Say Your Right Words

I didn’t know what I would post about today, since I need to be working on my National Novel Writing Month project, but I had to go read Sara Deurell’s post–never miss them! and I started writing a comment and decided I might as well put it on my own blog instead of somebody else’s!

At Quills and Quibbles writers’ group last night, we were talking about (among other things) how a story can come to seem to have a life of its own, and how characters can surprise us. We agreed–as much as writers can–that a story is like an emergent property: It comes out of all we are and all we’ve done and learned and observed and read, but it’s more than those things. The best bits of writing is when you’ve imagined a place and a set of circumstances and a group of people so fully, the action and dialog can proceed believably and naturally without our having to push or pull to force things to happen. That’s when it feels like a story or character has taken on a life of its own.

Of course, Little Miss Control Freak here is always on the other side of the two-way glass going, “No, you don’t want to pick that up, you want to check under the table. Why? Um…you drop your breath mint. Oops! What did you say? Oh–that was funny! Yeah, you totally did say that. Now…under the table…bump your head…look up…and…. YES!”

Man, I love writing! It is absolutely the best thing ever!

WRITING PROMPT: Beginning with the same character, setting and situation, make the scene go three different ways for believable reasons.

MA

About

I was born in Louisville, Kentucky, but now live in the woods in southern Indiana. Though I only write fiction, I love to read non-fiction. The more I learn about this world, the more fantastic I see it is.

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