Because the best ideas come to me in the shower, of course. This morning, as I was getting ready for work, I had a mini-epiphany about Revelation.
After my writing session two nights ago at Village Inn, I’d noticed a few things shaping up in this retelling. Daniel seems both more capable and a little more unstable than he was before. And the accident at which he helps out is much worse, both more visceral and more deadly. And it suddenly dawned on me how to fix several things that had been bugging me in how I’m beginning.
At some point, I was going to have explain what Daniel was doing in DC, why he identified himself sometimes as a paramedic and sometimes as a doctor. I also needed a reason he’d be wanted by the authorities and a reason for him to be noticed by the FBI. I wasn’t sure how I was going to do any of this. I wanted to avoid doing any of it in straight on exposition if possible.
This morning I realized that when he notices the missing body (of the demon, but neither he nor the reader knows that yet), he’s gonna freak out. So much so that he gets arrested by the cops that finally arrive on scene. And while he’s being questioned back at the station, he’s going to explain who he is and why he isn’t a doctor anymore. Coming through dialogue in a police interrogation, this should be a good deal more interesting than a simple flashback.
Whether the cops let him go or whether they hang on to him and he escapes (remember, we still have a missing corpse they’re going to be looking for, and at the very least Daniel is a material witness), they’re going to have to notify the feds. After all, Daniel fits the profile. He’s the son of immigrant parents, highly educated (an MD) but working well below his training (a paramedic), he just moved clear across the country and he has no social circle, lives almost completely solitary. Add that to evidence of mental instability (possibly stole a corpse), and he’s a textbook example of a potential terrorist.
And just like that, without jumping through any of the improbable hoops in the original book, I have the setup. Daniel on the run, investigating a dead man, and can bring Jack Harris into the story that much earlier.
And I just barely got toweled off and wrote all that down before I had to leave for work.
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