everyday life | Keira's Place

This post by Mike Staton

The twisted hunk of metal lay in Interstate 40’s medium. It no longer looked like a car. A man stood beside the wreckage, leaning forward, perhaps speaking words of reassurance to the driver, if the poor soul still lived.

I have my doubts. The wreck looked lethal.

In the southbound lanes, a man carrying a blanket walked from his vehicle toward the crumpled metal. Another man kicked debris away from a demolished trailer. Conspicuously absent were emergency vehicles and Highway Patrol cruisers. The accident must have happened just a short time earlier.

As traffic slowed, motorists were waved off the pavement and into the grass. Once past the wreck, I maneuvered my Saturn back onto one of the southbound lanes and continued down the road. As I pressed the gas pedal, I found myself reflecting on how detached I had been as I drove past the wreck. That really wasn’t surprising … I’m a newspaper reporter and over my career have covered my share of bad accidents. I would have stopped to take photographs of this one, except the accident was outside our circulation area.

The first fire truck, lights flashing, raced up the interstate’s northbound lanes, followed by an emergency squad, another fire truck and a second squad. More thoughts – these ones disturbing – percolated to consciousness. Soon loved ones would get jarring news that would perhaps change their lives forever. Tears wet my cheeks.

It struck me that authors strive to show scenes of drama like the tragic accident. Whether you’re a writer specializing in romance, mystery, westerns or – like me, fantasy – you weave together the elements of plot, characterization, dialogue and description, hiking up tension as you tell a story designed to reveal an aspect of the human condition. On a few occasions tears have wet a page of a novel held in my hands.

Sheer moments of terror

Sometimes that means unexpectedly killing off a main character, springing a gut-wrenching surprise on the reader. Like real life, a plot can’t become predictable. A critter reviewing one of the early drafts of “The Emperor’s Mistress” told me I was killing off too many palace guards. Palace guards are easily disposable and making them the only casualties of action scenes doesn’t prick the reader’s emotions. Readers could care less if a minor, forgettable character lives or dies.

Someone once said the American Civil War was mostly marching and bivouacking punctuated by moments of sheer terror. That describes life as well – and a good plot in a fiction novel.