The Strange and Wonderful Places We "See" Our Characters

I got this feeling on the summer day when you were gone.

I crashed my car into the bridge. I watched, I let it burn.

I threw your sh*t into a bag and pushed it down the stairs.

I crashed my car into the bridge.

I don’t care, I love it.

I don’t care.

Those words aren’t my own, but yet I feel like I own them.

Or at least my manuscript does.

Let me explain.

When I’m deep into the first draft of a manuscript, I start seeing references to it everywhere. It’s like how when intuition tells you you’re being followed and yet all you see are shadows: There’s something familiar there, something striking, something that makes your spine tingle. But you can’t quite put your finger on it. Still, it speaks to the deepest part of you.

And that’s where those words come in. They’re the opening lyrics to the song “I Love It” by the Swedish dance duo Icona Pop. That’s them up there, looking all cool and hip in their video.

And, for some reason, they’re speaking my language. My story’s language.

I heard “I Love It” on the radio and immediately thought: Holy cow, that’s my WIP! As soon as I got home, I pulled up the video on my laptop and put it on repeat about twenty times. And each time it looped through, I felt even more conviction.

This song was my main character’s anthem. It’s her song. It’s the story’s song.

Even though my work in progress had absolutely nothing to do with Sweden or musicians or dancing. Heck, even the lyrics don’t make literal sense. There’s no car crashing into a bridge, no break-up with wedding dresses and iPads tumbling to the ground floor.

Nope. None of that.

Here’s the pitch: Big-deal New York sports writer A.J. Beckett inadvertently quits her job in a power-play gone wrong and ends up boomeranging back to her very first writing gig: Covering high school football in her Nebraska hometown for $50 a game. When the local high school’s backup quarterback ends up face-down in a creek, A.J. goes searching for answers and soon finds the rosy glow of memories she has surrounding her childhood influencers — from the legendary football coach to the editor who hired her a second time — is blinding her from a very ugly truth.

Now you’re probably really confused: “What the heck does Nebraska high school football have to do with a car crash and a fight and is there a love story in there somewhere? Are you insane?”

So, a peek into my brain: I see A.J. quitting her job like a car crash — it’s sudden and violent and totally turns her world to ashes, leaving her with nothing but an embarrassing trip home and, subsequently, a stint doing the exact last thing a successful person wants to do: Her first ever job. And for that, and many other reasons, the idea of “I don’t care. I love it,” is a huge theme — that we can do what we love anywhere, even if it’s in a lowly Nebraska pig town.

You see? Not so crazy, right? (I hope.)

So tell me, where does your main character/story/theme magically appear in real life?