I love bonus materials. From director’s commentaries to deleted scenes to behind the scenes featurettes and gag reels, I find the process of creating a final product fascinating. From conception through drafting through the cutting and editing process. Every decision made, every step taken to get to the end point – a film, television season, comic book event, or even a book.

Something about the transparency of it all appeals to me. I know, I know. I’m sure there is more hidden than shown when cracking open the bonus materials on my favorite Blu-Ray. But even some insight into what went into putting together the story or the effects is better than nothing.

That is my hope here. I spend way too much time in a bubble, making choices – through quite a bit of debate with myself – and when I started this site I promised I would share the decision making process and some of what was left on the cutting room floor with all of my projects.

I will make every attempt to keep any spoilers to a minimum as we go along – though I’m sure you’ve already finished the book and left a glowing review for it anywhere and everywhere, right? 🙂

The Evolution of Signs of Portents

Signs of Portents went through many different forms and incarnations before reaching the shelves. It evolved from a four issue limited series built for comics to a full length novel to the first book in an expansive series of books. With each step choices were made, characters added and cut over time, arcs tweaked and mysteries developed to span multiple books.

Most of the book, surprisingly, survived the process and made it to the final product. There were some items, however, that needed adding and some that desperately needed cutting.

Loren’s Quirks

Greg Loren has quite a few problems in Signs of Portents. He’s obsessed with his wife’s death. He chews gum incessantly when he craves a smoke. It helps him to think but is also used to avoid deeper connections with those around him. He even has a problem with heights thanks to the way his wife passed.

That’s enough to make someone question his sanity, or at least recommend a shrink session twice a week.

The initial drafts of Signs of Portents included yet another quirk in Loren’s personality.

A fear of driving.

There is a scene in the parking garage of the Central Precinct where Loren and Soriya attempt to figure out what direction to head in their investigation. Soriya has the bright idea to head to the Courtyard and the two head over there. Simple. Concise.

Not so originally.

The original version had an exchange that NEVER worked for me and made me cringe every time I read through it. Soriya heads over to parking garage attendant and requisitions a vehicle using Loren’s signature which she’s mastered during their time together. She grabs some keys and tosses them to Loren who promptly tosses them back. The guard in the toll booth style box watches all this and accidentally falls out of his chair offering some comedic relief that was so far out of place it made the scene even worse. But why summarize when you can see the awfulness:

From the fifth draft in 2014:

“What’s the endgame once the pieces are back in place?” Loren asked as they continued for the bright light of the requisition desk by the main door of the parking garage leading to the first floor of the Rath Building.  Gomez, never one of the most ambitious officers in the building, operated the desk with his usual exuberance.  His feet were planted on the desk and leaned back with his hands anchored behind his head as a pillow. 

Soriya stopped before the desk, looking back at Loren.  “We can’t figure that out yet.  We need to know who he is first.”

Without warning, she reached into the small enclosure Gomez occupied and retrieved a set of keys from the wall.  As Gomez tried to stop her in a panic, his feet pushed off the desk where they had rested and his wide frame flew backwards in a loud crash.  With keys in hand, Soriya scrawled Loren’s name on the log.  The quiet detective watched in awe as she matched his signature perfectly, even adding in the small blob of ink that tended to collect at the end of his first name.  Finished, she tossed Loren the keys with a wide grin on her face.  He caught them then tossed them back.

“So we find Mentor, right?”  He asked, knowing the old man wanted in on the case.  His last request continued to echo in his thoughts.  Keep her safe.  The question, of course, made the joy fade from her face as thoughts of the two failures from the last two days played in Technicolor behind her eyelids. 

“No.”  She replied.  She let the answer hang between them for a long moment until Loren nodded, still refusing to take the car keys from Soriya.  Then she smiled wide, ever the child holding onto a secret she couldn’t wait to share.  “He has his methods.  I have mine.”

Loren then has to explain his feelings to the reader during their trek to the Courtyard instead of seeing the city as we go:

Loren knew it was coming, the scowl and the glares that came with it.  He didn’t care.  Throwing the keys to the requisitioned vehicle back on the peg to keep Gomez happy would have been enough incentive for Loren, but the added bonus of not being stuck behind the wheel of a walking death trap was obviously the true motive behind their choice of transportation. 

Loren was a city boy, born and raised.  He walked his entire life in Chicago and though he carried a license, driving was never in his comfort zone.  The distractions of the every day driver brought shivers down his spine.  It also came with a side order of pure dread at the lack of control any one person had on the road as they drove.  Traffic was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode and take as many innocent motorists as possible.  Accidents were up 500% over the last decade alone in Portents, with the rise of Bluetooth devices and portable entertainment.  Anything to multi-task side by side with the local commuters. 

Putting his life in the hands of someone that received a paycheck from driving and the threat of an accident ending their career seemed more pragmatic, though if he thought too long about it the holes in his thesis widened greater than a slice of Swiss.

Neither section worked. Both added nothing to overall plot or the arc of Loren. His fear was yet another trait that needed constant monitoring and would never be believed in the modern day world, or tolerated by Ruiz or the police department. It strained plausibility and took the focus from their search for answers and the need to solve the case before them by turning it inward on Loren, something done for quite a few chapters before this exchange.

It needed to go.

Cut. It. Out.

Taking out the quirk and pairing down the scene refocused the characters on the task at hand. It also gave Loren the opportunity to see the city, something necessary to his overall arc for the novel.

“What’s the endgame once the pieces are back in place?” Loren asked.

“We can’t figure that out yet. We need to know who he is first.”

“So we find Mentor, right?” he asked, knowing the old man wanted in on the case. His last request continued to echo in his thoughts. Keep her safe. The question, of course, made the joy fade from her face, the two failures from the last two days playing in Technicolor behind her eyelids.

“No,” she replied. She let the answer hang between them for a long moment until Loren nodded. Then she smiled widely, ever the child holding onto a secret she couldn’t wait to share. “He has his methods. I have mine.”

Short and sweet. The focus on the two players. No movement. Nothing but the case before them.

Soriya’s city.

Since no explanation of Loren’s quirk was necessary it opened the door for a chance to show more of the city through Loren’s eyes and how the pair are so diametrically different in their approach to Portents.

Soriya’s methods were never straightforward. They were never a clear delineation to an end goal. They were, however, revealing. Revealing of the city in which Loren had spent the majority of a decade before deciding to leave for a new start. They were also revealing of his guide and her age. It had not been long since Soriya started her task as the Greystone, a task Loren remained skeptical about despite her obvious talent and enthusiasm for it. She was only twenty-two, barely starting her adult life, and together the two of them had faced monsters in the dark, both human and otherwise. It was not something he would wish on anyone.

It was during these jaunts through Portents that he forgot about all of it—the murder, the darkness of the city, the fear he felt creeping on the periphery. There was only the two of them racing through the night, searching for more than a simple answer. They were finding themselves as well.

He volunteered to drive. She laughed at the notion. It wasn’t her way.

It started with a cab ride to the east, ending at a tram station off Court. While they journeyed in the slow-moving evening tram, Soriya pointed out a street performer surrounded by the late night denizens of the area. He was a contortionist, bending and twisting his body in all manner of shapes for a crowd. Only the two of them caught sight of his blinking eyes. Horizontal instead of vertical. The thin tongue barely slipping out of his lips, forked and wiry like his body.

There was more. The city took on a strange dichotomy, blurring in the darkness between reality and fiction for the former detective. It disturbed him, made him nervous that at every turn there would be something else. Something unknown. Something dangerous. To Soriya, it was the opposite. Her smile grew with each step, with each discovery she was able to share.

This was her world. This was her city.

Advantage – Editing.

I did enjoy the no driving quirk. But it was wrong for the moment and wrong for the character. By focusing on the case in the first instance and the city in the second it strengthened the character arcs for the novel rather than distract with yet another instance of Loren’s wackiness.

In Author Commentary Part 2 – The Addition of Rufus Mathers and the Ticking Clock Factor.

Thanks for reading.