Words Per Mile

^{August 23, 2021}

Today I was driving, and someone made a u-turn on the southbound road. They didn’t turn onto the northbound side of the road, no, not this individual who had places to be. Instead they turned from the right-hand lane across the two middle lanes and into the left-hand lane, where they proceeded to drive for a bit before crossing across all the lanes again to make that turn they just missed.

On this same drive, I spared a character’s life. Not because I think he’s a better driver than this person (although he probably would be), but because it was too heavy, too late in the game. I often feel like this current novel is actually three novels in a trench coat, and I’m okay with exploring that possibility, but that was a bridge too far.

The protagonist of this novel has three father figures. One of them, frankly, kind of sucks, but the other two are loving, supportive figures that he leans on at various points. I wanted to push the character into more independence as he grows out of his given family and works on building his chosen one, and one way I thought to do that would be by killing one of the “good fathers” off. But by the time the characters and the narrative are ready for it, the novel is moving into its final conflict, and soon after its end. To land that kind of emotional blow on the protagonist with only a few chapters left would deaden the resolution of the story and deny the characters and readers time to grieve. So this character is getting away with a grave injury, and a sense of shock and fear of loss that spurs the proganoist into the last bit of action he needs to overcome the obstacles he needs to in order to reach the conclusion I need him to have.

By this point in the story, I’ve driven past the point where I can add in a major death. No u-turns.