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Hello everyone!

I know that I said this week I would go into the two roles each chase sequence in Dig Down had to fulfill, but I’ve decided to postpone that a week to make an announcement.

While there are still many more steps to go, I just finished writing and revising my latest book to the point where I believe it’s ready to go to an editor (who will no doubt catch countless mistakes, some of which are so obvious you’d wonder how it got by me draft after draft). The manuscript still has to go through numerous rounds of revisions, and I still need to finalize a cover design for it, but I like the way it’s progressing along.

A title reveal will be coming soon.

Have a great day.

“You’re not making his game, are you?” his wife asked as soon as she came on the line.

“Before we get into that,” Preston started, hoping to corral the path of the conversation before it flew off the tracks.

“You broke your promise to your son to be a bigger participant in his life,” she stated flatly.

“I’m working hard to make that happen. You know I am. I just—”

“You broke your promise to me you’d do this for our son.”

It was out there now. He knew she’d been harboring resentment towards him ever since he’d dove in headfirst after Pierce to start their own investment firm. Preston had wanted to bring up that she’d broken her own promise to support him while he was laying a foundation for their future, but knew that’d just lead to an argument that’d get him nowhere.

“He needs his father,” she insisted. “You don’t see it because you’re never here.”

Preston just stood there, clutching the phone, forcing himself to take it. He didn’t feel numb. Numb would’ve been preferable.

At least if he felt numb, he wouldn’t have felt like a failure.

“I’ve been letting him stay out late with friends because I’m looking for anything to distract him from the fact that you’re not here. When he’s home with nothing to do, he just waits by the phone for you to call.”

Preston flinched at the imagery. “It’s tough for me too,” he said softly, hoping she’d find it in her heart to be understanding.

“You’re a grown man. He’s a child. Your child!”

He loathed that she was forcing him to see himself as the bad guy. He was pursuing the American dream, going into business for himself, building a company from scratch, something he could pass on to Robert when the time came.

A family legacy.

“If you keep missing out on these moments, you’re going to regret it.”

“I do regret them.”

Every last one of them.

If it were up to him, he’d never leave his son’s side.  Robert was the most special thing in his life. He wanted to celebrate everything with him, whether it was learning to ride a bike, or the birth of his first child.

But he had to sacrifice these precious moments. Preston couldn’t remain at his old firm. He’d been fortunate enough to survive the latest round of layoffs, but the longer he stayed, the more likely he’d be sacked as the company scrambled to save a sinking ship.

The last thing he wanted was to end up like his own father, a slave to the whims of management. Sure, his father spent plenty of time with him, but that was because he always found himself searching for jobs. His father usually held onto a job long enough to pay off the debts he’d accumulated during his previous unemployment stint.

He’d had plenty of opportunities to seize control of his own fate, but did he ever actually do it? No.

“If you don’t change soon, you’re going to lose him.”

Preston didn’t want to follow his father’s path. He didn’t want to lose the ability to retire because he had a mountain of debt to pay off. He didn’t want his son to regret not spending time with him in his golden years, when they would both know the time he had left was short.

He didn’t want Robert to resent him the same way Preston resented his own father.

“I will change,” he said. “I am. You’ll see. In time you’ll see. We almost got this account. Things will be easier after. I’ll still have to make these presentations, but they won’t be as often. We just need to get this account so we can pay the bills. And put food on the table. Get off of the ledge, you know?

“You’ll see. When I’ve got a job waiting for Robert, you’ll see it was all worth it. And when I’m grooming him to inherit what I’ve built, and he doesn’t have to struggle to choose between work and his own family, he’ll appreciate what I had to give up to make life easier for him.”

By the end, he wasn’t sure who he was trying to convince more. Her, or him.

After spending most of the outlining process figuring out what kind of person would be involved in the scandals of Dig Down, and developing their backstory, that still left me with a monumental task:

The actual chase.

The initial concept for the book was a man running for his life, pursued by numerous criminals who all want him dead. Although I finally knew who he was, I hadn’t come up with dire scenarios and daring escapes.

I only had three ideas for escape sequences: one where a loan shark has him at gunpoint, one where he was being chased through the mall by two different enemies, and one where the surviving characters were in the middle of a standoff (think the end of Reservoir Dogs). But anyone whose read Dig Down knows: two of those events occur in the first 6 chapters of the story, which are (aside from Chapter 6) among the shortest in the entire book. The last is the finale, and while I was confident that this was how the book needed to end (just about) I didn’t have a roadmap of how to get there.

These were the last two questions I needed answers for before I could start writing. The answer I came up with had to do with the purpose of Rob going to Preston in the first place. After entering Preston’s townhouse at the end of Chapter 1, he emerges from it to start Chapter 2 lugging a briefcase. I knew what would be in it, but as part of the reason for alternating between two timelines, the reader wouldn’t. The intrigue of its contents hopefully helped keep the reading turning pages, but its purpose helped me determine what Rob would do next, along with the impossible situation he’d get snared in.

Going to Preston for the suitcase was already the reason he would find himself held at gunpoint by the loan shark. Getting out of that situation caught the attention of the sociopath, who became one of the two parties involved in pursuing him through the mall. The circumstances surrounding his escape would lead him to arriving at Dr. Kine’s office needing medical treatment. Stealing the sociopath’s car there would explain how Rocco knew where to find him at the end of the story.

When I applied necessity to each sequence, the plot of the chase became clear. Since I’d already established he was in danger if he was found by multiple parties, anything he had to do or anywhere he had to go to escape could be turned into a moment of tension as he had to escape, so long as the setting was a natural next step Rob would take.

Next time, I’ll review how every chase sequence had to fulfill two purposes.

Continuing with the analysis of Chapter 3, I’ve yet to touch on the true purpose of the chapter. In my outline, this was when the reader finds out everything Rob is accused of and why he’s running for his life.

I knew that the townhouse chapters were going to focus primarily on Rob and Preston’s relationship, and the tumultuous history they shared, but the driving force behind that history was all the activities Rob partook in to make a fast buck. All of the crimes are brought up during the chase chapters, scattered throughout Dig Down, but some activities, like drug smuggling, don’t get brought up until Chapter 18. At this point, I felt it would be too late to spring this on the reader, so I needed to incorporate this into the book sooner. Once again, Chapter 3 was up to the task.

This was a tricky thing to pull off. As a writer, you don’t want to dole out information by dumping exposition on the reader. An exposition dump is when a writer gives the reader all the relevant information in a clump of paragraphs. When done poorly, it will be written as Preston telling a Rob information theyhe would already naturally know, like “I’m angry at you because the news says police are after you because you are involved in stock manipulation, insider trading, drug smuggling and prostitution.”

At this point, all the reader knows is that Rob is on the run for some reason. If I’ve done my job right, there should be a sense of intrigue and mystery about why Rob’s running. Outlining and writing the scene, I needed to keep those feelings going until I revealed what the charges were.

To do this, I didn’t have Preston inform Rob he was mad, but convey his anger with his icy silence. This reinforces the hostility Rob encountered at the end of Chapter 1. The TV that Rob mutes has his face on it. This suggests that what Rob is running from has made headlines.  Preston continues to give Rob the silent treatment as Rob examines the townhouse. This was done so that, in addition to blocking the entire townhouse sequence, establishing the curtains, portrait, paperweight, and characterization of both characters, ideally, the readers would keep turning the pages to find out what the crimes were.

Only when Rob makes for the portrait does Preston break his silence, first turning the volume up on the TV, then shouting his frustration at having to hear all about Rob’s activities, and only then, a quick rundown of what he’s accused of. While I’m delivering exposition here, my goal was for this to be delivered as a payoff to the reader, answering the question they would have from the start of the chapter.

I immediately tried to make sure the reader didn’t dwell this exposition by offering a new source of intrigue for them. I did this by teasing two new bits of information. One, I had Rob insist he was innocent. Two, I had Rob correctly guess which congressmen were condemning him, and then calling them hypocrites . At this point, the reader will realize that although I may have told them what Rob is accused of, they don’t know who was actually involved and how they were done. The chapter then ends.

If Chapter 3 has done its job,  the reader wants to find out how all these parties are involved, and they’ll continue reading.

In order for the scene’s in Preston’s townhouse  to feel fast-paced like the rest of Dig Down, they needed to be efficient. There was no room for the literary equivalent of Mumblecore, where there were a lot of useless actions or dialogue. Everything had to be crisp and serve a purpose.

Chapter 3 has Rob and Preston really speaking for the first time. All the reader knows is that they have a strained relationship, based off the tepid reception Rob gets when he first arrives and is looking for help. The challenge here was not only making the conversation that followed feel natural, but feeling like there was a reason for it being there.

While Rob is muting the TV so he doesn’t have to face what he’s done, and drawing the blinds so no one can see him, he tries to fill the void of silence by commenting on Preston’s possessions. Originally, talking about his furniture was meant to just be a placeholder, but the more I thought about it, the more what Rob was saying fit.

Rob’s monologue about Preston’s home served to not only be a way for Rob to stumble through starting a conversation with his father, but shed light on the characterization about both of them. Rob’s observations about how everything here is twenty years old and is just as good as they day they were bought is meant to lay the foundation for the time of character Preston is. Preston throughout the story constantly defends how tough he was on Rob because he was always trying to instill a strong foundation in him so that his hard work now would take care of him later. The furniture and other items in his townhouse reflect the choices made by that type of man. Preston took the time filling his home with quality items and took care of them, and as a result, he’s had no need to replace them, and they still serve him decades later.  

Rob reveals the nature of his own character during the same monologue. Comparing his own household to Preston’s, he says they’re replacing everything every five years, and goes on to further state that everything’s flashy, but nothing’s reliable. He even shares an anecdote that he went to numerous stores just to find something suitable the last time he shopped for furniture.

Throughout Dig Down, it is revealed that Rob had a lazy work ethic when he first started working for his father, trying to win over clients with flash and pizzazz instead of knowing the business inside and out. This led him to struggle and was the first step in his path to getting entangled with the many unsavory characters of Dig Down. Like the furniture he bought, things broke down, while Preston, like his furniture, was still reliable. That Rob was still buying these flashy items also hinted that he hadn’t learned from his past mistakes.

It was a quick interlude meant to transition Rob’s arrival at Preston’s to the beginning of the fight between them, but it served to lay the foundation for the types of characters they both were.

Preston would’ve been proud.

As I mentioned in last week’s blog, Dig Down had to be fast. I believed a frantic pace would really emphasize what Rob was experiencing as he was running for his life. While this was natural for the chapters where he’s being chased, I knew from the start that the chapters in Preston’s townhouse would prove to be a challenge.

There were a couple tactics I used to keep the pace flowing for these scenes, whose primary focus was exposition and character. The first, as I went over last week, was to write them in a similar style to the chase chapters, was stacking the many things going on in the scene on top of one another. The second writing tool I used was establishing setups and payoffs throughout this sequence.

In order for Dig Down to feel fast paced, I was going to have to be economical with my words. I kept the description of Preston’s townhouse brief, because the details of it weren’t what was important, both in the scenes (the focus needed to be on Rob and Preston’s relationship) and in the story as a whole (Rob running for his life). With that in mind, I took a bare bones approach to describing the layout of the townhouse; a living room, a kitchen, a study, with windows on each side. This minor description was what I used to create the setups for what happened later in the story.

The first detail I setup was the windows on all four sides. It’d already been established in chapter 1 that Rob didn’t want to be spotted by anyone, nearly jumping out of his skin when Ms. Harrington steps out of her townhouse. Rob’s initial reaction when he sees the windows is to draw the blinds because he doesn’t want to be seen by the neighbors. This is the setup. When Beverly enters the townhouse later and remarks they should get some light in here, this is the reminder. Rob’s inability to come up with a reason to keep them drawn ensures that they were going to stay open for the remainder of his time there. While it might seem that this was just returning the blinds to their original state, it was actually crucial to draw the reader’s attention to the windows being open when he first enters the townhouse.

The payoff occurs in chapter 19, when the reader sees the consequences for keeping the blinds open, as it creates another problem for Rob to deal with. In a way, I feel this is actually a double payoff because it also (hopefully) satisfies the intrigue setup at the end of chapter 2.

 I kick off another setup and payoff in chapter 3 when Rob is first remarking on Preston’s townhouse. While Rob is comparing the quality of items that Preston has in his townhouse, one of the things he mentions is a frog paperweight. This knickknack plays an important role in the story, but in the first draft, I didn’t introduce it until the end of the story. On my second draft, I established it here, to setup a bigger payoff later. In chapter 15, when Rob and Preston enter the study, I make sure to mention that Rob’s fingers dance across the paperweight. This was done solely to remind the reader that this was here. The payoff comes in chapter 19.

 One last small example to go over would be the painting in Preston’s study. Once again, this was one of the few objects that I describe in chapter 3, and that’s because of its importance to the story later on. Anyone reading Dig Down a second time might notice that the characters acknowledged its importance from the start. After drawing all the blinds, Rob is practically drawn to the painting, since what it’s hiding is his main purpose for coming to Preston. And it is only when Preston sees Rob heading towards it that he breaks his silence and starts talking to his son. The payoff comes later when you see what the painting was hiding.

Next week, I’ll be going into how I incorporated characterization into this chapter.