Crash! Boom! Pow!

I'm no pro on the novel circuit, but I can see why people want to be - and why I'm aspiring to be.

I'm closing in on my 50,000 words for National Novel Writing Month, and that's all well and good, but that's not the big deal. What gets me going is making things explode. No, I'm not some pyromaniac. I'm talking about getting to the juicy part of the book where worlds collide.

I'm probably 20,000 words or so away from wrapping this sucker up, and all of that stuff I've been building toward is finally starting to boil over the top. It's crazy and fun figuring out where to put these characters, and how to get them in there place. But the most fun is tossing in the twists and turns that they have to take to scramble back to (some sort of) normal.

Of course, I knew these things were going to happen to them, but the characters didn't expect it. What fun would there be in that?

Coming up with some ideas for a book - or for your plot - is always great. It's those single, solitary moments of realization that are very rewarding. But doing the work to build up to the fireworks is the tough part.

This is one of the most rewarding parts of writing for me: Writing your characters into impossible situations and then wiggling them out of it - for better or for worse. The climax and all that good stuff surrounding it are the meat and potatoes, they're what people are going to remember.

The least I can do is have a blast writing that stuff.