That Was Fun

Wow! That was exciting!

When you start writing an action scene, you have a general idea of what's going to happen and how it's going to end – you certainly don't expect your main character to die, right? – but you don't really know how it's going to play out exactly.

And when it's multiple characters it's even harder to foresee because it's not always clear to you beforehand who is going to do what, or how these characters you've created will react in a life or death situation.

So I felt like I had a front row seat as the four kids – Jamie, Spider, Johnnie and Maggie – and the grandfather, Buck faced off against the pirates.

It played out great. Each character got to show of his or her grit, personality. It was, I hope, fairly dramatic, but not without some humor. While I have completely reworked the story, I made sure I kept one of the things that got the biggest reaction from the first test audience, Tori's students. The first time it showed up in the story it got a big laugh, the students loved what Johnnie, the 8-year-old girl, had done. They actually cheered her. And when I referenced it later, they always laughed. So that stayed, and I gave it a much bigger payoff this time around. Any of those kids who eventually see the final version will be surprised how different the story is, but they'll sure laugh at what Johnnie does.

So that was 1,379 very satisfying words, bringing the story to 56,161. I have to go back and put two little things in there, then it's off to dealing with the treacherous Mr. Lowell.

Three days to go before my deadline.