Terrorism and Writing

I’m not sure if it was the crash or the blood-curdling scream that alerted me to the fact that two months after 9-11, I was on a plane with a group of terrorists. I sat there staring, shaking… wondering.

So this was it. My final moment. I’d always wondered if it would be heroic and strong… but the only thing that was strong was the sound of my heartbeat in my ears. And my breath. Maybe I could take these guys down with that.

But it was all happening so fast I could barely respond. One moment the terrorists sat in their seats, quiet and subdued. The next moment they hit the floor, shouting and crowding around the explosive device.

Which actually ended up being a digital camera, which was, apparently, a very expensive item, which had, apparently been dropped. Hence the screaming. Because we all know screaming in Arabic on an airplane after 9-11 about a dropped digital camera is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

After a few hours when I crawled out from under my seat (where do you go when there’s a bomb in an airplane?), I realized… things aren’t always as they seem.

I hadn’t known all the details of the situation. After all, if I had known it was a digital camera hitting the floor, I could have avoided the whole being-bribed-by-a-stewardess-with-a-cookie-to-get-out-from-under-my-seat-thing. But no. I was just guessing.

And that’s the same thing we want to do to our readers – keep them guessing.

Because if we tell them every little detail of the digital camera, the flash, the whole thing, they are going to, quite frankly, take a snooze in the airplane seat and not wake up until Chicago.

Then they’ll leave the plane, eat a greasy deep-dish pizza that will send them to the restroom, and spend their time over the toilet not thinking a thing at all about your story. Which is not at all what we want them to do.

Because, after all, if Readers Digest sales have proven anything to us, it’s that everyone needs a good bathroom story…

So go get started on yours.