‹ Back

4/29/25:

    Last week, I looked at the scene where protagonist Kelsey Webb is tossed out of school for the rest of the year. My reaction?

The scene was bad. Bad enough to make my head hurt. It was too short. It had no tension. The tone was folksy rather than riveting. And it wasn’t like any courtroom drama I’d ever read. I’m not even sure I realized, when I wrote the rough draft, that it ought to feel like a courtroom drama.

    My first-draft writing made me mad. This was a pivotal scene. It won’t surprise you that I immediately thought of To Kill a Mockingbird and its courtroom scene. What would the story have been without it?

    So, not only did I have to rewrite a lame scene and turn it into something. I knew I would come to the closing arguments moment, and I’d have to have Kelsey’s lawyer say something that would reverberate through the novel. My “teachable moment.”  

    Putting aside all the other obligations that required my immediate attention, I chose the Chicago style of dealing with hard work. That is, put your head down, work on it as much as you can every day, and eventually you’ll have something better than you started with.

    It took two long days and part of a third to say what I needed to say.

    All the time I was scouring my writing for opportunities for conflict. When I found conflict, I upped the fight to the max. I did everything I could to make the characters breathe on the page.     I made the admittedly absurd actions of the Superintendent and his son as plausible as I could. The prosecuting attorney’s argument was, basically, “Follow the rule.” Which I tend to agree with in most education cases when a student is to be punished for his or her actions.     Don’t make exceptions and don’t make deals. Follow what the handbook says.

    But the defense attorney, Mr. Tulkinghorn from Scranton, stole the show. He told the schoolboard that, for those who would entertain for even a moment that Kelsey was being framed, it begs the question: why frame her? Were the Rivers, father and son, that petty that they’d create this scheme solely to get revenge on Kelsey for refusing to marry Zeke Rivers?

    Or is something deeper transpiring?

    The quote from Tulkinghorn: “Something is rotten in the hamlet of River’s Bend.”

    Okay. That’s probably a “darling” that needs to be killed, but I’m keeping for a week or two before I come up with something better.

    It felt so good to be done with a better draft of this scene! My wife asked me if I was done-done with it. There are many drafts ahead this summer. But. To get to Act III (75% done, Save the Cat! tells me), I just have to write three more chapters. I just have to squeeze ten more scenes into three packages. And all ten scenes look short. And then it will be May in Carlisle, the second-most beautiful month of the year (behind October), and I’ll have four full weeks to revise the last 25% of the book.

    I don’t know how many words are in that 25%. Don’t know how many pages, how many scenes or chapters, either. But for now I’m going to tell people that finishing the 2^nd draft of RIVERS RISE by the end of May will be a slam dunk.

    Easy peasy.