Hijacked

No wonder I've been having trouble finishing Leftovers. Turns out it's been taken over by space aliens or something. No, really. It started out as the story of a woman who always gets the leftovers in life...and now it's morphed into (eek) a tale about mothers and daughters.

Which would be fine except...I don't have a typical mother/daughter relationship with my (step)mom. Worse, I don't have kids, let alone daughters.

The good news is that I AM heading for the finish. AGAIN. And yes, that 'one or two scenes' I needed to write to get to the end have morphed into four or five. But it's all good. I finally figured out the problem: I lacked a BIG BANG for the ending. Hey, there's a new story step for ya, huh? You got your inciting incident, your turning points, your stakes raising, your black moment, your climax...and now you got your BIG BANG.

See, I went back to the whole character arc issue that I mentioned the other day. I had to ask myself: What has Rose learned? How is she different at the end of the story? What does she do NOW that she wouldn't have been able to do at the beginning?

Which got me to thinking about her step-sister, Angie. I needed to finish her character arc, too.

And that's when I knew how to end the book...with something that will demonstrate the change in both characters...and, as a bonus, create the BIG BANG.

The only problem? It all ties back into the theme of mothers and daughters. Easy to conceive, more difficult to execute.

But then that's why we authors get paid the big bucks. Kidding.