Some Musings Part II
I have always liked thrillers, but often found them lacking. A heart-stopping, high speed car chase, a gut-wrenching combat sequence, a near death experience where the hero emerges triumphant after narrowly avoiding the villain’s trap, those are the stories I live for and never read because they never live up to expectation. Why? because they never have enough romance. The best parts of Indiana Jones are when, after he’s defeated the big evil, he turns to the romantic interest, sweeps her up in his arms, and draws her in for a kiss. The catharsis of him saving the day and being rewarded with love is a theme that often gets overlooked in thrillers these days. Call me anti-feminist all you like, but I love a good romantic subplot in my action stories.
Ford Rayburn was my romantic, action thriller bedtime story. Late at night, I would dream up scenarios of how he would save Marnie and then save the world. One very memorable scene even involved dodging poison bullets while he carried her off the battlefield. It was not supposed to be good, it was supposed to be my ultimate fantasy. Last November, when I was contemplating doing Nanowrimo for the first time in ten years, I was debating what story would be good for the frenzied writing fest that is Nano. In the past, my Nano’s have not been very good. Writing 50,000 words in a month without editing, while a good writing exercise, does not lend itself to brilliant writing. I’ve seen a few books published by people who wrote their first drafts during Nanowrimo and I have to say, frankly, it shows. But some of my best ideas have come from Nanowrimo. My advice if you do one, take the idea and throw out the draft. There’s nothing in that draft worth saving.
While I was pondering over what to write, my husband suggested I write Ford and Marnie Rayburn’s story. He had been interested in the story ever since I had told him about it a couple of years ago, but since it was locked up in my head he couldn’t actually ‘read’ it. He told me to write it for Nanowrimo, to write it as satire to explain away all the absurdities like poison bullets, and it would be a great inconsequential story to work on just to get my creative juices flowing. It was meant for him, and only him to read. But then a funny thing happened, around the time I got to the poison bullet scene, I started to realize the book was better then I was allowing it to be. What cinched it was when he read the poison bullet chapter, he got mad. When I tried to defend it, saying the book was a parody, he just said the scene was too ridiculous. It then dawned on me that he was actually invested and that there was something much better here than dumb satire.
To be continued….