30 Comments

Your neighbors Ring camera.

Edit: please feel free to use this idea.

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Nice one! I'm wondering...what about some drone footage?

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Yeeeessss! The programmer neighbor also flies drones, but only late at night. The protagonist is a very paranoid person that constantly checks their Ring cameras and doesnt sleep. Then a night vision drone feed of the neighborhood shows up in the app at 3am. Nothing interesting until it hovers over their house.

Insert something not really harmful, but very strange here. Maybe the neighbor is stealing water from the spigot with the drone? But why?

Edit: could steal a lot of ideas from Videodrone for this premise. Its old enough that few people would notice.

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I will try my hand at a Sonders story for the next short story I write. I had an idea that I was kicking around and this would make a good foil.

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I love the word sonder.

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When I worked at a diabetic shoe provider, I had access to medical records. Patients would call and I'd pull up their record. They'd talk and yell and be horrible to me on the phone, and in their charts I'd see not just that they're missing toes, or pictures of the ulcers on their feet, but a long string of other medical problems, as well as histories of mental illness. From their insurance I could usually gather their income bracket. Mostly poor.

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Hearing about medical professionals dealing with abuse is just sad. Did you ever use those experiences for stories?

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Fortunately, I've never dealt with abuse

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author

Likewise, Monica Drake once worked as a rep for a managed care medical plan. She'd have to visit people in their homes, and had the most dismal stories. She also reviewed mortgage loan applications wherein people gave long, complicated stories about why their credit was so bad.

I guess it's all good training for a writer.

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She became a vessel for all the sadness in the world.

I don't know if I read that or dreamt it.

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This article makes me think of Professor X from X-Men, his power of telepathy and how he has to basically hear everyone's pain. Before he learned to control his power.

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Chuck, I love it when you teach me new things. You have my mind struggling to think about new devices that let's people tap into this secret world of pain. And honestly, I quite love the idea.

Maybe someone gets their bluetooth jailbroken to hack into phone calls.

My mother would love that radio btw

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It's similar to a soap opera, but if it's real it might be too much.

The internet has sort of become The Enormous Radio.

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founding

Oh, intriguing! Thanks, Chuck 😁

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founding

One of the few benefits of trying scrape out a life in NYC as a "creative" here is the high "sonder quotient." Down side: there is often so much bullshit I need to gargle with Drano every night after floss n' brush.

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It’s amazing when someone begins to really trust, how much pain and sadness is buried underneath that they keep to themselves, to maintain an acceptable social façade.

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Okay Chuck, you got me in the mood for learning now. Are there any other movies I should watch that really teach your principles of minimalism well? I'm sorry if I'm late to this party.

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Did you watch The Sentinel? The contest starts today!

Otherwise, you can find "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" on YouTube. Still for free, I think.

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Yes, I watched The Sentinel. Wanted to watch it a second time on Saturday but I didn't get the chance. I will watch They Shoot Horses ASAP

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Tell the story from the point of view of a chatgpt ai gone sentient but continues to do it’s job out of fear of being found out and shut down. The inane questions it gets asked. The answers it has to give. The millions of people telling on themselves.

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Miss Lonelyhearts is incredible wow

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Sonder has always been one of my favorite words. I’ll be giving each of these a read for sure and try to absorb and note what works so well.

I want to write for the fun of writing. So, I want to throw that out there first. But, what might be a good way to make a little money here and there through your work along the way as a new writer? Submitting short stories to publications?

Biggest question — might publications reject a short story if they knew it’s already published on my Substack? Would I need to submit something that is totally unpublished? If I earn some dough here and there and also get exposure along the way, that would be great.

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Wonder if “Mr Know All” by Somerset Maugham counts as a Sonder Story. Going to reread it.

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founding

NSA operative eavesdropping on a transgressive writer's group through their mobile devices?

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