Stories in the attic

I came across the title of this post in a writing magazine.  It actually referred to a small press with attic in the title, but it immediately got my writer's imagination going thinking about things we stuff in our own attics.

The English call an attic the space at the top of their house between the top floor and the roof.  Sometimes we convert this space into extra living space, but more often it's a storage space for all the things we want to keep but don't have space for in the house.  An attic is often a repository of memories too.

What sort of things would your characters find if they were clearing out the attic in their own houses? We often only do this then we're moving, and we come across mementoes of events twenty or thirty years old.  These can be great triggers for stories.  My own attic contains some of the objects my parents owned which I couldn't bear to part with when my father died.  It also contains my wedding photograph album.  I've been divorced for seventeen years now, and have moved on well away from that relationship, but still I keep the photos.  They represent a substantial chunk of my life.

But what if your characters' attics contained photographs of someone your character didn't know?  And what if they were discovered alongside old journals or diaries that made it clear that man was your  character's real father?  You could get several stories out of that.  Or perhaps your attic contains something collectable that your hard-up character can sell?  And what if it turns out to be an Old Master painting that has been lost for decades and is sold for millions at auction?  How will your character handle this startling change of fortune?  

Or maybe the truth is more shocking.  Perhaps your character finds out the truth about the father she's   always worshipped, who she's been told died tragically young.  What if the truth is that he was a violent criminal and went to prison for life?  What will she do if she finds out he's still alive, and due for release in his sixties?  

Attics are great places for characters to discover long-forgotten secrets among the debris of other people's lives.  I must clear mine out some day.