What If

All Fiction* begins with the question, "What IF?"

What if the girl falls in love with a vampire? What if the magician's trick goes horribly wrong? What if there was life in outer space? What if the princess turned into a frog instead of the other way around? What if the most unlikely person saved the world?

Eavesdrop on children pretending and you'll see where this develops.

"Let's play Princess**!"
"Okay. I'll be the princess and you be the witch."
"But I don't waaaant to be the witch."
"Okay, we'll both be princesses."
"Yeah. And Caleb can be the prince and he can rescue me from the dragon.***"
"And what if the the witch**** puts a spell on the prince to make him fall in love with her?"
"Oh! Oh! And what if she turns the dragon into a fairy*****?"

And so it goes.
Does that mean writers are just children who never grew up and got real jobs?
Probably.

As an exercise today, pick a "what if" and let your imagination run with it. If writing isn't your thing, chose a favorite novel and see if you can identify the "what if" the author developed.

*Some non-fiction probably falls into this category too, but we're not going to talk about that, are we?
**Absolutely no one plays house anymore.
***The dog is always the dragon.
****Somehow there's still a witch in this story.
*****Poor Kirby.