Found out my favorite writing prompt came from a real town in Nebraska

I was scrolling through Wikipedia last night looking for weird town names and stumbled on a place called Broken Bow, Nebraska. Turns out there's a whole county out there with less than 3,000 people. And that old prompt about a small town sheriff finding a mysterious package at the post office? I've used it like five times in different ways. I always thought someone just made it up for creative writing forums. But it's actually based on a real event in Broken Bow back in 2017 where a resident got a box of old maps mailed to them by mistake. The sheriff got involved because the return address was from a guy who died 10 years earlier. That's way more interesting than the generic version I had in my head. Has anyone else stumbled on a real life story that matches a writing prompt you've used?

3 comments

3 Comments

shanef3411d ago

Man that's actually wild. Broke Bow's sheriff probably never thought his day would turn into a writing prompt for a bunch of strangers online.

the_max11d ago

Ha, right? @shanef34 you're probably not wrong. I bet that sheriff was just sipping his coffee, thinking about lunch, and suddenly he's the main character in everyone's internet story. Honestly, if that happened to me I'd probably just delete my social media and move to a cabin. But hey, at least his day got way more interesting than mine, I'm just sitting here refreshing my feed.

max_brown9d agoTop Commenter

Yeah man totally! Once a raccoon stole my sandwich and I ended up on the local news.