Hallie takes Writing Step 1: What-iffing

 HALLIE EPHRON: I know I’m coming out of my long writing drought because I’m starting to have ideas. See possibilities.

In last week’s Boston Globe there was an article about two guys who tow sonar equipment underwater, looking for stuff. Meet New Hampshirites Hans Hug and Bruce Stebbins. They use Edgetech side scan sonar equipment which they describe as “ultrasound on steroids.”

With the permission of local police, they set out in a boat, towing their sonar torpedo, searching for a 1972 Dodge Dart Swinger that might have gone into the Concord River 40 years ago. They were hoping to find the remains of 17-year-old Judy Chartier who drove off from a party late one night and has never been seen since.

Sure enough, the pair spot a mass underwater about 30 feet from the river’s embankment. Hug suits up and scuba dives into the river where he says visibility is barely a few feet. He’s able to confirm that the mass is, in fact, an old Dodge.

Police divers take over.

The story is fascinating, and the pair of amateur detectives towing sonar equipment through bodies of water immediately brought to mind one of my favorite TV series, THE DETECTORISTS. In that show, a pair of eccentric metal detectorists search for buried treasure the UK.

I began to imagine fictional versions of misters Messrs. Hugs and Stebbins and a series in which their personal lives interweave with quests to solve waterlogged mysteries. (As in: What in particular caught which one of their attention about Judy Chartier’s disappearance? Did he know her or her family? Did he have a sister who is long missing? Writers will recognize this story-spinning process.)

It’s not a story I feel at all equipped to tell. But I feel sure it’d be a slam dunk with a publishing house looking for a quirky mystery series. Underwater sonar? All kinds of stuff that they might or might not be expecting to find on a river bottom. Mysteries to solve. Bad guys who might want to get in their way. What’s not to love! Lends itself to all kinds of catchy book titles.

Or maybe I'm ripe for this idea because I just read Sharon Ward's thrilling debut (IN DEEP) featuring an underwater photographer as the hero. Stay tuned: Sharon visits us next Tuesday!

So I am hatching ideas! Which, as anyone knows, is Writing: Step-one.

Does reading the news give you story ideas or merely indigestion, and is there any recent news brief that caught your eye?