Just Jump

Have I mentioned before that my brothers were crazy daredevils?

So on Friday nights when my parents went on dates, we'd party down. Because that's what you're supposed to do when you're parents are gone, right? We lived in a split-level house. (If you're unfamiliar with a split-level, you walk in the front door and are immediately faced with a half-flight of stairs leading up, and a half-flight of stairs leading down.) One of our favorite things to do was to gather every couch cushion and pillow from the whole house (with eight of us, it amassed to a decent amount), and pile them at the bottom of the lower flight of stairs.

We didn't have a railing between the upper flight of stairs and the lower--- instead, we had a half-height wall. And lemme tell you, that wall was way easier to climb on top of than any railing would've been. (I think my parents might've planned on our eventual antics when they designed the house. That's as good as permission, isn't it?)

So, with an easy to climb half-wall, we had no choice. We had to climb on it. And we had to jump ten feet down to the huge pile of pillows.

Just because we grew up in a family of daredevils didn't make that first jump each week easy, though. Every single time it was scary. It was SO HIGH. And it was hard to tell if we had fluffed and stacked and prepared the pillows well enough. And there was the possibility of not landing on our feet and getting hurt. (And actually, there was the possibility that if we sat crouched on the wall long enough, contemplating the jump, someone would "help" us make the decision to jump.) And there was the heart-clenching fear when we free-fell to the bottom.

And yes, there was the exhilaration of it all.

Because do you know what? Our ordinary life was just ordinary. Sure, things happened all the time like they do to everyone, but our Friday night jumps were something WE controlled. A craziness to our life that we chose (except in instances where we were "helped" to choose).

Jumping off that wall is kind of like jumping into a huge story line. Jumping into that larger-than-life, huge conflict / consequences story is scary every single time. You prepare by practicing and reading all about plotting, but you never know if you prepared enough until you jump in. Sometimes you may not want the huge story line, but your characters themselves will "help" you make the decision to jump. After all, they like to be in control of the jump! There will be heart-clenching fear. And there's a possibility that you'll not land on your feet. You might get hurt.

But do you know what? Without that hugeness to your plot, your story is just ordinary.

And along with the huge story line comes the exhilaration of it all. For you and your readers.

And that's what it's really all about.

I'll admit. Of all the things that require bravery that I mentioned on Monday, this one might be my hardest. I have to amp up my conflict with each round of revisions, because it is never huge enough at the beginning. Do you ever have that problem? If you don't, how do you push beyond the limits to come up with a huge storyline from the beginning?
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