Have you ever been working on a story or book and known exactly what it is you need/want to happen in the scene you’re writing, written a sentence that sparked some random thought that then spirals off into a digression about the background of a minor character that suddenly decides he/she wants more page time?
And wow, how about that run-on sentence?
Seriously, though, I was working on my current novel FIXATION (shapeshifting jaguars, Olmec deities and other goodies) and all I had to do was get my heroine through a garage to her little cottage in the backyard of an old SF house. Simple, right?
Well, theoretically, yes. But my mind started off on a tangent involving the contents of the garage, the heroine’s landlord, dumpster diving and art. Yeah, I know… WTF? I have 200 pages (the standard length of a Ravenous Romance novel) to play with and lots of action and sex to get in this book. And yet my brain insists that I need this extra bit of information about a character who, before I had my heroine enter the garage, was never going to actually get any “screen time.”
Now, however? He’s looking to feature fairly heavily in the plot, all because I started wondering what this guy would have in his garage.
My mind works in mysterious ways.
LOL — don’t they all? Minds are like icebergs. That big hunk of blue ice under the surface can capsize a big boat — or your narrative plan — not to mention picking up stray polar bears. Watch out for the puffins. They look cute, but I have it on good authority that they suck human blood with their razor sharp teeth. No, really.
HAH! Yes, I totally agree… although the puffins can make great characters along the way…