If Your Life Were a Plot: Smack Dab in the Imagination by Dia Calhoun
I’m finding hope these dark days by putting into practice my hard-earned plot-writing skills. When my story is stuck, I’ve learned to spray the WD40 imagination loosening question, “what if?” What if Susan did x? What if the weather turned x? What if a stranger walked in? Imagination creates potential twists and turns. So, I ask, with the world and country in the state it is in, what if I do x? or y? or z? Alas, I’m not the omniscient authority of the world (thank the powers) as I am my novel. I can’t see where my doing x might help create a desired change. Uncertainty rules—and uncertainty is like a bed of nails. How do you rest? Pray for The Unbearable Lightness of Being? Here I pull out another plot-writing skill: the character must be the essential mover of the action. Doing nothing is not going to move the story forward. Who knew that learning how to write a plot would become a life-survival tool? Let loose your imagination of activism.
