Ever since the very first scene, I didn’t know whether the Boss knew about Bill being a rat. And I think I wanted to keep that a mystery for the rest of the story. Maybe Bill’s Aftermath would address the truth.

But then I got this damn card. “It’s a trap.”

The point of this exercise is to draw these cards for every scene and be guided by where it leads me. Explore ideas, alternate versions of the characters and their stories. Be inspired.

I called this story “Rat Trap,” Bill is actually an undercover cop as per Fiasco, and the Boss is looking for a rat among her crew. After all of that, I thought about this first scene of Act 2 hard and deep. We have our tilts—a chase and a showdown—which are supposed to inform every scene as best as possible. And damn, combining the card with the tilt let me to write an actual showdown, as the Boss confronts Bill, tells him what’s what. She even has a bit of a villain monologue. I used this opportunity to bring back the Boss’s phone from the first scene, to give it some sort of payoff.

In truth, the scene played out about as I thought it would after I went over the card.

Now, in Act 2, I’ll handle the dice (good or bad outcome) differently than Act 1. Before, I predetermined the outcome and wrote with that in mind. For this act, I write the fiction first, and decide toward the end of the scene whether it was good or bad.

As far as the scene resolution goes, I think this went bad for Bill. His cover is blown, the Boss and her thugs are now doing everything in their power to go after him, and his “friends” are somewhere on a train with a functioning bomb. And while Bill might not know that Jay did something to the bomb that might prove problematic, I think all of this is still just one bad outcome for him.

In Act 2, you get to keep your dice, bringing the tally up to

• Bill: White 0, Black 1
• Ash: White 1, Black 2
• Jay: White 2, Black 1

---

Let’s look ahead at Ash’s next scene by drawing the next card.

The first card I got was “#51 Misfortune Cookie,” which is repeat from Ash’s first scene in act 1. Lots of repeats in this project. Last time, this card led me to starting Ash off at rock bottom, with the Boss making her an offer to get back on her feet. With that in mind, let’s draw another card for this scene:

#42 Oops

“Mistakes happen.”

A person inside a hazmat suit dropping a vial of something volatile; terror on his face, and several other scientists running around in panic in the background.

I can’t even begin to imagine what this card, in conjunction with the repeated Misfortune Cookie, will do to Ash’s first scene of Act 2.

Stay tuned to find out next time.