Writing Christian Sci-Fi: When Imagination Takes Flight and Characters Change Your Script! 

I had an incredible writing day not too long ago. I got two chapters written that day and something unexpected transpired in my story! I was staging a rescue operation in one of the Earth Terra villages when a long-lost sister to one of my side characters (a rescue crew security team member) showed up and caused a future shift in my story line that will change something major. I didn’t even know that she had a long-lost sister when I started writing the chapter. 

This is something that happens now and then in a writer’s day and brings joy to our hearts. It’s an unanticipated reward in the writing process. Think about it. When I have a story in mind, it already has a sketched outline. I just have to flesh it out and breathe life into the characters as they move through their pre-planned action. To have something happen that wasn’t planned, is like having an actor suddenly begin to ad-lib, creating a scene that’s not in the script. 

This can be good or bad, depending on how you, the director, look at it. If it’s brilliant, it’s a welcome blast of cool air on a sweltering summer day. It can also be completely extraneous and take away from the story as a whole, but even that is not a loss or waste of time. A new story can be woven from it, or, as I will do, it can add an element that changes everything for a major character, or characters down the road. 

I march forward, pen in hand. (That sounds more poetic than ‘laptop on table.’ Besides, who can march with an open laptop?) Completing a chapter here, reading aloud to my hubby and editing there. The work moves forward toward the release date in October. Will she finish in time? Time will tell!

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