Inspired by my son!

“There’s more to Godiva than just her pivotal ride through Coventry,” I tell my 18 year old son, “and I want to show that, but I’m struggling with how to keep the ride from being the turning point where readers expect it to end.”

“You need another thread of tension that starts before the ride, is impacted by the ride, then extends beyond it before it’s resolved,” he says without missing a beat. “That way the ride is important but it isn’t the be all, end all.”

“You’re exactly right,” I say, looking at my son in awe. It’s so simple, so clear and so fundamentally correct; yet, I had gotten lost in the story and couldn’t see the most obvious solution.

This isn’t the first time my son has awed me with his creative skills. I pride myself in being a story-teller, but his ability to weave a tale far exceeds my limited talents. He understands structure and arc and threads at a level that I only realize is there but can’t see clearly myself. When I look back at what I’ve written, I can see those elements of story-telling coming through, or sometimes I recognize after the fact they aren’t coming through and need to be brought to the surface more, but rarely do I consciously think about them as I’m developing the story and I work hard in my rewrites to ensure they are there. I let the story unfold and then go back to see if there is arc, character building, threads to…