Again, something of a reach, but bear with me:
You know how sometimes you have a plan, or you don’t, and then it’s like the universe decided it wanted to take a crack at it?
Maybe a sudden illness makes you think of variables you never noticed before. Maybe you met the man or woman of your dreams because you happened to miss the bus. Or maybe you happened upon a business incident that revealed it’s all a pack of lies.
Life is much bigger than we are, and we often say “you can’t make this stuff up” when crazy stuff happens. And really sometimes life is a fantastic cowriter. Maybe it helps you come up with timelines or non-canon side stories, or a billion what-ifs.
If you feel inclined to do so, share your favourite instance of real life writing the plot, whether it happened to you personally or to one of your favourite creators.
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@Banafsheh I dig your term, life is a fantastic co writer. I do i phone dictation or notes, even on holiday to capture random events. I’ve also a scene in a hispanic pulp from a true experience. Was in rural Spain & last person to be dropped off in taxi, when it purposefully took a wrong turn in opposite direction. I pretended not to notice, & said I’m about to be sick, (gut heaving) & put my phone in my jeans. I left my bag on the seat, saying look after my dinero. They pulled up, opened door, & their greed to search my bag bought me valuable time to run. I ended up in fields, with miles of stumpy trees, all planted in a crazy pattern. Before finding safety, I concentrated on nature, to counteract any fear. Later I used the trees as a plausible ancient code, to solve the riddle of where to find the treasure, in the last scene of the trilogy script.
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That’s quite the experience Debbie Croysdale! I’m glad you made it out safely and got inspired at the same time. Life really has a way of plotting sometimes!
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Love that—"life as a fantastic co-writer." The best plot twists are often the ones we'd never invent because they'd feel too coincidental or cruel. Reality has a better sense of dramatic irony than we do. What's one unexpected "life wrote the plot" moment that changed the direction of a story you were working on, or maybe even your own path as a writer?
That’s a great question Sam Rivera, I think for me it would have to be when I was in high school and working on a stream-of-consciousness novel and crushing on this one guy, and found myself on the short end of no less than three love triangles with him until we graduated lol. I’m sure we were both quite aware of the dramatic irony at the time. As such, I’m quite good at writing drama and love triangles; very easy when you’ve basically lived a soap opera against your will lol