The Perils of Writing Fiction

Since 1985, when I sold my first novel, In Shadow, to Ballantine Books – I’ve made my living as a writer of both fiction ad non-fiction. I love both types of writing, but I believe that fiction writing comes with certain strange perils. It’s way to easy to create what if situations in your imagination when you don’t have all the facts.

Take any potentially perilous situation that involves someone you love. Today, Megan and two friends, Julie and Alex, were going hiking in the Cascade National Park. They got a late start because they have an electric rental car that needs to be super charged and the closest spot for doing that is a Walmart an hour from their B&B.It takes a couple hours to super charge the car so they lost about 3 hours.

Finally, close to noon, Meg sent a picture of the Maple Pass Loop un the park that they were going to hike. It’s seven miles. We didn’t hear another word from her until past midnight EDT and a little after 9 PM PDT. As the clock’s hands forward later and later, my imagination seized on this.

I imagined that they reached a narrow point in the pass and took a chance and tried to squeeze through – and that Megan lost her footing and tumbled down the mountain. This scenario ended up with a phone call from the National Park Service saying that our daughter’s body had been found.

Or this one. They were so high up that they a UFO landed and they were adducted, taken right into the craft and, well, fill in the details.

Or: Megan fell and broken her leg or her foot and had to be rescued by a medical chopper.

Or Julie and Alex would have to carry her out.

As a fiction writer, I imagine worst case scenarios. But these frightened me. I carried them through to the inevitable conclusion of the details you have to deal with after someone dies. I kept wondering if I would hear by tomorrow and if I hadn’t, I could have to call the park service.

Shortly after midnight EDT, (9 PDT) Megan texted: Just got service.

Apparently three miles into the hike, Alex fell and broke her foot. She couldn’t walk and Julie and Megan had to piggyback her two and a half miles out of the park. They were now in the car, headed back to the airbnb because all clinics were closed and the closest clinic was in Canada. They decided to take her to a clinic in the morning. She wasn’t in pain, but she couldn’t walk.

So, did my terrors as a mother inadvertently glimpse a scene in the future with one essential detail different?

Regardless, it’s definitely one of the perils of being a fiction writer.