Sunday, October 21, 2012

Backseat boogie


By: Joelle Charbonneau

Today at DSD, I require audience participation.  So keep reading to the end and play the game with me.  You might win something cool.

Writers have different processes.  Some listen to music.  (Not me!)  Some require absolute quiet.  Others have to write in a specific place.  Everyone does things at different speeds or in different ways.  The one constant for writers is the moment in which we say, “Why would someone do that?”  “What if that happened when…”  What if the dunk tank was a murder weapon?  What if someone drown in a toilet?  What would happen if the penalty for failing a test was death?

You never know what is going to spark that brainstorming moment.  It could be dinner conversation, a moment on Sesame Street (can you tell I can a small person in my house?) or an article from the newspaper. 

Today, I read an interesting article.  It seems that thieves have taken to breaking into cars in order to steal the backseats from them.  Really!  Here’s the article.   Apparently, skilled thieves can break into a car, steal the backseat and be ready to hightail it out of there in under a minute.  Impressive, right?

My question is – why?  Why would someone steal the backseat of a car?  Sure, they can take it to a chop shop and sell it, but then I am forced to ask – what does the person buying these seats do with them? 

This is where you come in.  I challenge you to brainstorm with me.  Write one line of motivation, the blurb for a story or even a scene and post it here by Nov. 1st.  Silly ideas, series ideas and everything in between are welcome.  The winner will get a cool prize.  It might be a book or two, or three.  It could be an ARC.  You have to play to learn what you’ll win!

Ready….set…..brainstorm.

13 comments:

Jerry House said...

A college hazing ritual.

Or, assuming the cars broken into were of the same make, model, color, year, or what have you, an attempt to find a specific back seat which would contain incriminating DNA evidence, or a hidden stash of drugs (or money, or whatever).

Perhaps both o.f the above could be combined, placing a hapless heron in jeopardy

Anonymous said...

Same reason Acuras and Ford Tauruses of certain years are the most stolen cars: The parts are in demand. There is likely a demand to replace backseats off the books. Don't laugh. Stranger things have happened.

WriterMarie said...

The thieves are designing a car-themed diner and need the seats to create the booths. Of course, this diner is in another state, far away from where the thefts are taking place...so that nobody will catch on and figure out where their seats went!

Pop Culture Nerd said...

To be a guest "bed" for the visiting mother-in-law.

Unknown said...

To create a "backseat cinema" for automobile fetishists who fondly remember going to the drive-in with parents.

Nancy Kay Bowden said...

While Mac used his new woodworking skills to dress up his sister's big old basement rec room, it occured to him that Susie desperately needed couches or some sort of seating and that he owed her a lot--she'd visited him every weekend of his incarceration for auto theft.

Aimee Hix said...

The aliens demand a sacrifice.

Al Tucher said...

Following a lead in a series of puzzling cimres, the police find the perpetrator living in the frame of a derelict van with the dessicated bodies of five former mothers-in-law strapped into five stolen seats.

Priscilla C-B said...

First, my practical explanation... It's to smuggle illegal aliens across the border. People are gutting the insides of the seats, storing the I.A.s inside and re-installing them in cars that can be driven across the border. To take it to another level. The I.A.s could even be drug mules who are being smuggled across the border.
But, reality isn't always as fun to write about. So, now, here's my creative response...
The setting is a sleepy sub--burb where 90% of the women are soccer moms. They love their husbands. They love their children, and their activities. But, yet they feel that something is missing from their lives. Then, one day the back seat from the lead soccer mom's minivan goes missing. A day or two goes by, and the same thing happens. And again, and again. This weird string of thefts is the jump start these women need to get them out of their ruts and into the more interesting lives that they so desperately crave.

Jon The Crime Spree Guy said...

As it turns out a large number of cars being imported into the US are hiding drugs, the backseat being the perfect place to hide them. The inspections only look at 1 out of 250 cars.
So I would imagine these thieves are looking for drugs. A quick way to make a few bucks or get wasted.

Also, this is all conjecture and I have nothing to back up any of it.

David John said...

It is part of a campaign to save the world from annoying back seat drivers.

Linda Rodriguez said...

They're being stolen to sell to an interior designer who decorates hipster loft apartments in NYC with "industrial chic."

Anonymous-9 said...

The economy is so bad they're after loose change?