We’ve been talking in the past few posts about the evolution of A Man at Arms from its shaky, unclear inception—and how one narrative element led to another until we had a fully-formed, living and breathing story.

In our previous two posts, we examined several embryonic elements as they came together at the inception of an idea for a novel. 

We’ve talked in earlier posts about “the McGuffin,” i.e. the item or person that the villain wants. Let’s examine this today in terms of the genesis of A Man at Arms.

My niece Meredith was getting married. She asked me to be the officiant.

William Holden plays Pike Bishop, the leader of the “Wild Bunch,” in the 1969 movie of the same name. He has one of the all-time great Private Moments toward the end of the final reel.

I am. The illustration below is by the renowned and redoubtable Victor Juhasz. It expresses exactly the way I feel when a book is done and it’s time to get out and sell it.

Why is a Private Moment so powerful in a book or movie?

My original manuscript for Gates of Fire, back in 1996, was 802 pages long.

When you and I as writers are looking to deliver a Big Moment, we often think it has to come in a rock-em-sock-em, five-star, dyn-o-mite scene in which characters are passionately declaiming at one another, if not firing guns, crashing cars, and blowing up the planet.

I was working on a screenplay with director Andy Davis (The Fugitive, Under Siege, Above the Law) when he got an odd, dissatisfied look on his face.