Home Inspection Checklist? Yes, Seriously.

No, I'm not out of my mind. I know, the last post happened a while ago, but I had to finish a bookproject and a gazillion of other things. Back to the subject: Why would one—as a writer—need a home inspection checklist?

For starters, it doesn't hurt to have one anyway. For us as writers, this type of list could be a gold mine. Need an idea what might happen to your main character while sneaking into an unfamiliar house? Check the list, or a list of perils confronting home-owners in general; you'll find something useful, I'm sure.

I'm using the term home inspection checklist, but I'm not talking about the short version which usually contains boring stuff like number of rooms and the like. An exhaustive home inspection checklist should contain information like where is the nearest school, where is the police-department, lay of the land, plants close to the house and in the vicinity, you get the idea.

Speaking of plants: Is your hero allergic? If so, what happens while your protagonist lurks in the cellar, waiting for the adversary to do something stupid, next to the open window close to a birch tree, in spring? Next to the window are some termites—unbeknownst to our hero—and he is about to use the wooden stairs leading up into the house…

OK, the last scenario might be too much, or is it?

Home inspection checklists could provide some ideas to increase the suspense, that's for sure. On the other hand, what about a stack of filled out lists to be used to create the surroundings of a story? As I said, it could be a potential gold mine.