A humungous change made to Dig Down was the character of Rob Moore himself. When I had first come up with the idea, I was using the name Paul as a placeholder, but the change was much greater than just a superficial name change.
Going back to the original concept, I always had it in my head that the character who would eventually become Rob Moore would find himself in trouble and turn to his father for help. His father would be a sickly old man, who needed an aide to come to his home to take care of him. His father would refuse to help Rob, and in an act of desperation, Rob would do what he had to to get what he needed. All of this should sound pretty familiar.
But the key difference in this original concept was…Rob Moore was initially innocent!
Rob was originally just going to be a character who was hard on his luck, either turned into a patsy by the company he worked for, or possibly extorted into doing illegal things until an explosive scandal came to light. Back in 2011, my idea for Rob’s driving force was to have him escape long enough for the truth to surface, and that meant going into hiding for potentially years. It wasn’t until his father refused to help him that the desperation for self-preservation kicked in and Rob did something he would never be able to take back.
This setup presented a lot of problems though. A major one was that I couldn’t come up with a reason why his father would refuse to help him if Rob was a good guy who was just down on his luck. His father would already be established as terminally ill, and the idea was that Rob would be forced to do something where the reader would immediately want him to be caught for the remainder of the story, even if he was initially innocent. But if he had a parent like that, who didn’t have a compelling reason not to help his son, I thought on some level, readers would still side with Rob. Even the addition of a pregnant aide and what Rob would have to do with her caused some issues, because I felt at that point readers might find her fate was just thrown in there, and would want justice for her instead of for Rob’s father.
So, the idea for Dig Down was shelved. For 6 years. Until I finally came up with the idea to have Rob be guilty from the start. Then I had a reason for his father’s refusal that felt believable and understandable. Then Rob’s actions feel more in character.
Making this one change was monumental. And it brought about even more changes to Dig Down, which I will get into next week.