Friday afternoon I was marathon editing/rewriting because I had to get to a certain page number before leaving for a worship set.
As I worked through the scene, I realized it didn’t quite hit the mark.
The motivation was half baked. And the “how” one of my characters faked a letter from one person to another just felt contrived.
When the big questions are being answer and the story threads were coming together, I implied my antagonist faked letters between hero and heroine.
I put it to the reader like this, “I guess Peg faked the letters.”
Frown. Really? Just pull that out of the air and drop it in the book.
I mean it IS a reason but did Peg ever do anything even close to foreign handwriting?
But I needed these forged letters to make the whole sub plot story line work!
What could I do to fix it?
Thinking, praying, and coming up on the quitting hour — had to get ready to go sing — It hit me.
I knew how to fix it!
My hurricane moment!
I told my husband, “I found my hurricane!”
I called Susie. “I found my hurricane!”
Just what was my hurricane?
Back track to last summer when I read a book called “100 Summers.”
In this dual timeline story (’31 and ’38) a hurricane is a key external plot element that draws the whole story together.
But it comes completely out of the blue.
Yet, the author Beatriz Williams cleverly, keenly, expertly wove in a hint. Twice.
No more. No less. It seemed to be a throw away line.
The protagonist’s aunt said, “Oh, look at the news. There’s a hurricane in Florida. Did you see that?”
But then, with great poise, Williams draws all the story lines together just a the great hurricane of ’38 hits her fictional Rhode Island beach town where her heroine was bound.
This was brilliant writing.
I was envious. How’d she do that? I wanted to do that in MY next book!
How do you hint of a twist 75k words before it’s needed!
It’s the set up. Then the reveal.
The setup needs to seem throwaway. Like chatter. Or an odd character description.
But THAT is the very thing that sheds light at the critical end of the book.
So sitting there Friday night with only a few minutes to spare, I found my hurricane.
How could it make sense that my heroine would believe a letter from the man she loved, pledged her life to, would write her a Dear Jane letter his first week at boot camp?
She would KNOW it wasn’t his handwriting.
Conversely, he received a Dear John letter from her.
How would he not recognize her handwriting.
They can’t be “too stupid to live.”
So, what if my antagonist was really good at forging handwriting?
What if I casually mentioned that about her earlier in the story. Built a little story around it?
And I knew exactly where. Why and how.
Now when the reader gets to the end and the whole reason for two lovers being apart of decades comes to light, the trickery of the antagonist will makes sense.
This is the fun part of storytelling For me as the writer. For the reader.
Weaving in gems that creates those ah-ha moments.
How do you add this to your stories.
Man, I don’t know! LOL.
Okay, seriously here’s a few pointers:
1. Determine you want to look for ways to weaving in threads that are critical to the end of the story.
2. When you feel like you’re dong a lot of “explaining” at the end of the story, start to consider you need a hurricane moment.
3. Make up your mind that you might discover something at the end that needs a hook in the beginning. So rewrite.
4. When you feel like your characters might come across “too stupid to live” figure out a way to beef up your reasons and motivation.
5. When you’re reading or watching movies and you discover “hurricane” moments, take note. Study it. Read 100 Summers for this. (Note: not a CBA book.)
Go Write Something Brilliant