On the flip side of our earlier post on fiction becoming reality, reality is apparently becoming fiction just as fast. Classic pregnancy handbook What to Expect When You’re Expecting will soon be adapted into—yup, you guessed it—a romantic comedy. Entertainment Weekly reports:
Jon-HammLionsgate has confirmed that they will adapt the bestselling pregnancy bible What To Expect When You’re Expecting and intend to give it the Love Actually and Valentine’s Day treatment. In other words, we’ll see a series of intertwining vingnettes with enough star wattage to blind most any moviegoer.
For those of you looking to spin the straw of other reference material into your own story gold, i09 has a great essay by comic book writer and novelist Greg Rucka on researching a story:
In this day and age, it’s easy to be lazy with research, possible to fake it altogether. I say this as a fan of the web, of search engines and the dark corners of the Net where the strange facts lurk. My own research, in fact, normally starts in two places-on the web and in the library. I hit sites like Google Earth to get the lay of the land and YouTube to see the places that I cannot reach myself for one reason or another (say, Dubai); I abuse free trials at sites like Jane’s Information Group, and I pay for the right to comb Highbeam for articles and photographs. Ten minutes with a search engine-five if your webfu is really cracking-and you’ll find sites even more esoteric, more specific, more . . . well, insane, really. Web forums discussing the best yeast to use in making your Malbec, or how to fit a SOCOM silencer to a Walther P99.
And all of that looks good, but if it ends there, it is cheating. The best stuff is rarely posted online. To get that, you need the people. I met one of my best resources because I cold-called the local FBI office one day early in my career with questions. The agent who took the call knew someone who knew someone who was ex-Army, trained in personal protection. The resulting introduction was one of the best, most enduring friendships I’ve ever enjoyed.
Read the whole essay here. And tell us: What unlikely real-life subjects would you like to see made into fiction?
