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Well, The Centerpiece of the Novel Got Done ...

I didn't get to Act 2B, but I stand at its door

Robert J Hankes

Apr 10, 2025

First published on Substack

 

4/10/2025: I started this week with the best of intentions. And I started well. My first task? Revise the chapter that is the centerpiece of the novel. I’ve read enough writing books to convince me that something special needs to happen there. And, boy! Does it! The chapter is a chronicle of a New Year’s Eve date shared between the protagonist, Kelsey Webb, and one of the antagonists, Zeke Rivers. It is a disastrous date. By changing the course of their relationship, it changes the course all of Kelsey’s fortunes for the next three months.

 

Here are two versions of the end of the chapter. What’s happening in it? Kelsey has nearly been raped by Zeke. She escapes from his car and runs out into the empty parking lot, wanting to get as far from him as she can. Halfway to the park exit, she remembers to call 911. Temperature? 15 degrees in Northeastern PA. 1:30 a.m.

 

Here’s the 1st draft:

… Then I realized what had just happened to me. I was about to be raped. I stopped walking. I called 911, gave them my location, said I was almost raped, and that the assailant was still near me. The dispatcher said someone would be there in a few minutes.

I guess he was going to try to get a baby one way or the other.

His car started up. It pulled close to me. The passenger-side window slid down.

“You had your phone out. Did you call your parents?”

I slowly walked away from his car, towards the parking lot entrance.

He eased his car up next to me again. I smelled exhaust.

“You deserve everything you’re about to get,” he yelled. “Nice knowing you. Goodbye, Kelsey Webb.”

I looked up. I was ready for him to run me over. Something bounced off my coat and tinkled across the asphalt. I looked him in his eyes. The window of the car shut.

But he did not turn the Crown Vic around and crush me into the pavement. Instead, he drove away from me, back through the parking lot, down the access road, and onto Route 274.

I stood there, breathing in the frosty air. I tried to shiver in an attempt to warm my coat.

I looked down on the parking lot. Three feet away from me, the ring leaned on it side. I gazed into its stones until they flashed at me, reflecting the police car’s red and blue lights as it roared into the parking lot.

With my heel I ground the ring into the asphalt.

 

Here’s the same moment from the rewrite I did last Monday morning.

I jump up. He has one arm out of the passenger-side door as he crawls across the car seat after me. I slam the door on his arm as hard as I can. He pulls it back into the car. I kick the door shut.

Then I run. At first, anywhere away from him. Then I recalculate and turn towards the park entrance. I know I can’t outrun him in his car. But I can try.

It hits me. Zeke Rivers just tried to rape me. Pictures of me in him in the sandbox ten years ago flash through my brain. Yeah. Him. I stop, grabbing in my coat pocket for my phone.

“911. What is your emergency?”

“I’m being raped. I’m in the Ruffed Grouse Lake parking lot. He’s still here but I got away from his car. He’s drunk. He may attack me again.”

“Stay on the line. Do not hang up. Your name?”

“Kelsey Webb.”

“Your attacker’s name?”

“Zeke Rivers.”

“Who else is present?”

“No one.”

“Do not hang up. Stay where you are. Cruiser’s on its way.”

I look up. He’s turned the Crown Vic around so that it’s facing me. The car idles, emitting a light cloud of exhaust. I wonder what the temperature is. I can’t see his face due to the glare of his headlights. But I can feel him staring into me.

Will he chase me now? Or drive away?

I flick flashlight on my phone and hold it up over my head. So he knows.

We lock in that standoff for a minute or two.

He was gonna try for a baby tonight. One way, or the other.

His window buzzes down a crack. Something tiny is cast out. The window closes.

He revs his engine. It roars. But the car doesn’t move. Then boom! He releases the brake. The tires spin mightily against the parking lot pavement. A cloud—Smoke? Exhaust? Fog?—rises from the front end of his car.

The Crown Vic flies at me.

I prepare to die.

The side of the car brushes my parka’s sleeve as the Crown Vic explodes by me. It speeds out of the parking lot, fishtails as it whips right, and rockets away down 274.

I am cold. Really cold. Shivering. I pull up my shoulders and drop my head low into the zipped-up coat. Could use a hat right now.

I look out at 274 through the drizzle. What did Mrs. Gallagher call deafening silence? An oxymoron? I didn’t know what she was talking about. Now I do.

Maybe if I move around …

I walk back to where we were parked. As I suspect. I reach down and, with my frozen index finger and thumb, pick up the ring. I look into the diamond, its peridots still standing sentinel despite everything. How beautiful the ring remains! How brilliant!

I hear the siren. I drop the ring, and, using my high heel, I grind it into the parking lot. The stones break free. The band bursts, then crumbles. Its wreckage disappears, falling into cracks, covered by dirt.

How fragile the ring turned out to be! How worthless!

The red and blue lights stir me from its hypnotic hold.

 

Definitely more specific. More detailed. And, I hope, more suspenseful.

It was my plan to write every day this week. Do a diary entry on Tuesday, as well as this one tonight. But this has turned out to be a Yikes! week. My son deciding on a grad school. Me deciding where I’m going with my guitar instruction. And a plethora of side trips. Nothing has been revised since Monday.

 

However, I remain optimistic. You may have gathered that by the name of my website. Nothing is scheduled after 10 a.m. tomorrow. Should be a good 3-4 hours of revision. I plan to update you about by Sunday evening. Check out my website at diaryofanoptimisticwriter.org and see if I do!

 

Hey! You two subscribers out there! What do you think of the writing?