Day Eleven: How George R.R. Martin Killed Everyone in my Book

(The crime scene of so many deaths today: my writing room)

So today was an interesting day.

So I got to the battle scene. I came up with the brilliant plan to have Alex help me plot out the battle by giving him the motivation and weaponry for the attacker and plotting it out like a tabletop game. I quickly scrambled together a map, printed it off, made little pieces, the whole bit ... there's just one thing I forgot.

Alex has been reading Game of Thrones non-stop for two weeks.

Everyone died.

So I took the notes and I'll think about them for a day, and then we'll see what actually happens. Good start to it, though. It's just around the time he had a flailing body on fire with blood coming out of his sockets slam into one of my characters to set them on fire, too, I had to pause game and say, "Alex. It's a YA novel."

"Sorry," he mumbled. And from his computer, "Rains of Castomere" continued playing on repeat.

Other than that, I put together a lesson plan for a workshop tomorrow, and we're settling down to watch Game of Thrones. Because of course we are.

I want to thank Mardra for giving me amazing advice yesterday. Thank you so much. I'm learning that sometimes in order to write a scene correctly, it takes a little time. I'm going to give myself a week to write this battle scene and see how it stands at the end of next Sunday.

Now onto the fighting pits, I suppose.