The Unexpected

It is easy to blog about unexpected things.  I've done so myself prior to this.  I suppose that's because the world around us is full of the unexpected.

Here's why I think it happens so much.  Most of us awake each day with expectations for our day. We expect to eat meals and go to work or school.  We expect to interact with familiar people or follow through on our agenda in our planner.  By having expectations, we set ourselves up to meet the unexpected at every turn.  Reality comes into play.

Most unexpected turns are small such as a traffic jam or tripping on the sidewalk, not usually the life changing events that, while they do happen, are rare.  And remember, the unexpected is not always bad.  It can be good.  The day after Christmas some family members and I headed out to see a new movie.  We got to the theater a little early, but not early enough - it was sold out.  Unexpected - yes, bad - not really.  We'll go another time and instead we did a little shopping and returned home to play with new Christmas presents.

Part of dealing with the unexpected is attitude.  We could have been angry and upset about the movie, but we took it in stride.  In books, characters will definitely need to face the unexpected.  How will they respond?

If a book is to be believable, different characters will react differently to unexpected turns of events.  Molehills of surprises can create mountains of distress or instead show the flexibility of an individual.  With a different character, the unexpected can create a paralysis, an inability to cope.  Much can be revealed about an individual by the way they react to the unexpected.

But for those of us "real" characters, I have a different question.  Since so much around us is unexpected, shouldn't that be exactly what we expect?