Not everything comes out on the page perfectly. Not the first time. Sometimes not even the second, third or fourth time you’ve gone through a manuscript. There is usually an element missing, something discovered later on in the process. A character moment to follow through the manuscript, a plot point you need to touch on so the turn makes sense three chapters later. Or it could be something simply like you forgot Loren was wearing a coat and put him in jean shorts and crocs.
Then there is Chapter 16 in Signs of Portents, which pretty much needed a complete and total rewrite during the editing process.
The original draft.
Scenes have some requirements to make them relevant to the narrative. They drive action. They build an image or relate theme. And they need to drive character’s forward through their arc in the novel. Chapter Sixteen opened with Loren outside the Central Precinct, fighting against the need to talk to Ruiz about the case, right before Soriya draws him back into it with the death of her bouncer friend, Urg.
That was my original outline. I failed to hit the first point home completely. Check it out.
Loren was sitting on a park bench across the street from the central precinct when the call came. Her words were sparse, long pauses cutting through them that were not from reception issues, though Loren swore his phone knew when to crackle and fade with each and every call received. Soriya was distant on the other line, her mind somewhere else as she spoke.
“The apartment. Now.”
Loren was sitting on a park bench.
Um, what? The great character moment for Loren in this chapter, the incredible image built in the reader’s mind, was Loren SITTING ON A BENCH. Top notch stuff, Lou.
That line made it through four drafts somehow before I realized the problem. A whole slew of problems actually. Why was he sitting on the park bench? Why was he not DOING anything? He would have been better off sleeping on the bench than sitting. At least that would have shown him unwilling to go home to his apartment. Still, not ideal.
Enter the new elements.
I knew adding the Ruiz element would at least clarify the why of Loren’s sitting on the bench outside. But this was a chance to push a character moment further, to layer in his arc about being torn between Portents and Chicago. His old life versus the new one he was hoping to build.
I also had a chance to slip in some details from the case, something Loren was fighting to keep in the background but couldn’t help considering even in his resistance.
Two new players came into the chapter that pulled it together:
- Loren’s sister, Meriwether. (His character moment.)
- The William Rath statue in front of the Central Precinct. (Advancing the plot.)
A much more fleshed out chapter was the result:
The William Rath Addition
Loren sat on a park bench across the street from the Central Precinct as the bell tower behind him chimed in a new early morning hour. From his position, the statue of William Rath stood before him. The building’s namesake towered over Loren, a fifteen-foot monument to the city’s founder though the contemplative detective believed the legend would be disappointed with the praise.
The statue was cracked and worn from age. There were a number of imperfections in the face and hands as if changed after the fact. The dedication plaque held the same issues with dates overwritten and marred, either by age or man Loren could not say for certain, but the date 1893 read false when compared to the rest of the writing that adorned the stone surface of the commemoration. It reminded him of the change on the date marking the warehouse where the body of Vladimir Luchik was found.
Focusing on the statue and the plaque was the fourth distraction Loren had created to keep from leaving the cold metal bars of the bench. Anything to keep him from heading into the stationhouse and the waiting Captain Ruiz. Ruiz wanted to go over the case, the same way they always had in the past. A pot of coffee split between them and a piece or three of kuchen from the captain’s wife, Michelle. Ruiz wanted everything to be the same, the way it had worked between them for so long. Loren wanted anything but that. Things had changed. Hadn’t they? Change was good. Change was needed. Change meant growth; it meant movement, be it forward or backward. It was movement and Loren needed to keep moving.
Loren’s sister enters the world.
It took three rings before Loren realized his phone was going off in the left-hand pocket of his leather coat. It took another two for him to work his hand around the thin device, scan the caller ID, and make the decision to accept the call. There were certain people who expected calls after midnight. Loren was not one of them. Family, however, trumped the late hour the same way it did almost everything else. At least, that was what Loren wanted to believe, holding the phone to his ear.
“Hello?” he said over the wind. He turned away from the night chill that crackled into the phone, letting it fall on his back instead.
“Greg?” the voice on the other end asked. A deep sigh of relief blew into the line. “Oh, thank God.”
“Meri?” Loren rechecked the caller ID. It was definitely his sister. “What time is it?”
Meriwether Atkins, formerly Meriwether Loren, guffawed into Loren’s ear loudly. Loren used to enjoy the sound of his sister’s laughter when they were kids but since she had started a family of her own, he realized that her laughter typically meant something else entirely different than joy.
“What time is it?” she repeated. “About three hours past your train’s arrival. You know, that train I stayed up to meet so I could drive your ass home?”
Dammit. He had meant to call. Meant to text. Something to let her know about Ruiz’s rescheduling but it slipped his mind as if Chicago and his life there no longer existed. There was only the mystery before him, just like it had always been. Just the way Ruiz wanted it.
“Oh.” It was all he could mutter against the wind. He never should have asked in the first place but their relationship had been so strained, even with his return to Chicago. Part of him wanted to connect, or at least make the attempt he had been putting off for the last three months.
“Yeah. Oh,” Meri replied. “Anytime you want to make with the explanations and the apologies, I’m all ears. And don’t for a second start chewing in my ear with whatever nonsense flavor you’re craving today.”
Loren looked to his left hand that had retrieved a pack of gum from his pocket. He quickly tucked it back inside. Sisters. When they know you, they know you.
“Ruiz called me in.” Loren looked to the Rath Building and the dim light from the second floor office of the waiting captain. He felt the eyes of the statue of William Rath burning into him as fiercely as Meri’s undoubtedly did from the other end of the call.
“Of course he did,” she muttered. There was no surprise in her tone but Loren heard the disappointment. “He knows that’s the last thing you need, right?”
“He does.”
“But there you are.” There were things older siblings should never teach younger ones, Loren realized, hearing the biting sarcasm that filtered through every word his sister spoke.
“Here I am.” He joined her tone.
“Stop it.”
“What now, Mer?”
“Stop pretending to listen with your repeating answers and actually listen.” She took a deep, audible breath. Loren waited patiently on the bench that overlooked the front of the stationhouse of the Central Precinct. He snapped open the package of gum, slipping a stick into his palm. He let it rest there rather than incur more wrath from the responsible Loren. He knew there was enough coming his way as it was.
“That place almost destroyed you. You know this. You chose to come home, so come home. It might not be what you were hoping for, and God knows we can be just as screwed up as anyone, but family is family, Greg.”
He heard her every word. He had said them to the cracked and weary face in the mirror more times than he cared to recall. There was a time when family was king of the hill and everything else in the world was sitting at the bottom of the pile of priorities. That was how the world was supposed to be. Beth became that family to him in Portents. When Chicago no longer felt like home, she took that place. Even in her absence, she held that place while he spent every waking moment looking for who or whatever took her from him. Meri was right—he had come home, and it wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. Family was family though, right?
“How is she?” he asked quietly, his eyes shifting up to the night sky.
“You should call her and ask her.”
“Meri…”
“She’s…she’s okay, Greg.” There was a sadness in her tone. “Tired from watching my kids all day but okay.”
“Good.”
“Greg. How are you?”
The question always surprised him. He didn’t have an answer. He never really knew how he was doing. Not really. Between being back in Portents with Ruiz and Soriya, and now with the case laid in his lap, there was too much to consider to answer the question neatly.
“Craving the stick of peach mango I unwrapped.”
A deep sigh was Meri’s reply. It was clear she knew the question would never be answered. “Go, Greg. Go to Ruiz and your work. I’ll be here to pick up the pieces.”
“I’m fine, Mer.”
“I know.”
She was already gone from the conversation. He pushed her away as easily as he had when he first left Chicago to make a fresh start. “I’m sorry about the train hiccup.”
“Took you long enough to get there.”
“I am an idiot sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”
“I’ll be home soon.” The words slipped out and he tried to retrieve them by clearing his throat loudly. “I’ll call. Tell Mom—”
“You tell her,” Meri replied quickly. The phone clicked and Loren was alone once more. He let the phone hang by his ear, wondering if he would ever again feel like he could be there for his family as much as Meri had been there for him when he really needed her. There was a divide separating them, one he had put into place long ago. It was more than his work, though, which was what drove him away in the first place. That, and what his father put them through over the years. Loren couldn’t stay in Chicago and watch his family crumble. At the time, he wasn’t strong enough to stop it, the abuse both verbal and physical. His strength came later, with Beth, but by then the split was complete. And remained complete, even after so much water under and over every bridge separating the Loren family.
He tucked the phone away. Dry, cracked fingers ran through his uncombed hair, massaging his scalp to wake him up. Loren had barely slipped the stick of gum between his lips when the phone lit up once more. He clicked the accept button, the first burst of peach mango hitting his tongue.
Her words were sparse, long pauses cutting through them that were not from reception issues, though Loren swore his phone knew when to crackle and fade with each and every call received. Soriya Greystone was distant on the other line, her mind somewhere else while she spoke.
“The apartment. Now.”
Thank you, self-editing.
A much more involved scene to add character moments and build up the mystery in the background led to a stronger addition to the novel. Though I do think Greg Loren Sits on a Bench will be a New York Times bestseller someday.
Thanks for reading.
The ticking clock factor is a plot driven deadline to push the action forward in the narrative. It is the timer on a bomb about to go off. It is the fifteen minute race through New York City traffic to answer a phone call to the tune of a madman’s game. (Yes, Die Hard With a Vengeance reference achieved! Just don’t force me to explain the water jug thing.) The ticking clock forces action. It forces movement.
Why Mathers?