Does truth ever follow fiction for you

Yep.
Character interactions more than plot events, for me.

I heard somewhere that a film a few years ago, carried the plot that an aeroplane smashed into the Twin Towers. Don't know how true that is. Do they have TV's in the Afgan hills?

Way back when I was a lowly undergrad and was taking a creative writing course, I wrote a story about a religious cult. One small detail was that the main family had been instructed to use prayer to raise their daughter from the dead. At the time, several people thought the detail unbelievable. A couple of weeks later, Waco happened. One of the details that came out of that was the members would sometimes use prayer to try to raise the dead.

The foundation of my first WIP (now being rewritten as an MG novel) is based on the observations I made over the past few years. The characters are real. All I've done is weave my imagination around them. Some of what I wrote happened after the first version, so I went back to rewrite the more interesting parts in.

Certain events in my novel have become reality recently. Very strange.

(for those who've read my book, you'll have to guess which events.. )

All the time.

I have ice volcanoes in one WIP. The hubs explained how these were impossible (on Earth, yes. On a land seeped with magic? Uh, yeah, possible, okay? I'm the God.)

2 weeks later, he had to show me the article about the discovery of ice volcanoes on Pluto (I think it was Pluto, LOL).

This happens to me all the time. Pretty much, I have an idea, he scoffs, within days he's showing me how my "insane, impossible idea" is happening in reality.

I love those conversations.

Um, yes.

My book is about a married couple dealing with an unplanned pregnancy. Two months after I finished it--guess what?

It was in that moment I realized the true meaning of irony.

Oh lord, too much.

My significant other has some mental health conditions, and so I incorporated our experience with that into the heroine of my novel. In an airport in Phoenix, I wrote about the heroine's experience in the mental ward of a hospital. Her hallucination of a vengeful psychiatrist, her friendship with a friendly black, male nurse who sang her Beatles songs, her complete and utter despair, etc.

Well, a few weeks later, my significant other was incarcerated in the mental ward of a hospital after an attempted suicide and when she got out, I gave her my novel (she hadn't read it yet). She'd had several of the exact same experiences I'd imagined and written about weeks before. And not just the general stuff, like the despair bit, but a couple of chapters happening almost word for word to her...with some names changed, of course. It was pretty creepy.

No. I've not had something happen to me after writing about it. It might be nifty if it did. I'm all for meeting a few dragons.

Strongbear said:

Does truth ever follow fiction for you? Have you noticed that events in your book have been mirrored uncannily in real life some time after you have written them, to the extent that by the time you finish your book it looks like you copied the event rather than vice versa?

I know that's certainly been the case for me.

Click to expand...

Well, I DID copy the event. I write historical fiction so this sort of thing isn't likely to happen unless the bubonic plague decimates the planet again or Babylon becomes a world power.
Linnea

It's how I met my wife! I was single and had just finished my "trunk novel" 15+ years ago, when I happened to meet a woman with the same hair, eyes, dress and job as the main female romantic interest of the MC. And that's not easy to do, considering it was historical fiction, but she was wearing a historic costume and volunteering in a living history role when I first saw her.

It was love at first sight for both of us. We married a few weeks later, and have been married ever since.

Now here's the, um, unfortunate part. She wanted to read the book. I let her. In the end, the MC chose someone else over "her." She's never let me forget that.

All the time, down to meeting characters with the same name as characters I've created. Even crazy made up fantasy names that should never exist in real life. But they do. And I meet them about two weeks after I write them.

I am afraid that I follow my own ficiton. My time is the Greek Bronze Age, and I even try to eat like these people. Olives, pomegranates, raisins, legumes, celery, figs, honey, feta cheese ... OK, there are some things that I won't eat but the influence on my own personal diet has been kind of nuts.