Finding Inspiration

By AnnetteDashofy

This summer, I’ve been driving to our local cemetery several mornings a week to walk in the early hours before the heat grows too intense. These walks, surrounded by quiet, provide abundant inspiration for many aspects of my writing. If I need a name for a character, all I have to do is look around. No one here minds if I name a murderer after them. (I do mix and match first and last names for the sake of living family members who may not like seeing Uncle Joe as a serial killer.)

The names aren’t all I pick up during my cemetery walks. Simply pausing to read the inscriptions provides ample story ideas—such as one family stone with “Mother” engraved over the woman’s birth and death dates. Clearly, the other side originally was reserved for “Father,” who hadn’t passed away yet, but at some point, a small plaque was mounted over his side with “Mother” on it again. Did the father remarry and abandon his deceased wife for another burial plot? Did he do something so egregious that his surviving children wanted his name wiped from the family monument? The possibilities—and story ideas—are endless.

Sometimes, it’s not the engraving that raises questions, but the items left at the gravesite. A child’s stone decorated with angels and Teddy bears. A plot where stalks of corn grow instead of flowers. Obviously, a farmer who loved his cornfield. Or something else? 

I’ve been noodling with the idea of posting a photograph of one of these interesting tombstones once a month as a writing prompt. I snapped a picture of one of the monuments that has long stirred my curiosity and respect. A young Pennsylvania State Trooper who had been killed in the line of duty at only twenty-five. Definitely a story there.

The very next day, this appeared in our local newspaper.

Apparently, I was right. Two days after Christmas, in 1929, twenty-five-year-old Trooper Corporal Brady Paul and his partner stopped a car driven by Walter Dague who, along with his girlfriend, Irene Schroeder, had just robbed a grocery store. The pair, who had been on a multi-state crime spree since August, gunned down both troopers. Corporal Paul’s partner, Patrolman Ernest Moore survived his injuries. The young corporal, however, did not.

The Bonnie-and-Clyde-like couple ran, only to be captured nineteen days later in Arizona.

The story and the photos fascinated me. But they also ruined my plan to use the tombstone as a story prompt. For one thing, I’ve come to feel like I know Corporal Paul and don’t want to use his death as a mere idea for a fictional story. For another, how could I come up with a better story than the real one?

I’ll file this newspaper article and the photo of his grave marker away. Maybe someday, I will decide on a plot—not based on his life and death but inspired by it.

So, dear fellow writers, do you ever use real cases as inspiration for your fiction? And readers, does it ever bother you when you read a book or watch a TV show that’s obviously based on true crime? Does it feel like the writer has capitalized on someone else’s pain?