POST CARDS FROM THE MUSE

Facing Your Fears

As the giant spider crawled across the floor, my legs involuntarily drew up under me on the bed while my arms crossed themselves to protect my vital organs from the monster. As much as I hated looking at the hairy thing, I couldn’t take my eyes away. My lungs pulled in a gulp of air and pushed out a piercing scream.

Is that fear? How about this . . .

I watched him open the door of the car and toss his bags into the backseat. His last words stung my face as if they had needles and stuck in the air. I couldn’t believe he would leave me like this, that the years we spent together were over and he now hated me. I had no idea what I would do without him. My tears ran openly as I screamed for him to come back.

Fear is a huge part of every plot, whether it’s very obvious, as in the case of a character running for their life from a monster, or whether it’s disguised with another emotion, such as anger. Even a romance story has an element of fear: fear of commitment, fear of intimacy, fear of losing someone.

If you take the fear and amplify it to a phobia, you have a nice big glowering obstacle for your character to overcome. There are hundreds of well-known phobias; it’s the unusual phobias that make a story interesting.

Congratulations. You have just received a post card from the muse.

Nandy Ekle