When I teach creative writing, many of my students want a formula, rules, step-by-step guidance. And of course there are structures that can be learned (and modified). Formulas to be studied (and tweaked) along the path to writing a short story, novel or screenplay.

Yet it’s crucial to remain open to serendipity, especially once you’ve learned the basics. 

Going down rabbit holes in your research is a good way to avoid doing the actual writing. Yet if you surf in moderation, you can turn up fascinating little facts that can deepen your work. It’s like going out for a walk and seeing something unedited, maybe a guy holding his hands in prayer mudra so far up his back it looks as if his shoulders are double jointed. Or maybe you hear a weird turn of phrase. “I have concepts of a plan.” In general, however, harvesting the unexpected, the serendipitous–something you can’t make up–gives your work both specificity and authority. 

I recently read a memoir by American writer Abigail Thomas, What Comes Next and How to Like It. There I learned that if you’ve over-salted a salad dressing, you put in a chunk of raw potato to draw out the salt. Even though Thomas’s book is a memoir, this reminded me how writers of fiction as well as non-fiction need to make their characters credible by showing very specific skills they possess. It doesn’t work to say merely that your character is a good cook. Too generic. Instead, she cuts up a potato and saves an over-salted dressing, and in two sentences, we know who she is. 

That’s my first writing tip of the day. Keep your eyes open for serendipitous details—gifts—and use them. 

This came to mind because of something that recently helped me deepen the novel I’m writing. As part of my research (not the most painful part) I’ve been going to Korean spas in Toronto. While writing a piece about the spas, I remembered a couple of Chilean hot springs I’d visited and decided to add them to the story. To get the details right, I hauled out my journals of a trip we made to Patagonia during the 1990s, re-reading them for the first time in years.   

As I did, I had to laugh at myself. In my new manuscript, which is set mainly in Canada, I’ve made my protagonist’s father a Chilean who took off home to Santiago when she was six years old. Technical point: I know Mexico far better than Chile. I lived there for several years, and I’ve only ever visited Chile, although I have very good Chilean friends. But I’ve already made several characters in other books Mexican, so I thought it was time to stop repeating myself, and the father became Chilean. Sometimes writing decisions go no deeper than that. 

In any case, I was laughing because creating the absentee father meant that Chile was on my mind as I wrote the post about Korean spas, and that was probably why I ended up writing about Patagonia rather than hot springs in Iceland or Mexico or Banff. And there’s this: when I hauled out the journals, I came across other forgotten details of that trip that helped me deepen the character of my protagonist’s father, adding specificity to the couple of pages I’ve allowed him. 

I’m not going to write down those details here. They’re for the novel. Instead, I’ll make a second point: keep journals. They’re not only useful for whatever you’re writing at the time, they can help years later.

And they let you give small gifts. I’ve transcribed another part of my journal from that trip, which I made with my husband Paul and six-year-old son, Gabriel, and thought I’d add it here. As I open, we’ve rented a car in the town of Puerto Montt and driven south, wanting to visit some hot springs. 

Here’s what I wrote:

“The next day we got off fairly early and in some confusion as we decided we would head to Llancahúe Island, but didn’t know how to book a room at the hotel. The tourist office in Puerto Varas referred us to the tourist office in Puerto Montt, and after we’d retraced our steps, the woman behind the counter in Puerto Montt was able to tell us what to do.

“As she advised, we went to the local radio station, Radio Reloncavi, and paid them to broadcast a message, our own ad, telling the people who ran the hotel on Llancahúe that we would arrive at 10 a.m. the next day in the town of Cholgo. Apparently this was where they came to pick up their guests. After buying our message, we drove south on the Carretera Sul Presidente Pinochet, although the sign outside Puerto Montt has been written over to read, “Presidente Allende.”

“Actually, it’s not a highway but a dirt road covered with gravel that pocks up at your car. That day, just before a rain, it was very dry, and following behind anyone was poisonous. Paul ended up overtaking them all, but even so, the car was full of dust by the end of the day, and I don’t think he saw much beyond the road, so acutely did he have to concentrate.

“Yet it was very beautiful along the way, with high bamboo filling in logging cuts and falling in on itself, crowding out the other undergrowth or draping over the ferns—giant Jurassic-style ferns—and enormous patches of elephant ears, while hiding the bases of high trees we didn’t recognize. 

“It was a frontier. Every once in a while we saw a small jerry-built sawmill. Workers were cutting trees in a circle around it, clearing land that seemed destined for farming. Some was already being farmed. We passed fields cropped by cattle and sheep, and wooden farmhouses that also looked jerry-built in which people must live the way my grandparents once lived in a sod hut on the Prairies. Was it Mapuche land? I presume so. I hope those were their farms and sawmills as well. We’re passing through here very quickly and can’t know.

“What’s obvious it that it’s healthy here, peoples’ cheeks rosy, although at high summer all you can say is that the air has a certain kindness but little warmth. Still, there were great flights of birds around us. Sparrow hawks, I think. I’ve never seen so many hawks at once, and seen them so close. Down the hill we saw sea lions swimming in the cold ocean along the coast.

“Through the clouds of dust, we also saw what I think was an ibis, a huge brown and white bird with an enormous curved beak. A pangloss, a hitchhiker called it, but that can’t be right, or maybe I misunderstood. There were also pheasants, and at the ferry dock we eventually reached, a poor little blue-footed booby chick all on its own. We watched a local girl capture it and take it away. The bird was too small for dinner, so perhaps she was claiming it as a pet. I hoped so.

“A brief ferry ride took us across the estuary, and finally we arrived in the town of Rio Negro (or Hornopirén, or Rio Negro-Hornopirén; they can’t seem to make up their minds). There we saw a flock of black-necked swans sheltering in the bay. We watched them for a moment, but soon it rained and rained hard. For the rest of the day, all we could do was stay in our 8,000-peso-a-night hotel room. That’s $18 and overpriced for what it was, but what are you going to do?

“The next morning, it was cloudy but had stopped raining. We got up early for another look at the swans, seeing as well some dolphins surfacing nearby. Then we took off down the narrowest and most dangerous coastal road I’ve ever driven. We seemed in constant danger from landslides tumbling us down a very long way into the sea. Below us—very, very far below us—we often saw the type of fish farms that Geoff doesn’t approve. (Geoff Meggs, author of Salmon: The Decline of the West Coast Fishery.) Apparently the farms are foreign owned, not good for the local fish, and they grind the ones they raise into fish meal.

“Finally we arrived in Cholgo—to more confusion. No one from the hotel was waiting for us. Nor did we have any idea where they would land their boat, or if they’d already come and gone. Members of a very Scottish-looking family living on the crest of the hill collectively assured us that the hotel boat was always late, that it hadn’t arrived and left, and that they—the Chilean Scots—would take us to the island for 8,000 pesos if it didn’t show up.

“Not long afterward, an outboard cleared Llancahúe Island and motored toward us. The boatman soon put in on the rocky shore, and we had to presume he was from the hotel since he didn’t tell us. He didn’t speak at all, not for the entire journey, and I don’t think he could. But it was all right. Our silent Charon took us to the hotel on the hidden side of the island, where things got delightful.

“Later

“It’s lovely here, utterly rustic and unpretentious, with bright crocheted cushions on homemade chairs in the lobby we first entered. After our silent boatman left us on the beach, we went into the big wooden house—it looks more like a house than a hotel—and found no front desk. Found no one at all until we went upstairs and stumbled on a woman cleaning one of the rooms, busy sweeping it out. We introduced ourselves and asked where we should stay. 

“Anywhere you want to, she said.

“The walls here are that clinical colour of green, the trim light blue, the floors beautifully polished planks of wood. The walls are evidently the same kind of planks behind the paint. I instantly loved it, although Paul thinks it’s funny to throw yourself so far off the track to be nowhere in particular. He’s sleeping now, and I hope he’ll get a good rest after that drive. 

“Earlier, we had a long hot spring soak after our delicious homemade home-grown lunch of devilled eggs, mussel soup, potato pancakes and apple sauce. The hot spring water actually comes out from between a tumble of rocks down on the beach, and they’ve poured concrete seating around it so you can sit there at low tide, feet flirting with the very hot water. At high tide the area is covered, and with the seawater mixing with the hot springs, it feels wonderful.

“But they’ve also installed a pump to pump the water up the shore to a long shed which Paul initially thought was a boathouse. Inside, it’s divided into cubicles, each holding a couple of concrete tubs that they fill and drain with each visitor. Also a bigger plastic hot tub-like affair, and that’s where we soaked in the hot water amid sulphurous steam. The walls are rough planks of wood, the windows painted for privacy—the same swabbed blue as the window frames. 

“The waters were so relaxing that Paul is deeply asleep, and I’m going to take Gabriel out to explore further. So here we go.

Later

“The hotel is a farm, too. Gabriel is delighted, because up the hill is a chicken coop and sheep eat the grass. While we eat the sheep. When we arrived, the porch was unremarkable. After our time in the waters, a butchered sheep hung there, its head on the railing, its fleece on the grass. Dinner, I suppose. Gabe accepted it; like the big vegetable garden. I hope we get fish one night.

Later again, after hearing loud splashing 

“I went the window and saw a pod of killer whales, orca, playing not ten feet from shore. The tide was high enough that the hot springs and the ocean had mixed, heating the bay. Black and white they surfaced, jumping, playing, back and forth in front of us, so quick and joyous they were almost like swallows for all their great size, until finally they swam more slowly out to sea…

Achao, Chile—after a break

“This is a tiny town on a tiny island off Chiloe in southern Chile. We’re surrounded by shingled houses that seem to have had the surfaces photographed off them, and by someone’s boom box playing heavy metal. The tourists are mainly backpackers here: Chileans, most of them. I haven’t seen this many backpackers in a while. The local people look as if they’re more used to them than us.

“But I want to say that we spent another full day at Llancahúe before coming here: bathing, walking along the shore and doing lots of reading, since it rained hard in the afternoon. We were joined partway through by some Germans who had been caught in the neighbourhood by a ferry cancellation and were astonished to find themselves seeking shelter in such a rustic place. Their condescension made them seem small. We found the waters lovely in the rain, although the shed roof leaked onto our clothes. 

“We even tried for a bit to bathe in the pool at high tide, but it was a matter of moving every few minutes. The hot spring water is 50°, insufferably hot, so the idea was to hit the sweet spot with the incoming tide and bathe while the sea and hot spring waters mixed. But the tide ran so fast and the seawater was so cold, we only had a few minutes of relative comfort, which didn’t compare that well with the pools in the shed, although it was fun to try. Comical, I suppose, chasing the happy medium along the shore.

“The next morning we breakfasted and left during a break in the rain. But as we rounded Llancahúe Island—the hotel is on the side facing away from the mainland—we ran into waves blowing up the fjord. It was cold and windy, so we bumped up and down in the open outboard, no life jackets, freezing and drenched by the time we reached shore. The woman who had been taking care of the car was kind enough to let us change in her small warm house, in the room with the TV and her diploma from the University of Chile’s technical school which certified her as an executive secretary.

“Afterward we drove the 130 km on the dirt road back to Puerto Montt, the first seven kilometers of which—the Camino de Penetracíon—we’d rattled down precariously before, the first draft of a road, sketchy and precarious, scratched into the mountains too high above the sea and marked by washouts. A little dangerous, and as usual at times like these, I wondered why we were doing this with our son. But he wasn’t scared, and we made it, so fine.

“Then it was on to the next adventure.”

We were living in Brazil when we visited Chile every January for three years, escaping the summer heat of Rio de Janeiro. I haven’t written much set in Chile, just a couple of short stories.

But I wrote a novel set in Rio and the Amazon called Drink the Sky, and you can get it here.