I get that question often from readers. I’m sharing the secret of how I wrote the scene for Man in the Mist when Raey first meets Josh, her best friend’s brother and later Raey’s husband.
I actually wrote this scene long before I started writing the novel. It was a challenge I gave myself, to immerse the reader in a moment and let my words create the mood. I set the song “Simple” by Florida Georgia Line on repeat, focusing on the lyric: “The way your fingers fit in mine, it’s five plus five, not rocket science,” and the image that flashes at 59 seconds into the video.
Later, when it came time to write Raey and Josh’s first meeting, I pulled that scene from my laptop’s “writing rafters” and wove it into their story. Of course, the scene evolved and grew through revisions, but the spark from that song remained.
Here’s the excerpt from pages 66–68 of Man in the Mist. Maybe you’ll recognize a bit of how the song inspired this scene:
[Nic] wasn’t her Nic any more than Josh had been her Josh that long-ago Sunday afternoon. A familiar flutter in her belly swept the cobwebs off that day. When she first laid eyes on Josh, her face suffused with heat and her skin tingled all over. Home from his medical studies at Duke, she had met him for the first time when he threw open his parents’ front door and yelled for her to hurry inside, rescuing her from waiting for an answer to her knock in the pelting rain.
When he smiled, her body came alive. She averted her vulnerable eyes from his dangerously transparent smile, but they skirted to the opening in his button-down shirt, pulled tightly across his chest. Her flushing fever rose higher and her face glowed brighter. Her eyes darted back to his. Exposed under his intense gaze, her need to be rescued mirrored in his eyes.
His casually-rolled white sleeves rested against his tanned forearms as he fanned the door wide open. She never regretted her boldness when she reached for his helping hand. Her heart sped as, one by one, his fingers wrapped around her hand and coiled around her heart, lifting her into the house. She stood toe to toe and eye to eye with him, dazed by his dashing good looks. Her heightened focus on his body surprised her more than Brenda not greeting her at the door. Seeing him had been a defibrillation, a shock to her heart.
“Now what to do with this?” he asked rhetorically as his hands cupped her shoulders and twirled her around to remove her soaked jacket, dropping it onto the entryway rug. His subtly woody, orchid scent propositioned her senses.
“Um,” she stumbled, imagining all kinds of things she would like to do with him: slow swaying to soft background music, walking through a garden of white daisies holding hands, sipping sweet tea under a beach umbrella, and mapping stars under a moonless sky.
Hugging her to his steely side, he said, “It’s good to have you here,” as if he had known her his whole life.
“It’s good to have you here, too,” she responded, immediately blushing with her mistake. The twirl discombobulated her. Her pulse raced, pounding like a wrecking ball through her emotional stability.
Her eyes didn’t leave him as he found a place for her jacket, not hearing Brenda enter until she giggled and said, “Oh, I see you have met my brother.”
“Um, oh yes,” she stumbled as she fought to switch her attention to Brenda.
Just then, Josh grasped Raey’s hand delicately within his and said, “It’s a pleasure to have met you. I hope it’s not too long before we meet again.”
“Yes, too long,” she answered, still sensing the warmth of his skin gently wrapping hers and then wincing upon realizing she had blundered in her response again. Josh gave a good-hearted, knowing laugh as he tapped the top of her hand to settle her nerves and headed out the front door and back to his studies, while Raey prayed her first fumbled moment would soon be followed by a second chance.
Brenda chortled as she grabbed her arm to pull her into the dining room. “Smitten much?”
Music is often at the heart of my writing. If you haven’t already, check out the companion song list for Trusting Love blog. Isn’t it amazing how a single lyric or image can spark an entire scene?
I’d love to hear which songs inspire you, too.