I love shoes and I love buying shoes and I love figuring out what to wear with shoes. Because sometimes you have to build the whole outfit around those fabulous new peep toe shoes or your new gray leather ankle boots or the shiny Mary Janes.shoes

Sometimes it’s like that with scenes too. You might have a joke, or a cute bit of dialogue or even a fabulous setting you simply must include in your novel. And when you feel that way, you quickly start figuring out how to build the perfect outfit around it. Which jeans should the scene wear? Or maybe do the words prefer a skirt? Short skirt or pencil skirt or flouncy, cute thing?

Then you step back and look in the mirror and ask yourself: does this ensemble go with these shoes? When the answer is YES, you say “hooray” and go out for a night on the town! Because it’s something of a writing fashion victory to make your scene fit your shoes.

Remember too, though, that sometimes the outfit just doesn’t go no matter how lovely or delicious those shoes are. If the skirt or the top or even a minor detail, like the earrings, don’t match then you must just  pet the shoes (or the pages) and put them safely away in your writing closet.

In my writing work, I have assembled a lot of scenes from a great pair of shoes and I have likewise pet a great many more pages that just didn’t fit.