Southern Fried Chicas

When I began my WIP, I knew my hero’s house would look like a museum. He’d have Impressionist oil paintings, tapestries, suits of armor, mounted animal heads, mismatched furniture, Asian sculptures and various other knickknacks. His library would be filled with books on Art, Literature, History, Medicine, Religion, Philosophy, Architecture and Science. I never asked myself why because the answer seemed obvious. He was immortal. Naturally he’d accumulated a bunch of stuff over the centuries.

Profession-wise, he started as an obscure Elizabethan poet, so I figured he’d naturally branch off into a related field over the course of his lifetime. Maybe try his hand at a novel writing, or perhaps he’d become a journalist. This lead me to discover he had a genius IQ, a photographic memory, and he could really draw. Just a few more unrelated character traits, right?

Wrong.

That Covert Co-Worker, AKA my Subconscious Mind (SM) had been working on another angle all along.

Digging a bit deeper, I put myself in my hero’s shoes by answering a series of thought-provoking questions like: What if I’d lived 5 or 600 years? What if I’d mastered a particular gift … like writing? Couldn’t it become tedious after a century or two? Especially if that gift/occupation served as a reminder of a VERY painful time period? That would compel me to make a fresh start. You know, take on a new challenge (READ: diversion). Maybe art. After all, I can draw pretty well and in 80 or 90 years when the bloom faded from that ‘creative’ rose I’d go for something completely different, like law or hell, why not medicine? I mean, I’ve got a genius IQ, a photographic memory and all the time in the world, right?

That’s when the light bulb really blazed bright. My hero wasn’t merely a jack-of-all trades with a long life line. He wasn’t just a pack rat either. He was a lost soul without root or direction. A man who’s been hiding behind possessions and various professions … for centuries.

A man who’s still hiding.

From himself.

My Covert Co-worker/Subconscious Mind taught me that.

When we start a new opus, our SMs may already be at work dropping seemingly unrelated details that will guide us to a desired end. These clues come randomly in the writing process until something in our conscious mind ignites. Then we get ‘IT’ and the pieces fall into place. Then we’re finally able to see the big picture.

How does your SM work? Can you recall an instance where you’ve written something and later discovered it was the cornerstone of your plot or the key to a particular character’s GMC?