The Chapter I Didn’t Know the Book Needed

BY TG MAYWALD

There comes a point in writing a book when you begin to believe certain parts of it are finished.

Not finished in the sense that every sentence is perfect or every comma is in place. Those things will continue to change until someone finally takes the manuscript away from me. But structurally finished. The stories have been gathered. The chapters have been written. The people who belong in that part of the book are already there.

I had reached that point with the bull riders in The Official Biography of Bodacious: Master of Disaster.

Their chapters were written. Their experiences formed an arc through the book, carrying Bodacious from the dangerous young bull a few men were beginning to notice to the most feared bucking bull in the world. I believed I had told that portion of the story.

Then I saw a video of James White.

He was talking about the time he drew Bodacious, and within moments, I was completely taken in. He was funny. He was engaging. More important, the story he was telling was good—so good that I immediately understood I could not simply enjoy it, close the video, and continue pretending that section of the manuscript was complete.

I needed to talk to him.

That meant reopening a part of the book I had already mentally closed. It meant reconsidering the structure, finding the right place for another story, and accepting that something I had called finished might not have been finished after all.

By that stage of a manuscript, every new chapter creates a ripple. A book is not a collection of independent stories that can be added or removed without affecting anything around them. Each chapter changes the rhythm of what precedes it and the meaning of what follows. Adding James meant looking again at pacing, chronology, repetition, and the larger purpose of that section of the book.

Still, some stories arrive carrying their own necessity.

The more I listened to James, the clearer it became that his experience did more than add another entertaining account of a cowboy matched against Bodacious. His story revealed something the book needed readers to see.

And that was that by then, everything had changed.

Bull riding had always centered around the bull riders. They were the athletes people came to see. They were the names announced over the loudspeakers, the men signing autographs afterward, and the competitors whose victories and losses shaped the event.

The bulls mattered, of course. A great bull could build a reputation and become well known among the cowboys. But the basic question remained the same:

Which bull did the cowboy draw?

By the time James White encountered Bodacious, that question had begun to reverse itself.

Now people wanted to know:

Who did Bodacious get?

That was not a small change in wording. It represented a complete shift in the center of gravity.

When Bodacious appeared on the draw, everything around him seemed to rearrange itself. Attention moved toward the cowboy whose name had landed beside his. Conversations started. People watched. Speculation spread through the arena. Would the man get on him? Could he ride him? And perhaps the question no one wanted to ask aloud: What was Bodacious going to do to him?

The bull was no longer part of someone else’s story—the cowboys were becoming part of his.

I had understood that transformation while writing the book. I could see it in the chronology, in the footage, and in the way people spoke about Bodacious as the years passed. But understanding something as a writer and allowing the reader to experience it are not the same.

I could have explained that Bodacious had become the main attraction. I could have written that the atmosphere changed whenever his name appeared beside a cowboy’s on the draw. I could have told readers that, by then, an entire bull riding event could seem to turn on one question: who would have to get on him?

James’s story allowed me to show it.

That is what made the chapter essential. His experience gave me a real moment in which readers could see that change had taken place. 

And it fit precisely where the manuscript needed it. The chapter created a bridge I had not realized was missing. The book had needed that chapter all along.

I simply had not known it yet.

There is a strange temptation, especially after years of research and writing, to defend what has already been built. Finished pages feel like progress. Completed sections feel safe. Reopening them can feel like stepping backward when every part of you is desperate to reach the end.

But a writer’s first responsibility is not to protect the outline.

It is to recognize the better story when it appears.

Had I been too committed to my own idea of finished, I would have watched James’s video, laughed at the story, and moved on. I would have missed the opportunity to speak with him. More importantly, I would have lost one of the clearest and most human ways to show readers what Bodacious had become.

So I changed the plan. I reopened the manuscript, made room, and wrote another chapter.

The result is not merely one more bull rider’s story. It is the moment when the world surrounding Bodacious visibly tilts in his direction—when the question is no longer which bull a cowboy has drawn, but which cowboy has drawn the bull.

His name was no longer even being said. No one needed to. Everyone knew who you were talking about. 

Who drew him? Did I draw him? Is he in the matchups? 

In the book, Aaron Semas demonstrated this, as well. At the NFR, he yells to Terry Don who is looking at the board, “Did I draw him?”

Sometimes the story that disrupts the plan is the story that reveals what the book has been trying to say.

James White, graciously giving me his time as he sat in a parking spot at Buc-ee's, gave me that story.