Remember the first time you found a loose thread
on your sweater and wanted to pull it to see what would happen? Did you follow
that impulse and unravel the sweater?
I’m not going to talk about the dangers of loose
threads in your story. I’m the rebel who is going to encourage you to pull that
thread.
After publication of my first novel, I was
happily writing my shiny new follow-up story that focused on a male character
that everyone loved in book one, writer Jack Hart. My plan was to follow the
pattern set up in my first novel of dipping into a past life for greater
insight into my main character. And, because of his character arc, I decided
Jack needed to have a past life as a samurai. Wanting something other than the
usual samurai stereotype, I chose a little known period in Japanese history,
the Heian era, before samurai formed clans of their own.
And, this time I was going to plan my novel and not go all pantser. But I was forty pages in and
BAM! Something happened that changed everything.
There was a loose thread.
... the rest of the story is on John Daniel's Blog--including a call of submission for a 99 word story. Be sure to check it out at the end of my post there.
