escape artist

Posted by admin | November 19, 2019

Milo is quite good about escaping. He’s escaped from the house, car, and backyard on a few occasions. Sometimes, Zailey also escapes, but comes right back. Milo is such a little shit; he is a little harder to catch.

The day I left for Arizona was also the same day my wife had to go to class in Hays and stay the night. I was tasked with taking the dogs to their hotel (the vet). When we got there, a big husky met us at the door. Zailey didn’t move an inch. It took Milo several attempts before working up the courage to sniff at this huge dog and say hello. I kept trying to drag Zailey inside the office, but she still wouldn’t budge. Somehow, she shook her head just right while I was tugging, and she slipped her collar. Luckily, she was still rooted in place, so I could just put the collar back on. The vet staff had me go in the cat side of the office so they could process the dogs’ admissions.

A few weeks ago, I was working on a chapter and found it wasn’t progressing quite how I wanted. I was covering what I wanted to cover, but just way too fast. Somehow, this little idea came into my mind for a bit of a twist (not a major plot twist, but a little something for this chapter) and I was off writing this new thread. It added about 500 or 600 words to the chapter, so about a third of it. It also fit nicely to give even another conflict to the story. It was a nice escape.

Another novel I was working on the very next day had a similar issue with the flow of a chapter. I was covering what I wanted much too quickly. The escape on this one was that I had one piece that I meant to just cover in dialogue, but then found that I could have it as a plot point of the whole chapter. I could show this as worry to the main character while the dialogue shows this as worry for the secondary character in the chapter. Showing this concern added about 250-300 words to the chapter and makes it much stronger (the characters are in danger here, so if they feel it, the reader feels it).

I find myself doing this quite a bit. I start with one thing in mind for a chapter, but then find I can strengthen the story by adding something else. Sometimes this results in changes to the story down the road, or I must make changes earlier, but that is okay since I am building a better story because of it. The plot twist I added even added a bit to the next chapter to resolve it (I’m close to the end, so things need resolving soon).

So, now you see that Milo and Zailey aren’t the only ones that know how to escape!