Lights Out: An MC Ruff and DJ Tumble Adventure

Lights Out: An MC Ruff and DJ Tumble Adventure is story number seven in the #52ShortStories challenge.

**SPOILERS BELOW. If you have not read the story and want to be (hopefully) surprised, come back to this when you’re done.**

Oh boy…where to start.

Challenges from every direction this time around.

Parts of this story had been tickling the back of my brain for a couple of years, but I’d been afraid to write it. I didn’t think I was ready to do it justice, but with six stories in the can, I heeded my own advice of pushing through the fear and went for it. I figured I could introduce the characters and setting within a week — a trial story of sorts.

I dove in without an outline. There was a lot of freewriting as I had only vague generalities in mind.

Nearing Friday of that first week, I panicked. I knew that I was not going to be able to wrap this one up by Sunday, therefore violating the implicit schedule of one story a week I’d been marching toward.

Okay, no biggie. One story behind. I’ll find a way to handle it.

Here we come, Friday of week two, aaannndd no end in sight. In fact, I was completely stuck as to how I was going to resolve everything.

Shit.

The whole premise had humor built in, but I originally wanted to put a serious mystery behind it. Nothing was coming to me, so in desperation, I put aside my ego and consulted with my wife. She thought I needed to continue along the humor route since the whole idea was so far out to begin with.

Of course, she was perfectly correct, and once I acknowledged that, the rest of the story came more easily. I wrote with abandon and my word count really popped up on the third week. I’m happy to say that the ending came together by Saturday and I celebrated by sleeping in on Sunday.

Did it all work out?

Well, all I can do is leave the answer to that in the hands of my audience.

I’ve got some exciting ideas of where to take these characters and the world they inhabit. While I’ll need to really buckle down at some point and make up those two missing stories, I’m glad I took the plunge on this one as I think it can find a niche audience.

Here’s the general scratch file: