Serendipity. You have to love it. As a writer it has helped me through plot walls, flawed dialog and incomplete settings.
Let me give you an example. I was about six chapters into The Founders (which will be out late this month or early May). Marisily had fled her childhood home after watching her mother die…to go… Somewhere. Hmm. Blank wall.
I had to leave town for a big furniture convention (my day job) so I shut everything down and boarded the plane.
The story was simmering in the back of my mind while walking the miles of hallways and talking to countless home furniture and furnishings vendors.
Then we passed a photographer’s booth. He had some big images that he was showing as decor. As we walked in there was this picture. It was a panorama of a desert landscape..totally the wrong type of topography for the story BUT the photo had been shot from inside a cave high up in a cliff. I just stood there transfixed staring at this awesome picture. At that moment I knew where Marisily had escaped to and how that place was important to the story.
These small moments are the treasured gifts that I so appreciate. Share with me your serendipitous moments. I’d love to hear them!
2 Comments
I love moments like that! Sometimes if I get stuck, I go hiking in the forest. Because the forest is a major setting for my novels, I often get unstuck by going along the same terrain as my characters.
There are parts of my life anchoring the story. The rest are bits of imagination and flights of fancy but it is always the magic of this world that gets me unstuck.