Writing Process

After outlining a quick rundown of Rob’s past, I next chose to delve into Rob’s motivation for getting mixed up in all the crimes he’d eventually be charged with. This stage of the outline really helped me understand who Rob was, and really established the character he turned into.

What kind of person would do these things?

That was the question I had to ask myself. It was possible that Rob could’ve been your prototypical “everyman” who just got dealt a bad hand too many times until he was forced to help others break the law just to make ends meet. But knowing the actions I had in store for Rob once the story got going, I knew that wouldn’t be right for the character. Not exactly.

Rob wasn’t a good guy who just got dealt a bad hand. But he’d THINK he was.

When I’d originally conceived on this idea in 2011, Rob was only guilty of the sin of omission, aware of criminal activities while not actively participating in them until things got out of hand and people wanted him dead before he could incriminate them. The more I thought about it, the more I believed my main character’s path leading up to story had to be forged by decisions he’d knowingly made, not bad situations that happened to him. This decision made his later actions when he was in Preston’s townhouse and throughout his escape more believable. It also helped give a reason for Preston’s refusal to help, something I didn’t have 8 years ago.

This choice also gave Rob depth, because although he engaged in activities that ultimately led to his downfall, I felt he was someone who didn’t believe he was a bad guy. Going back to what type of person the main character for this story would be, I felt they would be someone who went through life believing nothing they did was ever their fault and everything bad that happened was out of their control.

As I conceived the character of Rob, I gave him a martyr complex. You may have noticed most times when Rob is in a tense situation, his immediate thought is to think “Of COURSE this has to happen to me.”

Rob’s view of life was meant to echo the feeling of the title Dig Down. He’d make a bad decision that led to unfavorable consequences. Instead of accepting blame, he’d feel the world was out to get him, and use this as justification to make another poor decision that would lead him even worse off. As I went over his backstory, I wanted to craft it so that if he, at any point, just took responsibility (and his lumps) he’d be in a bad situation, but at least he’d stop there and could work towards turning things around.

This was the rundown of his backstory with his martyr complex applied:

Rob felt he should’ve had a job waiting for him at his father’s company once he graduated college. Because of this expectation, he never applied himself, which didn’t sit well with Preston. He felt slighted when given a junior salesman position, but he had plenty of friends he could make a quick sale too, hoping to impress his father and get fast tracked to the once denied executive position. When that doesn’t happen, he believes his father is holding him back, and with no more quick sales, his career takes a nosedive.

Believing he’s about to be fired, Axel, a shady businessman, approaches him, offering him plenty of business if he helps manipulate stocks for him. Rob does this, achieving success beyond anything Preston has accomplished. Through Axel, he meets Vicky, his underage addict daughter. He falls in love, and woos her by scoring drugs for her, eventually getting hooked himself. To support his ever growing drug habit, he agrees to launder money for the cartel when they approach him with a solution to his financial struggles.

Things seem fine for a time, but one of his conspirators gets mixed up in a public scandal, and dominoes start to fall. Being one of the closest people mixed up in this scandal, Rob calls on the cartel to kill the tarnished accomplice before the scheme can be brought to light, but is too late in doing so. With their crimes exposed, and Rob under the spotlight of the media, the remaining parties look to clean house before they draw the attention of law enforcement.

As you can see, I started him off with just being lazy, and always taking the easy way out. As life got tougher for him, he kept digging his heels in, until he had no other choice but to help break the law. From there, his willingness to commit crimes became easier, and the scope of his crimes grew with each new obstacle.

“Good decisions are hard to make, but easy to live with. Bad decisions are easy to make, but hard to live with.”

While I was going through this stage of the outline, this quote came to mind, and I wanted to make sure it applied to every decision Rob made. I’m not certain of it’s origin, but I’d heard it from a YouTube channel by Brian Tracy. He’s recorded countless videos on motivation and productivity, and if you’re ever looking for either, check his channel out.

Next week, I detail why Rob’s personality led him to always take the easy way out.

Before sitting down to finally write Dig Down, one of the first things I had to determine was what illegal activities had Rob gotten involved in. In essence, what had happened that led up to him being in the desperate state he found himself in at the start of the story. I knew I wanted him facing a slew of charges, and wanted him to have a lot of unsavory characters on his tail. But in order for all that to happen, I needed to not only know what he’d done, but more importantly, I needed to know what had led to his involvement in all those crimes.

One of the first things I did was brainstorm all sorts of criminal activities that Rob could’ve gotten mixed up in. From there, I started to rule out things that, while Rob could’ve been capable of being involved in, that he wasn’t going to have done. The crimes I kept helped shape Rob’s character. At the time, I had no idea what Rob did for a living, but being involved in stock manipulation and insider trading determined for me that he was going to be a broker.

Although I wanted him to face a litany of charges, I also needed it to be understandable why he did the things he did. That helped me pare the list of crimes to its final form, though it did lead to another difficult cut. Early on, as a way to explain how he’d come up with the money to rent a car and pay a coyote, I had planned for him to embezzle money from a charity he’d created. The more noble the charity’s goal, the better. Ultimately, I felt this choice might be too inexcusable, and just left the financing of his escape to the money he’d borrowed from the loan shark.

With all that settled, I crafted a personal history for Rob that outlined not only what he did, but the surface level reason for every action, and is as follows:

Rob graduated college feeling his father would have a top job waiting for him at his company. When Preston gave him a junior salesman position, after some initial success making guaranteed sales to his friends, he began to flounder, until Axel, a businessman without morals with friends in Congress, approached him with a lucrative, though illegal, deal. On the verge of being fired, Rob played ball. Through his partnership with Axel, the “Cowboy”, he met Axel’s daughter Vicky, who he fell in love with, and courted by scoring drugs for her. He began to use as well. Needing to support his escalating addiction, he starts pump and dump scams, until the firm’s clientele starts to vanish. Being a regular with dealers, he is approached by the head of a cartel to launder money through the firm, in exchange for drugs and a share of the profits. He feels invincible, until a strong supporter in Congress gets caught with a dead hooker in a very public way. Needing to hush up the Congressman before they can talk, Rob approaches the cartel to assassinate the prisoner. They agree, in exchange for him being a mule for their drugs. When the Congressman dies, the investigation intensifies, and other hookers step forward, incriminating everyone in the operation. Parties involved look to clean house, and that means silencing Rob. Permanently. Parties include Axel, the Congressman, the pimp of the hookers, and the cartel.

This was the initial rundown that I came up with for Rob’s backstory, and after reading the finished product, you can see I made changes along the way. But like a house, the foundation had been laid.

What I needed to do next was dig deeper into Rob’s motivation to help shape his backstory and focus and tighten the story even more. Next week, I dig down deeper into Rob’s reasoning for every bad decision he made.

During the months leading up to the launch of Dig Down, I was spending most of my time researching the hundreds of things I needed to get done to make the launch as successful as possible. I watched numerous YouTube channels that gave instructions on how to create a website, building a social media platform, the best uses of your time and money, and I could go on and on.

It was extremely helpful getting tips from other writers who’d already taken the journey themselves, and I was always searching out new sources of information. One of the best resources I came across was the podcast So You Want to be a Writer.

Not only was this show hosted by two authors who chronicled the goings on of their own careers, they also held weekly interviews with other writers. Talk about a healthy dose of exposure to the writing process.

The end of their interviews always play out like Inside the Actor’s Studio where they’ll ask their guest the same series of questions. One question they posed stuck with me: they’d ask “Are you a plotter or a pantser?” Essentially, do you work out what’s going to happen in your story before you start writing, or do you fly by the seat of your pants, making it up as you go along?

I’ve got a lot of respect to all the writers who identify as pantsers, and I understand the reasoning behind their writing process. Authors like Stephen King and George R.R. Martin fall into this category, stating that they want to be as surprised at what happens next when they write it as their audience will be reading it.

But, I’m a meticulous plotter, through and through. I leave room for improvisation, and there’s always revisions I find I need to make both while writing and after, but I need a steady framework of where I am in the story and where it’s going or I’ll never finish. For Dig Down, I think I spent more time outlining the story than I did writing the first draft.

In the coming weeks, I’ll go into detail about how much I craft the story before I put down a single word

Ever since I made the announcement that I was going to be self publishing my first book, I’ve received an overwhelming amount of support. I’ve loved seeing the screenshots people have taken of their order confirmations, and selfies where they’re reading my story.

A few people have told me it’s quite an accomplishment just to finish writing a book, and that while they have an idea or two, they wouldn’t know where to begin. So I thought I’d share what works for me.

Whenever I sit down to write a book (and I just did this on the new novel I’m working on), on the first day, I write a grand total of…

…1 page.

Even though I’m not looking for perfection in a first draft, and I know it will be heavily edited when it’s put through round after round of revisions, I stick to writing 1 page.

The reason I do this is because no matter the size of the story, I know it’s going to be a long process. It can look daunting at the onset, and you can get easily discouraged and give up in these early stages. I want that journey to start out on the right foot. So I set a small goal that I know I can easily hit, and build on that momentum.

So if you’re someone who’s got an idea for a book, give this a try. I look forward to reading your story soon.