4/13/25: Yesterday I laboriously summarized each scene, squeezing it all into a one-sentence nutshell, and I looked at the order of what happens. I thought about possible reorders of events. Nope. Everything is where it needs to be. So last night, instead of reworking the scenes or editing, I played the guitar and then slept on it.
Now it’s going on 8 am on Sunday. I looked over the organization. Change it? Nope. Everything is where I want it to be.
There are some short scenes. I’ll probably consolidate them with longer scenes, but I don’t know. I feel like my subconscious is very full right now, and that changes I’m not aware of will be made as I edit. I also feel like I’m liking what I see.
This half-act, more than the first half of the novel, seems like the vehicle where I make my statements about life as I see it, and as I invite the reader to think about it. I need to be clear about what I’m saying, indirectly, of course. But I also need to be big, as Donald Maass says in his books on writing. The other thing that occurs to me is I really need to implement the Southpark “But/Then” cause and effect. That needs to be present throughout the novel, but it really needs to be implemented in 2B. Everything should follow as a reaction to what preceded it.
I see a couple of medium-sized problems. I need to add a character who takes over for Chief Shikellamy, who is killed off-camera in this section. I’ll be introducing two characters who have little scene-time. I need to get both of them in the first part of the novel. At least mention them so that they don’t seem to be coming out of the blue. One is a Black female cardiologist who has had a nervous breakdown. The other is a Hispanic artist who is the lover of the cardiologist. In my head this all works. On paper? I will do my darnedest to make it work.
Now more than ever, I believe I won’t be able to tell if all this is clicking away as it should until I get the full second draft revised. The end has to be in focus before I can truly judge whether the rest of it is set up like a line of dominoes. This summer I really need to write that book about the right way to write a novel and all the myriad ways of how NOT to write a novel.
This week I’m away Tuesday and Wednesday. I’ll write Monday, Thursday, and Friday. My next diary entry will be on Substack the evening of 4/17. Check it out! Just type in Robert J Hankes and it should come up.
