There's always a story ...

Two men in casual clothes are standing in the street, in front of a house that is currently undergoing renovation. They are clearly there by appointment, have knocked, and got no answer. After knocking again, one of them gets out his phone and walks a little way down the street, with it pressed to his ear. His companion stays, looking thoughtfully at the house  ...

Okay, confession time, this was not the start of a story, it was me, looking out of the bedroom window the other morning. You know writers are horribly nosey. I was a good girl and didn't stay, partly because I had not yet had my first cup of tea. While drinking that tea I started to think about the scenarios that might come off that little scene. For a crime writer there would probably be a body in the house - or maybe it would be a missing person story. Actually, I like that one - I could run with that. For a romance writer the men would probably be handsome hero and best friend (who will probably get his own story in due course) who are there to look at the renovations. Gorgeous heroine - who has bought/inherited the money pit -  has got held up and will arrive delightfully flustered, and/or steaming mad at the driver who backed into her car. Or she is inside in some predicament involving a ladder, from which hero will, of course, rescue her ...  It can't really be an historical, because the clothes are wrong, but you might be able to do something with time slip. Or fantasy, if the house has a portal in it. And don't get me started on horror .... 

All that, from two gentlemen in the street. Writers can make something of anything. If you gave ten of them the same scenario, all the stories would be different. Making up stories is one of the innocent pleasure of my life - I assume other writers do it, but I'm not sure about the general public - you know, real people. I know my grandmother did it. She told my mother wonderful tales about neighbours she had never met, so it might be something in the genes. 

I don't put real people in my books, but I do use ideas. So - what can I do with an empty house ...