Coral Atoll

One of the Here Be Magic themes this month is BEACHES. My first thought was that I didn't have any books with beach scenes on them. The whole lying in the sun, playing beach volleyball, surfing, making sandcastles and sipping fruity cocktails isn't really part of my experience. I've only waded in the ocean three times in my life. I live in Alberta where the only kind of beaches are on lakefronts, and the lakes are often cold. (Anyway, that's my excuse.) However, I did eventually remember that I set part of the plot of my YA novel Golden Eyes on a newly-formed and not-very-sandy coral atoll.

Here are some cool things I learned during my research:
1/ Coral atolls aren't always circular. Some are definitely more triangular in shape.

2/ The center of the coral atoll is a shallow lagoon. It is a lighter shade of blue than the surrounding ocean.

3/ The prevailing theory on how coral atolls are made originated with Charles Darwin. The theory has gone in and out of favour over the years, but is mostly accepted now. Basically, he proposed that a volcanic island grew a 'fringing coral' which over time became a full 'barrier reef'. Then, due to subsidence,  the island sank into the sea, while the reef continued to grow upward and formed an atoll.

4/ Sadly, coral atolls are in danger from climate change. Warmer waters encourage the growth of algae that kills the coral and since atolls are seldom more than a few meters above sea level rising waters may soon submerge many atolls.

5/ A cool virtual tour of an atoll. 

6/ Atolls can have their own fresh water, but only if they are large enough and old enough to have accumulated a 'sandbar' type island between the actual reef and the rest of the lagoon. Here's a diagram.

EXCERPT:

Then something on the left caught Devon's eye. Not driftwood, but a line, a feature in the otherwise endless ocean. Her heart soared: land! She flapped more air into the pants-balloon, angled toward the line and started kicking. Her slow progress frustrated her—she had to stop periodically to rouse Pietr—but at least the line didn’t vanish or recede like a mirage. It was real.

It came into focus by slow degrees. At a distance of fifty feet, the line resolved into white surf. But where was the land? The people? She couldn’t see even a single palm tree. The line of surf stretched out to both sides for at least half a kilometer. 

At thirty feet, she knew. It was just a reef. Despair crushed her and she blinked back moisture she could ill afford to lose. She shored up her dissolving hopes. A reef was still something in the immensity of the ocean. Something to cling to. They could rest. 

Twenty feet. Ten feet.

“Hang on, Pietr. We’re almost there.”

He didn’t reply, and she turned her head in time to see him slip into unconsciousness and lose his grip on the pants-balloon. 

She lunged forward, caught his collar, and swam the last bit of distance. The reef crest proved to be smoothed by its battering from the waves and not sharp as she’d feared. Best of all, just beyond the crest was a flat area about two meters wide no more than a few inches deep. Land, or close to it.

With what felt like the last of her strength, Devon boosted Pietr over the lip of the crest. The tide had dropped enough that the wave tops no longer rolled over the reef.

He flopped on his back, still unconscious, but breathing.

She started to climb up herself, but the reef flat wasn’t worn smooth. What wasn’t muddy sand was sharp, branching coral covered in spots with pink algae. Colourful and pretty but rough. With bare legs she’d soon be scraped and bleeding. She needed her pants back.

All the air had escaped her pants-balloon, and they were sinking. 

She was tempted—oh, how she was tempted!—to just let them sink, but she needed the protection of cloth. Blood in the water could call sharks. Taking a deep breath, she dived after the pants. 

Fortunately, the ocean floor on the seaward side of the reef formed a brief shelf before dropping off to crushing depths. In the clear water she saw her pants caught on a piece of elkhorn coral, being investigated by a tropical fish. It darted away when she dived and tugged the material free.

She rested a moment before unknotting the pants legs and pulling them back on. Three sidestrokes brought her back to the reef. Then she heaved herself up out of the water on noodle-arms and collapsed beside Pietr.

Exhaustion dragged at her, overruling her raging thirst. She knew she needed to protect herself and Pietr from sunstroke, but she couldn’t move right now. She closed her eyes. Just for a moment.

Read a sample chapter or buy Golden Eyes.

Ripping Out Plotlines

When it comes to revisions I believe BIG changes are sometimes necessary. I prefer to do these in the second draft, before I’ve gone to the effort of polishing up my sentences and making them pretty. Story trumps beautiful writing every time—not that I don’t strive for both, I do—but if the story isn’t right, then no amount of polishing is going to save it.

I knew early on in writing the first draft that something was wrong with my subplot featuring minor characters Gabe and Devon. How did I know? Because I didn’t want to write their chapters and conveniently kept ‘forgetting’ them as I worked to push forward the main plot. I even skipped one scene entirely—something I never do. If I don’t want to write a chapter this is a BIG WARNING SIGN that something is wrong; if the idea of it bores me, it’s definitely going to bore readers, too. 

Nevertheless, the main plotline with Mike and Angel was going well, so I pushed on. Sometimes the act of writing a lackluster scene will trigger part of my brain. Bored, it will dump a huge problem on the characters and—sometimes—the scene will catch fire and become engaging. Unfortunately, this method didn’t work for me this time. At the end of the first draft, I had a mostly-good-but-with-some-sticky-spots main plot and a dreadful subplot.

Not enough happened. The characters were basically attending information sessions at a symposium. Some of the romance-arc character moments were there, but a desert stretched between them. Even once I began revisions, I avoided Devon and Gabe’s plotline like a sore tooth.

Then, I happened to read a blog post about disaster movies and something clicked in my brain.Ideas suddenly fizzed. The best part? It all fit with what I had already established for the plot. So on the way to their symposium, Devon and Gabe run into a few problems, like the fact that their aircar has no pilot and is flying over open ocean instead of taking them toward their hotel…

Excerpt:

Devon put a sensor dot on Pietr’s wrist to monitor his pulse. It immediately downgraded from green (good) to yellow (poor). “Where’s the wound?” she asked Kip. 

“Here.” Kip parted the hair on the back of Pietr’s head to show her a swelling lump. Not good—but much better than a depression. If his skull had been caved in, he would’ve needed a surgeon, stat.

“Concussion?”

“Probably.” Kip thumbed open Pietr’s eyes, which had drifted shut. The left was dilated more than the right. “Definitely.” Kip released his hold.

“Incorrect code.”

The aircar lurched violently. Kip kept his seat, buckled in, but Pietr rolled off the bench. Thrown sideways, Devon landed on the other plush bench. She grabbed the end of a seatbelt and held on.

“Reboot!” Gabe yelled from the front.

But the computer must have been programmed with defensive measures to prevent rebooting because the aircar rolled, this time doing a complete revolution. 

Devon heard a loud bang, but focussed on avoiding injury. Days spent in a VR Space game paid off. She twisted and got her feet under her, running in time to the revolutions. Step one on the side window. Step two on the ceiling, Kip hanging above her, cursing. Step three, on the other window, blue ocean beneath her feet and way too close. Falling slightly behind, she tripped on the fourth step, but the van stopped after one revolution, right side up again. She grinned fiercely, happy to get off with only banged shins.

Kip didn’t return her smile. Horror widened his eyes until the whites showed all the way around. The cargo door at the back flapped shut, then open, and she realized that Pietr’s unsecured body ought to have gotten in the way of her dancing-on-the-ceiling routine.

Holding to an overhead rail to resist the floor’s slant, she looked out and saw Pietr flailing in the ocean.

Just freaking wonderful.

Time seemed to slow down. One part of her coolly noted that the waves were low and gentle. That was good. However, the lack of land was very very bad.

“Man overboard!” she yelled over her shoulder, then kicked off her shoes.

Another part of her brain screamed at her. Jumping out of an aircar into a deserted stretch of ocean, no matter how calm and tropical, without an emergency beacon or supplies equalled a death sentence.

But Pietr was concussed. He would drown alone.

In VR, she wouldn’t have hesitated to jump in a save a team member or bystander, confident that the games designer would reward bravery. But this was real. She could really drown, really die.

And so could Pietr.

You don’t even like him.

Distantly surprised by how easy the decision was, she moved to the open doorway, then dived in.