social site recording all the conversations of government decision-makers (or the daughters of the President, perhaps?) in order to blackmail politicians into supporting legislation that gives the company a monopoly.
The fact that these stories have already gained an audience, albeit among people who think they are non-fiction, suggests that they might work well as fiction as well.
PS: A good source of such stories is the Hoax-Slayer newsletter, from which I took the two examples above. The site is http://www.hoax-slayer.com.
(Once you have a good idea you need to translate it into a good book. That's where Your Writing Coach comes in. It's published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing and available from your favorite bookseller.)
