The Ride-Along

It was Monday! At last! Fiona had been counting down the days until Monday. The very best day of the week, especially this week. This Monday, today, her mum was taking her on a ride along in her police car. This meant sirens, baddies, and her mum being a genuine superhero. Fiona had been warned that it might not be as exciting as she was expecting, but she was glad they wouldn't be dealing with any scary murderers or robbers. Her mum was on traffic duty, which meant they'd mostly be sitting in a parked car watching people drive past them and making sure nobody was going too fast. Her mum had promised her that she'd even be allowed to hold the speed detector! And if anyone was driving too fast, or breaking the law by driving with their mobile phone, then the sirens would go on and they'd follow them. Exactly like in a car chase! Fiona couldn't hold in her excitement, and she kept getting told off by teachers for not concentrating properly or for distracting her classmates with wild stories of things that she might see that very evening in a real life police car. The teachers weren't really angry: she was always well-behaved in school. That was why her mum had said she could come along on her traffic shift. It was a reward for her excellent school report, and extra especially for getting 87% in her maths test, the best mark out of everyone on her table and a great result for her worst subject. Mum had said that it really shows all the hard work she'd been putting in, so she deserved a special treat.
The school bell finally rang and Fiona swept her pens and pencils into her backpack, throwing the open pencil case in on top. Everything fell out of the pencil case and tumbled around her bag as she zipped it up, but she didn't care in the slightest. She knew that her mum was waiting outside in her blue and black squad car, wearing her smart black uniform and shiny badge. Fiona felt like she was flying as she sprinted out of the school gates and round the corner. There she was!

There is a moment for every writer when you have to make a big decision. You have introduced a character, you have described a little of their personality and perhaps some background story. The big decision is: what next? Do all their dreams come true, as simple as that? Or does something unexpected happen? How sadistic can you allow yourself to be with this character, this innocent character who walked into your mind and asked to be given a story? The unfortunate truth is that easy lives don't make for interesting stories or identifiable characters. The nicest thing you can do for your character is have them experience difficulty and overcome it, grow from it. Or perhaps they never overcome it, but either way they'll probably be irreversibly changed. So, what to do with Fiona? Does she spend the evening bonding with her mum in a squad car, munching crisps and playing with the sirens? Or does something bad happen during that long-awaited trip? Even a traffic cop car is no place for a kid, after all...