Story Idea: Juxtaposition of Action and Reaction

California is in the throes of more than a thousand wildfires (seriously, I'm not exaggerating) a few of the news stories have given me some ideas for characters and plot threads.  My favorite is the story in the San Francisco Chronicle about the Zen Monks at Tassajara.  Reading it gave me some ideas about taking an action or plot point and making the characters reaction the opposite of what is expected.  In addition there are some good hints in the article for ways to make the reaction more realistic to the reader.

Comments

[Julia]

Hey,

Thanks for sharing this article. Sometimes I think San Francisco and Los Angeles have the only remaining great newspapers in the country. When I read pieces like this one my local paper, "The Tennessean" , seems even more disappointing than usual by comparison.

J

[hanalith]

"What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly." - Richard Bach

There actually is a great story already there with the BLM and the Forest Service's initial policies on wildfire containment which would work wonderfully well against the Buddhist approach towards acceptance of natural order and being rigid but bending; a character who knows that the Buddha must exist within the heart of a fire would find some irony in the swinging of position of the forest service that went from "fight every fire" to recognizing that fire is a part of rebirth, too. Then you have the natural symbolism of serotinous cones as an easy symbol of rebirth, too.