What are your scenes that took on a life of their own?

[CaryJanJunior]

As a very improvisational, write what comes to mind with vague outlines and plans kind of writer, I often find scenes twisting the plot around them.

This is the first time, however, that a scene I wrote reached out of its story to grip my mind so much I created a setting and a list of board game rules meant for emulating that scene.

In light of that, I figured I would see what are your most egregious moments of a scene having far too much influence on the story/other stories/your personal life/etc.

 

[StillStunned]

Most of my stories start with a single image of a scene, and I write the story around or towards that scene. The one that's got most out of hand involved an adventurer pushing her rival into a pit with a demon. That led to "The Rivals", a series of eight completed stories so far, with a total of 73k words, and another 13k-word spinoff.

 

[ElectricBlue]

In light of that, I figured I would see what are your most egregious moments of a scene having far too much influence on the story/other stories/your personal life/etc.

I've had characters arrive in the space of a paragraph who became a key person in several stories. They thrust themselves up from my sub-conscious and took over the story. Several then went on and got stories of their own.

In terms of my own life, it's when I dream of them that I know they've put their hooks in and are here to stay.

 

[AchtungNight]

The first erotic scene I dreamt that went viral in my mind was a nude blonde standing before a mirror quoting Taxi Driver. Rendezvous was the result, chapter 4 has the scene in question. The Passion series featured the same character, so it came from that scene also.

 

[larrkap]

The long grey tshirt she was wearing rose up and I got to see the full extent of her well defined legs and the bottom third of her incredible ass cheeks.

This was just a line where one of my protagonists deals with a minor character. It's become a recurring image both in the story and my own mind and has taken my story line off on a very different tangent.

 

[crookedletter]

I write in the same improvisational way you describe: I often have a direction I'm trying to nudge my stories toward, but often no clear path how to get there, so sometimes scenes or characters come along and knock things far off track.

I mentioned one in a recent thread: what was meant to be a quick detour to deliver some characterization turned into a 3500+ word chapter, one that I enjoyed writing and think has something going for it but perhaps doesn't fit in the story I initially intended it for.

Honestly that's one of my favorite parts about the writing process. I think so-called "plotters" probably have an easier time getting a cohesive first draft together, less work needed on their second/third passes to make things fit, but I love it when I make something good that I never set out to make. And then the logic puzzle begins: what the hell is this and what do I do with it? Sometimes the answer affects the scene in question; sometimes it changes the whole story around it.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I wrote a simple conversation of about 100 words to see if I could portray different characters just by their dialects, nicking the voices off the guy with the sexiest voice I've ever known, and a completely different voice from an ex-housemate from Birmingham.

Didn't even mean to get them together. But with guy 1 being from Northern Ireland, and guy 2 getting thrown out of an Irish pub once for wearing a British Army jacket, that became something for them to talk about.

When my Covid and lots of drugs wore off 9 months later, I published the 110,000 word series of Smoking Hot, where the guys get together, and since then there's been at least another half a dozen stories where Adrian and Dan star or feature, plus getting mentioned in stories about their friends.

 

[VallesMarineris]

a scene I wrote reached out of its story to grip my mind so much I created a setting and a list of board game rules meant for emulating that scene.

This is one of the joys of writing. I'm finishing the last chapter of a novel-length story (>110K words) and suddenly a few days ago a scene for a spin-off took over my brain and I had to start working on it. After several thousand words on that, I think I've got enough sense of where it's going that I can (and need to) put hooks in that final chapter so the stories make sense together.

Have fun!