Monday, April 11, 2011

I is for If

I is for If or What if..
Remember when you were a kid and you asked this question. What if... This could be followed by something awesome that you thought up in your imagination or maybe it would be followed by a concern.
An awesome, imaginative What if...
What if my favorite baseball player hits a home run and the bases are loaded and he hits the ball so far it goes to the moon so the Twins just get to keep running the bases until they score a million points.

Or a more concerned What if...
What if the game is sold out and we can't get tickets?

I think writers and all artists really ask this question every day. What if my character does this? What if my character walks down that street? What if my character encounters a bear? What if vampires went to high school?

This is the fun part of writing. We get to answer all these what if's with our imagination. We put our characters in crazy, wacky, awesome, funny, scary situations in order to answer the question of what if.

Besides the What If's in our writing/art we all have our own set of what ifs.
Sometimes these are the things we worry about and sometimes they are the cool things we imagine for ourselves.
What if no one likes what I wrote? What if all the people who say they like what I wrote are just lying? What if everyone loves what I wrote? What if I sell a book? What if I become a super famous author and can't go out in public without being mobbed by my adoring fans?

What is your character's What if today? What is yours?

P.S Tomorrow is the last day to vote for my Peep Diorama. What if I lose to a Justin Bieber diorama? Will I hang up my glue gun forever? No, I'll just start planning next year's diorama which I hope will include foam core.



5 comments:

Unknown said...

My current MC's 'What if?' would be: What if I really could be more than a college a dropout/video game geek?

My personal favorite 'What if?' is posted above my writing desk and says, "What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?"

Stratoz said...

What if I do and What if I don't teach summer school this year.

Lindsay N. Currie said...

LOL I love you and your peep diorama! Though, if you do lose, just remember it's because those damn Bieber fans are insane. Good post BTW. . . I am always filled with a billion what ifs!

Lynda R Young as Elle Cardy said...

The what ifs are definitely the fun part of writing. For a long time I was stuck on two possible endings for a novel I was writing because I kept asking what if...

RosieC said...

Hmm, that's a good question. I guess one of my MC's questions would be "What if I had never gone to save him?" She does ask herself that pretty frequently, especially since she can't remember the "him" in that statement :)

Rosie
East for Green Eyes