Serendipity.
Let that roll around your tongue for a while. It’s a great word. And it has a lot to do with writing.
Encarta defines it: a natural gift for making useful discoveries by accident. Synonyms would be destiny, karma, fate, which are all great words.
I like to think that it falls more towards Whimsy [the art of being quaint or playfully humorous in an endearing way], that’s why I have paired the word with Fortunetelling.
Fictional characters develop serendipitously. Yes, they come from me, out of my experience or imagination or, sometimes, frustration. But in many ways it’s very accidental the way they become three-dimensional. A program on the radio inspires an idea. The way my daughter categorizes friendship becomes a relationship. An observed scene in a hotel lobby illuminates the conflict of a story.
So. What about fortunetelling?
We storytellers, by whatever medium we chose to use, are seers. We sit pompously in Delphi and predict futures.
The only time we have to come down to earth is to make it all believable to our readers. LOL. Sounds so simple. Yeah, right!