Still Get Surprised

Even as a plotter, I still get surprised by the story. No matter how much I plot, and outline, and plot, the story just keeps secrets from me -- It reminds me I'm not really running the whole show. I'm just the puppeteer and my imagination is the puppet master.

Sometimes the character leaks the secret when I'm laying in bed in the middle of the night, or even in my dream. Sometimes it's after I've been furiously typing and go back to actually "take in" what I've typed.

The latter is how I felt at the ending of Revelations of Tomorrow. I stopped typing, wiped tears away and reread it to really see why I was crying... and then cried all over again.

And, again, the latter is what happened to me the other night. This time, though, my brain split and I had an internal conversation between Mini-Mental AR and  Subconscious who, for the record, was still typing away.

"Whoa... really?" Mini-Mental AR scoots anxiously forward to the edge of her admittedly imaginary seat.

"Really," absently replied Subconscious.

*Clickety, clackety, click, click, click on the keyboard in the distance.*

"Are you sure? I mean, I thought--"

"Wrong. You thought wrong."

*Clickety, clack, clack, click.*

"But--"

"Shh... I'm busy."

"Yeah, but--"

"I said SHHH."

*Clack, click, click...*

I can't reveal what the -- er -- revelation was, I'm no story spoiler after all, but I will say I was blown away. I thought--oh, yeah, not a story spoiler. Damn it!

(This is like when I saw what present my mom and step dad were wrapping for one of my siblings and I had to keep my mouth shut for weeks.)