The author commentary for The Bridge continues! I almost forgot to include this little tidbit, but can’t leave this book behind without discussing the arrival of new agent, Abigail Winslow! Big time SPOILERS for not only The Bridge, but Spectral Advocate coming up!
Abigail Winslow – your new DSA agent
Full disclosure: Winslow’s chapter with Metcalf did not exist in the first draft of this book. There was no new agent. There was no paranoia about Stallworth and Sullivan recruiting agents instead of Metcalf. None of this was in the original outline or draft of the book.
Where did Abigail Winslow come from?
Her entire role grew out of the need for a victim in Spectral Advocate. How messed up is that?
I needed a dead body in Spectral to get the ball rolling on Ben’s adventure with Cal Cooper. For awhile, it was going to be someone only connected to Cal. The more I looked into it, though, the more it made no sense to leave Ben out of the mix. It’s his damn series, after all.
Realizing my error, I thought about his arc. Everything with Ben is about a lack of trust, that feeling of isolation and paranoia when it comes to everything happening around you. By having Abigail as the victim, someone new to the DSA but connected professionally to Ben, it opened the door for the later revelation of her position right across from his apartment and able to spy on him.
Unlocking her reason for being
Figuring out her death, and how it relates to Ben, made her introduction in The Bridge a necessity. I didn’t want this to be a throw-away character. I never want to include anyone that doesn’t impact the story in a meaningful way. Yes, there are little roles to be filled, but there has to be a reason behind each one.
Abigail’s own purpose grew from her death to impact not only Ben’s arc in Spectral, but Metcalf’s in The Bridge. By developing her intro with the Metcalf interview, we see how Sullivan is slowly taking over the DSA piece by piece, and how that helps further the divide between Metcalf and Zac when she sees him speaking to Sullivan.
None of that comes about without the Winslow intro here.
It was absolutely strange to write her intro AFTER her death, but that’s just the way the season unfolded for me.
Next time:
I’m closing out my time on The Bridge with a look at the bonus material included with the book: The Grissom File!
