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Misread Opportunities

edited October 2010 in Writing
Because I'm eye-scanning web content all the time in my day-job as a website content manager and also as a constant internet user I often transpose words and phrases due to the speed that I scan.

Today I read two sentences from different columns on a local news website; the expression that resulted came from 'the devil is in the detail' and 'the glass half-full'. Neither article in itself was interesting but in my head I read 'The Devil in the Glass', and all of a sudden I had an idea for a story.

I'm sure we all do this - not just online but in print; have you had similar inspiration strike this way?

Comments

  • Yes! Often mishear something and think 'that's a great title for a book/story'. I've got quite a few 'titles' scribbled in a notebook. :)
  • Sadly, no. :(
  • edited October 2010
    Years ago my husband misread a section on a job application form. It said Religion, he thought it said Region and wrote London.

    Luckily I noticed, otherwise they would probably have thought he belonged to some strange sect!
  • In my first year of secondary school a girl was talking to a group of us about her brother getting drunk and said, "He was pissed as a parrot." Being innocent (as I still am, thank you very much!) I'd never heard the phrase before and thought she said, "...Cisco the carrot." To this day I still say people are 'cisco' when they've had a little too much, and now it's rubbed off onto most of the people I converse with as well. (The title of Cisco - not the drunkedness) ;)
  • Oh sorry, Lily, to answer your question more succinctly, yes. I often mishear more than misread and have come up with quite a lot of good story titles that way.
  • Jenny, that had me giggling my little socks off. Funnily enough I have a story somewhere about a cult, set in London. You never know!

    IG - love it. Cisco it is.
  • [quote=LilyC] I read 'The Devil in the Glass', and all of a sudden I had an idea for a story.[/quote]

    Hi LilyC

    What a great title!

    Please let us all know how you get on with it.
  • I do this when I'm speaking never mind when I'm reading

    I was once singing to myself and came out with 'Lovely meter, Rita made'

    And another time my Uncle's watch had stopped and I said that his stop had watched!
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