I was wondering if anyone else got deep into a story before realizing that they created some bizarre coincidence that parallels something in the real world that they never intended. Once of my main characters has the last name of Davies. He meets a beautiful red headed woman and later ends up marrying her .... Her first name is Gina. Yesterday I started picturing the character as being played by Geena Davis in the movie. Totally unintentional ... as far as I know.
In my WIP my Roman diplomatic mission arrives in the Chinese capital of Luoyang in a snowstorm in December 100AD, with tens of millions of sesterces (in gold and silver), the soldiers having detached from Dura Europos, a fort on the Syrian border. Googled up Greek and Roman contacts with China and found a chronicle of such contacts. One was a diplomatic mission from Dura Europos arriving in the winter of 100AD bearing gifts. Goosebumps!
Hi! Yeah I totally can relate. It reminds me of the line from a Bjork song -'Coincidence makes sense only with you.' I have had eerie moments where its like 'the universe is talking to me, Man'. It's awesome, I love when that happens. I get so excited. @doggiedude 'Totally unintentional ... as far as I know.' Haha yes. I'd like to thank my sub-conscious brain. Good work guys for never taking a break and doing stuff I don't even know about. I also love when you get a wonderful connections in your story. A new idea all comes together and fits perfectly. Also very exciting!
I cannot relate to this, but I do find it generally interesting. In fact, I wish it would happen to me. Though if I noticed, I'd be so paranoid that I'd get in trouble or someone would think I did it on purpose that I would change the name. I usually got the names for my characters from phonebooks. Just closing my eyes and pointing to a random name and then doing it again for the last time, or middle name if I chose my character to have one. Unfortunately, phone books seem to be extinct and finding names for characters was always my weak point.
There are some great websites for finding names. http://surnames.behindthename.com/ http://www.behindthename.com/ Many of my characters have names of people that are friends of mine but sometimes I need names that match a nationality I'm not familiar with.