Day 3 – The Fun Part

photo courtesy of practicalowl

Yesterday, my MC was walking home from her job, exhausted and worried, when she suddenly decided to climb a tree. They are huge trees with low, sturdy, spreading branches. Of course, she would want to throw her leg up and hoist herself into one of them! But it came as a surprise to me.

It’s one of the great things about writing fiction. The surprises.

See, I’d only just made up that tree. I’d thought about the setting of my novel a lot. If you write fantasy or science fiction, that’s the extra work that has to go in ahead of the actual writing. But the details go in when you do the writing. So. Javali trees it is. And once I’d given them a name and described them, my character could not resist the impulse to hop up and explore what was up in that dense, draping vegetation.

I did not plan that. It just happened. And not such a great decision for this character anyway, since she’s suffering from frequent seizures. But, a lot of great stuff happened in that scene, stuff that will inform the reader and advance the plot.

So, this is just a shout out to all the characters out there who, once they inhabit the world we writers have planned, make the decisions that carry the story forward. This is the fun part, kids.

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