"Stories from today's paper that would make good fictional yarns": # 1

Would-be writers don't always have to look too hard to find good ideas for stories. Sometimes a browse through the paper is enough. Here are just three snippets of news from today's that could easily trigger an idea or two.

1. Behind Chocolate Bars: A former soldier who avoided being caught for years after raiding six sweet shops armed with a knife was finally apprehended after leaving his fingerprints on a bar of chocolate in one of the stores. He was nailed after DNA taken by police over a domestic incident were found to match the prints on the bar. He was sent down for three years.
2. Saul of Tarsas: A man walked into an auction room with a rucksack containing €250K worth of gold which he sold for charity after undergoing a Damascene conversion that convinced him to give to the poor. "Like a modern day Saul of Tarsas, I saw the light," he told the auctioneer.
3. Bus a Guts! A coach driver returning to the UK from France with a school group discovered a teenage stowaway hanging onto the underside of his bus. He'd clung to it for over 80 miles before being noticed and caught. The boy told police that he had come all the way from Sudan to start a new life in the UK. 

Facts forge fiction for sure!

More tomorrow...