Editing a novel is a tricky process. There’s the story you’ve come up with and put together over many months. And then there’s the story that needs to be told within that story. What sells the arc of a character? How do you drive it home for your reader? How does it impact future books in the series? All become very important questions over the course of the editing process.
To me, there was something missing in Signs of Portents for the longest time. A player that, while minor in the novel, would come to play a larger role in events as the series played out. In my mind, at least. Draft after draft went by until it finally dawned on me who I was missing in the work.
Rufus Mathers.
He shows up in a single chapter in the novel. (Chapter 23 for those playing at home.) Just one. But by including him as a physical presence in the book his impact is felt throughout the work.
Why Mathers?
I needed a foil. I needed a face to stand against Loren and the way things had been done in the past. Someone to hate Loren for the mistakes made during his previous stint at the Portents Police Department. Someone with authority and someone with power over how Loren and, by association, Soriya could operate in the city. The notion of Standish, the troubles in Loren’s past were seeded but there was no one actually willing to say these things out loud from any place of authority.
Mathers came into focus very late in the game to fill this role and in doing so also provided the perfect place to give Captain Ruiz more time on the page.
Counterpoint to Ruiz
I knew Ruiz needed more to play with during Signs of Portents. He’s the Walter Skinner of the cast (for all you X-Files fans out there) and there needed to be more room for him to strut his stuff. The inclusion of Mathers, and the sudden creation of the events in Chapter 23, the reader gets to see Ruiz take center stage.
We follow Ruiz while he defends Loren’s actions as well as his own for bringing him back into the fold. We learn the power struggle between the two men. One wanted the other’s job and one just wanted to do the job.
It also allowed me to show Ruiz’s doubts about Loren, his fears in putting it all on the line for the man barely surviving. His doubts become the readers and it becomes Loren’s job to put them at ease.
Ruiz down the line
By setting up the work dynamic with Mathers during the editing process I was able to open up some avenues down the line. The reader gets to learn more about Loren’s blow up with Robert Standish – someone you will be reading about quite a bit in the upcoming Tales from Portents collection – and added more drama to the situation. Having someone to pile on the protagonist always add more fuel to the fire of a plot. I knew Mathers would play the part well, while also keeping Ruiz in check.
More than anything, Ruiz needed to be seen and heard more in the novel. His role in the next full length novel is greatly expanded. Big stuff happens with him. Seeding his story here and watching it grow in Tales from Portents lets the reader see how important he truly is to the overall arc of the Greystone series.
Fingers crossed that it worked.
Thanks for reading.
