Go Ahead — Write This Story: Change, Part 1

People hate change. Consider how people howl when Facebook or LiveJournal make even a minor change in their user interface. Now think of the people you know who should shape up: drink less, eat better, dump a bad job or spouse, abandon ridiculous political opinions, or get anger management therapy. Will they? Not until they have no other choice. Fictional characters are like that, too. They fear and hate change in their environment and themselves and will resist as hard and as long as they can.

If you need a story about change – or aversion to it – here are a few ideas:

• This is a comedy about a family that lives in a haunted house and refuses to believe in ghosts.

• This is a ripped-from-the-headlines story about a medical team that cannot ethically flee an epidemic.

• This is thriller about an employee of a technology company that begins to operate in increasingly illegal activities, but the change is so slow and the money is so good that one of the engineers can’t afford to quit.

— Sue Burke