L1 Exercise Everyday Inspirations

{font:times)The first place I sat to observe life this past week was a mall food court. I used a food court as a scene in one of the chapters of my current novel so I will use this experience to set a better scene. The smell of fried food, the sound of conversation and ambient music, the sweet taste of the Cherry Coke I drank while observing life, and the various groups of people who sat around me. One thing that caught my attention was the fact that the song Love Me Like You Do was able to carry over the din of conversation. Of course, the first association I made was with the movie/novel Fifty Shades of Grey, which is not surprising considering its feature in the movie is what made it popular. As a music lover I enjoy featuring songs in my stories. Songs that I enjoy become favorites of my characters’. They typically have some significance to the character’s personality or place in the story.

After spending twenty minutes in the food court, I took a walk with my husband around the mall. We stopped in the center of the mall so I could a get a better look at the area. We stood in the center of a tile mosaic of an eight-point compass beneath a circular sky light. It was empty at the time we were there but a few weeks before it is where Santa sat to welcome a line of children onto his lap for pictures and whispered Christmas wishes. It got me thinking about what else an eight-point compass beneath a sky light could be used for; a pagan rite, time travel, or other supernatural elements in a story.

The third thing that stood out and appealed to my imagination was a poster hanging in the women’s room of a Texas Road House. It contained five rows and four columns of technicolor dogs with wild patterns. At the bottom in red scrawl were the words Chili Dogs Hot Stuff. I’m not sure how I would use it in a story. I just thought it was cool. Maybe it will hang in one of the rooms of a residence of a character.