7 Ways to Use Life in Your Writing

photo by Elaine Cougler

Do you ever stop and think a certain event, sight, story, circumstance, or person would make a great story? Have you ever read someone’s blog post and marveled at the way they used a common or not so common place or event to enrich their writing? I see it all the time. And I think of endless examples although getting them written is another story entirely.

My writing friend has just published her first novel over at Crimson Romance and she (Sharon Clare) guest-posted today about a scene from her book which didn’t make the final edit. From the comments maybe it should have, but that’s another story. The point is Sharon was sitting in her lovely yard writing and saw — well, just click above and read it. An ordinary everyday occurrence led to an interesting scene in her writing.

Does that happen to you?

7 Scenarios Which Might End up in Your Writing

1. You sit in a crowded airport across from a couple who are absolutely silent. She is totally covered except for her eyes which, via furtive glances, you realize are so lifeless they’re almost dead. What is the story here?
2. Early one morning, before you’re even out of your pj’s an insistent ringing of your doorbell summons you. Who might it be? What is wrong? Is someone hurt? Dozens of questions flood your thoughts and your footsteps are masked by the thumping of your heart. Who or what is on the other side of that door?
3. You unpack a bunch of a deceased loved one’s belongings and find a reel-to-reel audio tape which, you think, might have the long-lost recording of your duet with your mother from many years ago. Also in the box unlabeled reel-to-reel film from an earlier technical time and you wonder. What could be on them? Are they rediscovered Elvis tapes? (worth money!) Or unknown family recordings? Or something more sinister? Or even something totally embarrassing to your family?
4. The phone rings and your husband answers but even across the room you can hear the yelling coming out of the receiver. And your husband’s face goes from smiling, to frowning, to beet-red, and then he… you fill in the rest.
5. You go to a funeral for a 90-year-old distant cousin, taking along your 90-year-old favorite aunt, and the minister’s eulogy includes amazing and unknown-to-you facts about your cousin’s life. Afterwards a fortyish man comes up to you holding a half-eaten salmon sandwich in his hand and tells you he is your–wait for it–brother! And you never knew. What is the story?
6. That neighbor’s cat, always hopping the fence and using your kids’ sand box for his own personal litter station, comes right up to you as you sit by the pool in your Muskoka chair (Americans, read Adirondack) nursing your summer slush while you read Sharon Kay Penman’s latest historical, and, on the deck before you, he coughs up a disgusting hunk of gunk. On closer inspection you see it is a tiny capped plastic cylinder. Yuk! You wonder…you look away…you glance back…and pick it up. After you wash it, and your hands, till all the mess is missing, you open it. Inside you find….
7. Your family helps you celebrate a BIG, make that REALLY BIG birthday and one of the cards holds tickets to a tiny village in Italy where your uncle who died in WWII is buried. And when you go there, right next to his headstone is another with your husband’s name on it. What is the likelihood of coincidences in our lives?

By the way, these are variations of the truth, for that’s what writers do, isn’t it?

What kind of occurrences have made you feel like writing a book? Are they real or are they from the what if? section of your brain? Consider leaving a comment and sharing.

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