Stranger than Fiction

As a fiction writer, you want to tell a story that will evoke the same feelings in your readers that you've experienced when you've escaped reality with a good book. The ones that had you turning pages long into the night, that made you laugh or cry. The ones that took you on a journey to another world with characters you don't want to have to say goodbye to.

So as a writer we sit down and think of plots and characters to create an engaging story and then someone reads it and plants the seed of writer's doubt in your head, telling you that what you've written is too weird to believe and that it would never happen in real life.

Since when did dragons exist? How often have you fallen through a looking glass? Do you time travel often? I think you get the point.

As long as you believe in your own story and write it in such a way to make it believable to the reader then you'll create something fantastical. Remember that everyone's a critic but don't be your own and fuel that writer's doubt whilst you're writing. Remember you can make anything happen just by writing words on a page even if you're writing a romance or a thriller as opposed to fantasy or sci-fi. If you're looking for inspiration to write something out of the ordinary then this is something that recently happened to me . . .

I was stuck in morning traffic and saw a bright green camper van pull up in the lane next to me. Nothing unusual in that I know. This, however, belonged to someone that sought out and communicated with aliens as the glossy black stickers plastered over it proudly shouted. We both slowly filtered our way through to the roundabout and I wished I'd had the opportunity to take a photo of it.

That evening I arrived at my writing group eager to hear what everyone had written on the topic of 'Birthday Card'. It has always amazed me that everyone in the group always produces something on the same topic but they are all so very different. What I really didn't expect to hear was a story that featured aliens! Not something you tend to work into a storyline when the given topic is birthday card.

As usual, I forgot to ask for a contribution from the writing group to be published on the website so an email request was sent and the lucky victim asked if they could pick out something they had written previously to which I agreed. I was checking my emails a few days later to see if they had forwarded their story when my mother rang. It was bad news. Shep, our beloved border collie suffered heart failure and had to be put to sleep. He had been pining the loss of my grandfather who had passed away just 6 months before. We all gathered at the family farm to say a teary farewell before we laid him to rest in a peaceful spot at the end of the garden.

The following morning I was glad for once to have the afternoon off work for a dentist appointment and decided not to mention to my work colleagues about being upset about Shep passing away. I only had to endure the morning and really didn't want to talk about it. However, as the morning progressed the conversation turned to dogs; how sad it was to lose them and about a one-eyed collie pup that a local farm was looking to re-home as he couldn't be trained to work with the animals. At this point I couldn't listen any longer, feeling my face flush and tears start to well. I left my desk and went for a walk around to compose myself. Memories of Shep and Bamp (a Welsh term for grandfather) filling my thoughts. Despite living in South Wales it's not that often these days that I've come across others calling their grandfather 'bamp' and so it was surprising and comforting when a funeral car drove slowly beside me whilst I walked on the pavement, the flowers on the coffin arranged to spell out 'BAMP'.

Co-incidents maybe, but I took it as a message from my grandfather that he and Shep had been missing each other and now they were together again keeping each other company.

I managed after that to make it through the rest of the morning without breaking into floods of tears and before going to the dentist I sat down in a posh coffee shop for lunch. Waiting for my panini to cool down I went through my emails and found a reply with an attachment to my request for a contribution to publish on the website. Opening the attachment, which was a random choice not on the topic that had been set, I read through a story about a couple that met in a coffee shop and the main character making it known her views about posh coffee! As I sip my black coffee I'm reminded of my husband moaning about the same thing and his flat refusal to pay what he refers to as posh coffee shop prices.

So my conclusion from this is that maybe I should pay attention to signs of alien life because there are definitely people watching over us, even if it's just our loved ones. As for the price of coffee? You're either with me or against me on that one.

Whatever it all means it just goes to show that even if you're not writing fantasy or sci-fi that you can still include strange twists and turns to your storyline because why should real life be stranger than fiction?

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