I sat down yesterday to write a scene between the two leads in my WIP, Paul and Clarissa. It was supposed to be a scene where Paul told Clarissa something important that had just happened to him, something that would be a secret they shared.
Now, Paul does trust Clarissa – they already share some secrets, which is why he thinks he can trust her – but I’ll be honest, I was worried (as was Paul) about how he would tell her and how she’d react. So I was expecting it to be an interesting scene to write.
I managed to get them sitting down alone and Paul’s working out how to open the conversation when suddenly Clarissa blurts out, “This is about sex, isn’t it? You’re upset because we’ve been going out for a month and we haven’t had sex yet.” Which was most definitely not what Paul was going to talk about.
And just like that, Clarissa hijacks the scene and it goes off in a totally different direction to the one I was expecting to write. And Paul never did get to talk about what he wanted to talk about – which might just come back to bite him in the arse later in the story.
God, I love these characters, they just lead me where they want to go and I follow along writing down what happens and what they say. It’s a real joy to work like this.
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