Pull That Thread!

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.

 

Remember Robert Frost’s adage, “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.”