So I’m writing last night, plugging away at my work in progress. Working on this major action sequence, a series of four or five brief chapters that (hopefully) string together like a Spielberg setpiece. Think the truck scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Minority Report and you have the idea.
And right in the middle of it, this character … he died.
I didn’t expect him to die. Hadn’t included it in my outline. Hadn’t plotted for it. But he’s there and this situation arises and I realized as I was writing, “He’s not going to make it, is he?” And he died.
I don’t regret the unexpected death. Turned out to be the ideal resolution to his story arc. The exact place his story needed to go. Both the character and the novel are better for it.
But geez, I didn’t see it coming — and I’m the guy writing the story!
And now is where you discover you are actually writing a story about Pedro, the one-legged cabana boy that they met in Monaco.