coffee shop rule

My editor reminded me this week about the coffee shop rule. You can have a conversation in a coffee shop, but only one per book unless it’s a reoccurring, fully realized setting that is so developed it’s almost a character in itself. Yep, I got lazy.

So-o-o-o-o I took my licks with the wet noodle and then spent the night mulling where I might shift the scene to. I even made the mistake of asking my loved ones for their advice–which is a bad idea because they all think their first idea is the best and stop looking after they come up with it. Even worse, they feel hurt when you shoot it down for a reason that makes no sense to them even when you explain why a museum or bowling alley or bookshop won’t work. (sorry, guys)

Mulling in the back of the mind isn’t always a fast prospect, but I’ve gotten better at it, and dude, there’s nothing like the feeling of sitting at your desk at 7:30 am, gritting your teeth in the knowledge that a big chunk of the fun stuff you’ve spent the last month adding is a lot of tell, not show (because of page constraints) and the almost magical realization that maybe you can bring one of those tells into the show with the right new chapter setting, and THEN realizing there’s the potential here to use that show to flesh out the relationship between the two characters in exactly the right way–one scene shift solving an issue of show don’t tell, character development, world building, and yes, not breaking the one-coffee shop rule and making my editor and me happy.

Yeah, that thing.