As a fiction writer there comes a point when you’re going to meet a fork in your story. I’ve come to this several times throughout the writing process and have really debated about which direction to send the story in. Traditional or non traditional.

Its easy enough to sit down and plan out your story from beginning to end. We think about who will be the antagonist, and the protagonist. What will the conflict be? What major obstacles will our characters overcome? We do everything in preparation for our stories to be spectacular. We pick names, features and habits. Some are based off of real life and others are completely a figment of our over active imagination.

I’ve noticed though that while writing my ideas that I had worked so hard to lay out on a clean path have often changed direction. Try as I might its hard not to get wrapped up in the lives of your characters after all we spend so much time with them during the writing process they end up being part of us. So when we let them take the lead very often it seems that they path we wanted them to take isn’t the one that was meant for them. For example you may want your main character to be named Mary with black hair and a sweet persona like the virgin Mary. However, as the story progresses we find out Mary would rather kill and behead her boyfriend after she finds out that he cheats with her sister. Think about how much more exciting the Wizard of Oz would have been if Dorothy hadn’t followed the yellow brick road!

So what do you do when your story takes a different direction? My ad

vice is to embrace it and go with the flow. What you may deem as right for your characters may take on a different note when you start writing. Letting your creativity and imagination run wild will ultimately provide your readers with a great story to read.