History Main / ItsForABook

* In ''WesternAnimation/MonstersInc'', Sully and Mike are hiding a human child from their fellow employees. When the employees overhear a heated discussion between Sully and Mike about the kid, they explain that they're writing a "company play", and that the phrase which their coworkers had just overheard was actually the title of the play ("Put That Thing Back Where It Came From or So Help Me"). Oddly, they end up actually writing that play, and the play is performed at a company function during the movie's closing credits.

A subtrope of the BavarianFireDrill, compare IHaveThisFriend. Comes up a lot because MostWritersAreWriters. See also FilmFelons and WeWereRehearsingAPlay, compare to WildCardExcuse. Compare also IShouldWriteABookAboutThis, when the unusual experience comes first and gives someone the idea for a book. When the research shows up clearly in the finished book, that's ShownTheirWork.

* In ''Film/{{Transformers}}'', Sam gives this to a school jock as the excuse for why he tried out for the football team (to which he failed hard). He makes it a StealthInsult by saying the book is filled with big pictures and colouring sections.

* On ''Series/{{Bruiser}}'', there was a running-gag sketch where a rather high-strung man (played by Robert Webb) came into shops asking less-than-innocent questions about [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEyUeCyXl1Q what sort of, say, poisons you'd have, for rats, a large rat, a woman-sized rat, say....]]
* In the ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' episode "Earshot", the Scooby Gang pretend to interview teachers and students for the yearbook at Sunnydale High to find out the identity of a potential gunman. "Hi, Mr. Beach. I was just wondering if you were planning on killing a bunch of people tomorrow? Oh, it's for the yearbook."

** Toward the end of Season 3, Castle's mother points out he has more than enough material for several books; [[{{UST}} he's clearly not doing it for professional reasons anymore]]. To be honest, he was never really in the first place -- which falls squarely under this trope: it was a convenient excuse.

* On ''Series/{{Friends}}'', Chandler leaves Ross's baby on the bus and has to call the Transportation Department to get it back. Rather than admit he left the baby behind, however, he tells the operator it's for his book. "Yes, [[RepeatingSoTheAudienceCanHear that would be a stupid character.]]"

* On ''Series/{{Journeyman}}'', Dan calls a physics professor to ask about TimeTravel, saying it's for a book he's writing. The professor obviously knew more about Dan's predicament than he was letting on but the series was canceled before it was revealed.

-->-- '''Kate Beckett''' (asking Richard Castle if she's his "second"), ''Series/{{Castle}}''

* This is pretty much the premise of ''Series/{{Castle}}''. The title character, a best-selling mystery writer is -- ostensibly -- tagging along with detective Kate Beckett in order to do research for his new series of crime novels, ''Nikki Heat''.

* In ''VideoGame/PaperMario64'', in the 7th-chapter murder mystery, this trope is inverted, with one of the suspects being a suspect in part because he writes murder mysteries (he's [[JustForPun a penguin called Herringway]]).