How to add 2,000 words to a scene in one easy step –

– throw a character to the lions.

So there I am, struggling with a simple scene of getting a character from ‘A’ to ‘B’.  It’s a necessary scene.  He needs to get there, and we need to see him getting there, but it’s little more than saying “he does this, then that, then something else” while retracing his steps through part of the story we’ve already seen before.

Not exactly the most exciting thing that’s going on here, right?

The answer was to bring one of the supporting characters into the scene.  Someone who hasn’t been this way before, and to whom it’s all a little bit unfamiliar.  Add a few gory details (don’t you just love the sound of bones being crushed underfoot?), and suddenly the scene jumps from 1,000 words to 3,000 words.

It’ll probably all disappear in the rewrite but it makes the story flow better right now, and that’s all that matters.  Now, is there anything else I can do to unsettle her?  Sure there is…

Word count now up to 174,889 words.