MAKE USE OF EVERY MOMENT, YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN YOU'LL NEED IT

   The ducklings in the pond near my home are growing bigger by the day and my 2 (almost 3) year old doesn't want to miss a moment of it. As a result, he and I have gone out almost every day since the ducklings hatched and spend a good couple of hours watching them swim around, nibbling at bits of pond muck.

   I am a bit of a numbers freak, I like to count things over and over and over and over...even if I know the result isn't going to change. Examples being stairs, steps taken in a hallway, and ducklings in a brood. As it turned out, and I should have guessed that this would be the case, the numbers of one of the broods was different yesterday than what it had been. The bakers dozen of ducklings had become a standard dozen of ducklings. I looked around for the missing duckling but the little ball of golden down was nowhere to be seen.

   When I looked to where I knew their nest was, supposing that the duckling was perhaps resting there, I saw that the nest was in terrible shape, as though it had been torn apart. And then, not far off but hidden slyly in the shade of a bramble patch, I saw the cat. Besides gutting the cat, there's no way of knowing if the cat was the culprit, but the look on its face and the way it was watching the nest (or what was left of it), leads me to believe that it was in fact the cat.

   Now then, why do I write about the cat that ate a duckling? Because it reminded me of a storytelling tool I've been trying to implement in one of my novels: The Snake in the Grass. The trusted friend betrays the hero, the little old lady downstairs is the serial killer, the otherwise innocent looking cat turns out to be eating the ducklings. The more unsuspected the snake in the grass is, the more potent the effect is on the reader. This has been a difficult tool for me to use in my book because finding the proper moment to reveal the snake in the grass is, I believe, the most important part of making it work. I think M. Night Shyamalan's film Unbreakable is a perfect example of this. Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn Trilogy, Warbreaker, Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians, etc.) also uses this tool to great effect from time to time in his books. If you haven't read anything from Brandon Sanderson, I highly recommend it. You can get a free digital copy of Warbreaker at his site and it's a terrific novel.

   Have you ever used the snake in the grass in your stories? Do you feel a little betrayed when the hero discovers the snake and now has to deal with the damage done by this supposed friend?