Writers and the Quantum Multiverse

Writers often claim that their characters speak to them and have minds of their own. Many say their ideas are somehow outside of them, waiting to be found.

Like Stephenie Meyer, who said, "Sometimes ideas feel like they were already there, and that you're just discovering them."

I've certainly experienced that kind of feeling when a character goes off on a tangent of their own that I'd never have envisaged when I started writing about them.

Where do our ideas for characters and stories really come from?

How's this for a theory?

According to quantum physics, we live in just one of an infinite number of universes. Many of these universes have parallel Earths, on which there are other versions of you, who differ because they took the opposite fork in the road to the one you took in this universe. There will be parallel Earths which don't have a version of you at all, because of a different decision made by one of your ancestors, like your great great grandparents deciding not to marry. 

There will be people on parallel Earths which don't exist at all on ours. There would be worlds where Hitler was never born, never came to power, and others where he won the war.

What if a writer is someone who can connect psychically with one or more of these parallel universes, and know what is happening in them? As some people claim they can "channel" ascended beings or dead people, are writers channelling people who really exist in an alternate universe?

This would mean that Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Mr. Darcy, Heathcliff and the Three Musketeers are actual historical figures on a parallel Earth, and Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and the like were picking up vibes from across the dimensions. It would mean that Harry Potter, Bella and Edward from Twilight, Gandalf and the Hobbits actually exist in some other quantum reality, too. There really is a Hogwarts, a District Twelve and a Forest Moon of Endor - just not here.

Just as there could be slightly different versions of each of us, there could be slightly different versions of our favourite characters, too. Perhaps those who manage to connect with a writer here on Earth are the lucky ones, for they are the ones whose stories will be told. Only one Harry Potter could reach JK Rowling, for example, but other versions have perhaps made inroads too - by latching on to the people who write fan fiction.

Of course, if this is what's happening, by the same token, your own life may be the basis of a best-selling book or blockbuster movie franchise in one of those other universes. A writer from one of those other worlds could be watching you.

Writers write based on their own experiences, you may be thinking. Many first novels are to an extent autobiographical, not from another universe at all. Could it be these writers are picking up information from one of their alternate selves? One for whom life played out slightly differently? Or do they form links with beings in the other dimensions who've had similar experiences to them, or are similar in character? Like attracts like is an oft-quoted spiritual law.

These concepts are common in science fiction, where contact with, and even travel between, such dimensions is possible. There is a novel in my pipeline, a first draft right now, in which a bunch of characters travel from an alternate universe to ours - or a version of it, anyway.

We all know that as far as our dimension is concerned, there are no such things as zombies, vampires, werewolves, unicorns or dragons. However, if we are considering this theory, then there must be dimensions where such things do exist. Perhaps some of the psychics who claim to be able to communicate with unicorns or fairies are no more bonkers than your average fantasy author.They say everyone has a book in them. 

"Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day," wrote Orson Scott Card. "The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any."

Could it be that everyone, writer or not, has a connection to some of these other dimensions, but the non-writers don't actively listen, dismiss any images or ideas which come to them as silly daydreams, or simply don't bother to write any of it down? Writers stop and listen, and want to tell the story.

It can feel like someone out there is communicating with you. More than once I have been pulled up by a character who wanted more of their story told. See "Characters in Control", an earlier post on this blog. 

It's happened to me again since then. Another character in a yet to be published book is a princess. When her mother, the Queen, is considering passing over her son as heir in favour of her daughter, she comments that the princess "couldn't rule a paper bag." The princess was coming across as a dizzy blonde with few brain cells to rub together; until she took objection to her mother's opinion being the only one we get to hear about in this universe. It was as if she started telling me her own story to set the record straight.

She's not stupid or dizzy at all - she is actually very smart indeed, and the dizziness is all an act, which is so convincing at times that even her mother is fooled. What she told me turned into a whole new novel.

Since I've been re-visiting stories I wrote many years ago, the characters in them have been leading their lives over the years. Now I'm tuning in again, I find out what's been happening in their lives. The troubled teen got her stuff together and became a counsellor. A few characters had children, who have now grown up, and I'm getting their stories, too. I now know what kind of people they grew up into, and the experiences, both good and bad, that they had growing up.

It's like a "Where are they now?" article about stars of an old favourite TV show. Some of my characters have readily shared with me how their lives panned out. Others haven't, and I guess they won't until they feel I need to know. "He/She hasn't told me yet," is how I'd answer readers' questions about whether a couple stayed together, whether they had kids, or what they're doing to earn a crust these days.

There are characters who haven't even told me their names yet. Now and again, some of them wave at me from their home dimension, but no more than that. For example, the four sisters. They have told me that one is a down-to-earth farmer's wife, another is a bit of a hippy chick, another is a social climber and another goes off travelling and never comes back.

They haven't told me their names, where or when they live, or what their story is that could form the basis of a novel. What is the problem they all have to come together to solve? What is the deep, dark family secret they are going to uncover? Do they have brothers, as well? Who, if anyone, do they marry? I have no idea. They haven't told me yet. They just remind me every now and again that they are there.

I won't know until I decide to sit down and write about them, because the act of writing, and getting into the creative zone, seems to be the best way of opening up the channels between our world and the worlds these characters live in.

In the word of Beatrix Potter, 

"There is something about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you."

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Sweet Karma

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