The end is in sight! The author commentary continues for Founder’s Day with a look at a deleted scene left on the cutting room floor. SPOILER WARNING is in effect!
The original ending…
Sometimes a tale has a clearly defined ending. There is an arc and everything circles around to its end in an orderly fashion.
Other times? Not so much.
Founder’s Day was the latter. I had the climax of the story in place. Richard Crowne’s fall and the treachery of Samantha Myers. But I went further by circling to the beginning of the story.
The story opens with a baby being left alone by his dragon of a father. Hey, someone has to go out and get diapers and wipes for the kid…
Anyway, the original ending had Loren visit the kid – now in Child Protective Services – to see the impact of his work and the choices made by not only the kid’s father but in effect Crowne as well.
Chapter 24
The Child Services Center was quiet. Loren’s heavy footfalls boomed against the instilled hush and he slowed upon entering. Sleep eluded him, another day lost to a dream that offered no solace.
No answers to the questions plaguing him from all sides. A Circle of Shadows. Soriya. Myers and the secrets he held from her. And now Richard Crowne. His friend for so long, lost to the past. A past he could never escape.
Loren needed to do better. To move forward. To build instead of tear down. There had to be a way but the questions were born of the past and he couldn’t leave them behind without closure.
The nurse at the front desk looked up from her paperwork, a smile greeting his arrival. Monitors kept track of the rooms down the hall, the camera shifting between occupants in regular intervals. The sound kept to a minimum to keep their charges resting.
Loren pointed to the child in question. “Can I see him?”
The baby curled up along the railing of the crib, thumb secure between his lips. The nurse’s persistent smile grew at the sight. “He’s resting.”
“Someone should,” Loren muttered.
“Sir?”
Loren shook his head and showed his badge. “I only need a minute.”
She hesitated then nodded, leading him along the hall. They stopped at the end, the half glass door offering him a view of the temporary nursery of Bartleby Kindt’s son.
His name was Davon.
Eight months old and his life forever changed by the events of the last few days. Forever linked to the past, to the sins of his father. Would he suffer from the same affliction? Would he walk down the same path? Would he never escape the shadows haunting his every step?
Loren worried. Hell, he worried about everything lately. All the choices made, the secrets kept and those kept from him. And everything still to come. Yet looking at the sleeping infant in the crib, Loren hoped.
“He’ll be all right?”
“Sure,” the nurse whispered. “A good home. A good life. All we can ask for, right?”
Loren nodded and the woman moved back to the front desk, giving him a moment with the child. A new home. Family and friends. Dreams and accomplishments that swallowed up the darkness already behind him. A new beginning. Loren hoped for the same, a way to break from the past and start again. Away from the burden of Portents and the darkness of every path forward.
An impossible dream for him but maybe not forever.
Greg Loren hoped the child would find a better way. A way to bring a little light back to the city.
He hoped they both could in the end.
Why remove this deleted scene?
It ended on hope. That was not the message being sent with this story. It’s what we all wish for in the end but here? Loren is in a dark place. Myers even more so.
Ending with this notion of the future doesn’t work, tonally.
Taking out this story beat to keep the focus on Myers and her decision to betray Loren not only sets up events in A Circle of Shadows but nails the tone of the story for the reader. It’s ominous. It’s dark.
And it shows that maybe there isn’t light in the future for everyone. Maybe the choices we make have to be dark at times.
Why write the deleted scene in the first place?
Happy endings are nice. They are clean and leave the reader content that their hero/heroine will come out on top of the problems plaguing them.
Not exactly a spot on description of where Loren is right now in Greystone. And I realized pretty quickly. Just not fast enough to avoid writing this scene.
I thought it would add hope to a hopeless situation; a light at the end of the tunnel.
Not realizing the darkness to come.
Tone trumped all concerns in this case and it won’t be the only time this happens. There is a story you’ll be seeing in a year or two with a similar situation. The tone is key and leaving Myers in the woods, stepping along the darkened path slammed the image home for me.
