More Fire and Blood

This morning I went swimming and did my twelve laps. That's really not important. But afterwards I had time to kill before going to work so I wrote the next scene in 'Fire and Blood at the End of Empire.' That's only marginally more important but it's what I'm going to talk about so there it is.

This scene was essentially a campfire scene. You know, that part of the movie where they all sit around a campfire and reveal meaningful plot points and character traits. I started the scene (a week or so ago) with two characters sitting down to tea and cakes but quickly realized that situations like that make for boring reading. So I procrastinated a while and thought about what kind of info I wanted to impart and how best to do it. My first inclination was to have some kind of suspenseful running fight scene on the streets of Rome with the discussion happening amidst the action. That was good, you generally want action and suspense on every page, but it didn't quite fit the mood of the story at the time. So I started typing this morning, without really knowing what I was doing, and That Funny Thing About Writing happened. As I wrote I decided to have somebody else do all the fighting and have Apollo and the other character do the talking while the fight happens 'off camera.' What I ended up with was a scene with some mystery and suspense as well as a bit of humor as the bad guys get thrown out windows, tossed down stairs, and generally thrashed to within an inch of their life. The story is up to 3100 words now and the scene was great fun to write. That's how to start your day well.