Using real life to change fiction

It never ceases to amaze me how a messed up situation in real life can change the pace of a fiction story one is composing.


Currently I am in the middle of the lives of Jack and Anastasia and they have now found that they have evil neighbors in their desert. Hrmm. Wonder where that came from? Well, I certainly love my neighbors. Even the evil ones that have no idea how being nice really works.  As a writer, it amazes me how things can take a turn in a story that you are writing and you don't even intend for it to go down that path.


What happens is this:


You are walking along, minding your own business. Listening to your footsteps as you travel down this storybook road ( your footsteps are sounding like your fingers hacking away a the keys-keep your pinkies up while typing!) and you see this little less travelled path along the side of the road. Oh, you note it alright but you keep walking. Only, your stride slows down as you think about that path. You think. You stew. You think and you stew. You think until you come to a stop and look around you. There is nothing but untouched field and warm sunshine all around you and you stand there.


Brooding.


That paths presence simply will not leave the back of your mind. At some point, as if hypnotized, you do an about face and you find yourself standing at the top of the path...wondering. Should you take it? Should you keep going? You know if you keep going in the direction you were, you will always wonder. You wonder this as you stand before said path and turn your face to the setting sun. This is the same direction you were heading in the first place. Hmm. The setting sun. Interesting. Maybe something is trying to give you a message. That path leads to an ending that your mind knows so well. The plan you had laid out for this story to travel. The path that you know how it is going to be. However.


However, you are at this new, unexpected thing. This crossroads and you have to take it. You ask for opinions of others and they all say...go for it! What makes it even more interesting is that you once wrote a small blurb when you were experiencing a writing prompt and you had requests to finish it. While you had no full story to go with that blurb, that one situation that led to this interruption of the field you are waking by and the path that so raptly has your attention now has a place in your story. That blurb and where this path leads go hand in hand and make perfect sense for the direction you know the story could go.


Do you take it? Life is about taking chances. While us writers are not ones to go out and do parkour or ride a skateboard off a ramp some 500 feet in the air, these are the chances we take. Is this the making of a great story? In my mind it may be.


It makes me wonder how many paths are along the stories that I read.  I now understand where "the Wind Through the Keyhole" by Stephen King came from. When I first discovered that story I was in pure bliss to find another book to the whole Gunslinger collection. When I read the intro, I thought it strange for the author to label it as Gunslinger 4.5.  However, it fit right in between books 4 and 5 of that story. Funny how paths are created and how they come into existence.


Have you ever come across a less beaten path? Did you take it? Where did it lead you?


What do YOU think?






DISCLAIMER:  This post is used by its author on several social media sites and cannot be reproduced otherwise.

Ballad of the Wolf Spider. (Epic) Contributed by Farva Hale.

The following was written by an epic soldier we shall name Farva.  While brave, the masses continue to raid his lands and invade his castle. Win after win keeps Sir Farva's spirits high but the incessant attacks of the Wolf Spider armies are commonplace at the Farva hold.  Below we enter at the latest battle in the field of Bath. Morespecifically the corner of the fields of Shower.  Thank you, Farva, for sharing your epic tale.....

So it begins....

Again..... they have returned.....

A tale of virtue, resolve, soaring triumph, and - like all stories that go on long enough - crushing defeat.

Our tale begins in the dense, oppressive, muggy heat of my bathroom this morning. There I am, in the shower, innocently performing my morning routines, when I see it. A small spider upon my shower curtain crawls. Intrigued, I watch this spider - this ...tiny creature - assured of its inevitable defeat for the folly of venturing into the watery grave of so many of its kind.

But no! This is no ordinary spider, my friends. This little fellow is a paragon among the spider kind, possibly a sleeper agent from clashes before. Rather than shy from the downpour, he valiantly attempts to cross the treacherous spray, Time and again rebuffed back to the relative safety of a fold in the curtain. But does he give up, does it resign himself to the sheltered cocoon? No! He struggles on, determined to complete his journey toward the source of his frustration.

Admiration fills me. It is hard to look on such courageous struggle without being moved. But the more I watch and think, the more I feel my admiration slowly becoming horror. I imagine legions of tiny spiders free from their debilitating fear of running water. To what heights might such a master race of arachnid ascend?!

It must not be! I'm sorry, but this must not be! I can not let you father a thousand thousand superior spiders, little warrior. It is my duty to all of humanity that I send you to your watery grave, just as your past clansmen, as a message to all spider kind that you will be, nay, that you must be washed out.

I fill my mouth with water and unleash a jettison above this brave creature. He slips. Falls. And to my astonishment floats. He dangles upon his silken cord, mocking my attempts to drown him. I'll not have it. Again, I unleash a torrent of water upon him, but to the same results! He mocks me as he clings desperately to that curtain, that vinyl wall. He resumes his climb.

Now my ire is the thing of legends. I will not be mocked in my own shower! Third time's the charm, as they say. This time, my rain of steaming water hits him squarely and he plummets to the slick acrylic below. Give him credit though, our intrepid friend puts all eight legs to good use! It takes three (yes, three!) waves of water created with my foot to wash him, scrambling and fighting for every inch, down the drain, but in the end, down he goes - like so many before him.

Thinking this is the end, I return to my shower, but not a minute later, what do I see? This most amazing of insect-devouring fiends emerges, seemingly unscathed, from the drain. He has climbed up the waterspout! With the WATER STILL GOING!

I'm awed. I'm humbled....but I'm terrified. Clearly my assessment of his prowess and his danger to mankind was frighteningly accurate. And yet, I'm impressed. What does one do when faced with such stalwart spirit knowing that his continued existence could one day cost you your life?

And so, with a heavy heart.....and a heavy foot, I crushed him beneath my heel. I said a prayer for his soul, and thanked God that I was there to quite literally stamp out this threat to the human experiment, as he was washed down the drain. The drain from whence his mangled, itsy-bitsy corpse will most certainly not climb up again.