Before reading any of the chapter blogs, please Read This
This is the last time (in the blogs for SoTC) that I plead “Not Guilty by Means of Best Storytelling Mode for the Situation” to the charge of Telling Rather than Showing.
SoTC is not the Andrew Lanquist story, and I felt it was best to get his backstory filled in, in the quickest way possible.
Andrew is a manager caught in the typical pressures of a business, particularly one where costs and safety concerns collide. As I built the competing interests that hemmed him in, I really began to feel for the guy.
This chapter goes into some of the changes in the grain industry that would ultimately lead to the disaster. At the outset, I began doing some research into grain elevator explosions. The first case study, for which I accessed online reports about the investigation into an actual explosion, taught me what those changes were, and how they contributed to explosions until more rigid rules were put in place. I had intended to research other catastrophes, but this one proved so rich that I cut my research short. I had enough contributing factors from that one incident to give me all I needed for one novel. Particularly a novel that was intended to be character-driven, with the disaster as a mere backdrop/catalyst.
This chapter also has a passing introduction to Lewee Jorgesson. I won’t say much about her here, preferring to wait for her fuller introduction in Chapter 6. What I should say here, however, is something about how her nature changed from my first inception.
Lewee was meant to be a minor character. I conceived her as being somewhat mentally slow. Not retarded, but on the lower side of the intelligence bell curve’s centerline. She was going to be somewhat of a contrast to Annie. But with the developments in Chapter 6, I began to realize her potential to the story, and began pulling her intelligence level up so as to more fully utilize her.
Unfortunately this was not a sharp bright-line change. It was a scene-by-scene evolution. As a result, there was a passage somewhere in this chapter that still carried some lines that reflected on her not being too bright. Now I knew by this time that Lewee was brighter than I originally imagined her, so when I read over those lines during rewrites, they didn’t sink in to me as being no longer appropriate. I got a good scolding from my trusted advisor Gerry Dailey (the original Ancient Reader) that I was being insulting toward Lewee. I was flabbergasted at the notion, but when I looked back at the passage, with the eyes of a first-time reader (a tough row to hoe, I’ve got to say) I saw she was absolutely right. I think I have now purged all of her scenes of those residual elements, but I could have missed some.
Lewee is definitely not as bright as Annie, but Lewee is definitely an underachiever, which causes many to not think of her as bright.
The chapter ends with a scene in the Lanquist home, as Andrew arrives home from work. I dearly love this scene. Andy Jr., a true hellion, is modeled after my dear brother Kent, who sadly passed on some years ago. But that man lived way longer than he had any business living (and that is said with the greatest affection). He was a live-life-to-the-fullest kind of guy, and he put our folks through a lot, till he settled down enough to be a functioning member of society.
This shaved-head-for-the-class-pictures thing was a real event, as was the silent supper that ensued. There were 18 years between us, so I was not around for this event. But oh, how I loved to hear the story.
Love ya and miss ya, Curly!