Quite the Life (and all in Times New Roman 10pt!)
I started taking writing classes and attended workshops – some recognizable and prestigious…or so they told me – since the 1970s.
In all that time – fifty years! – no teacher, instructor, writer, author, professor, wordsmithing professional gave me what I’m about to give you.
And boy did that piss me off.
I’m happy to learn I’m the village idiot and everybody else knew this, that what I’m about to share is intuitively obvious to the casual observer, except no author, writer, or wordsmither of any kind whom I’ve talked with knew this. It was revelatory to them.
So here it is, and I hope it helps.
Rita Mae Brown’s “Starting from Scratch”
Think I’m onto something? Take a class with me or schedule a critique of your work.
Think I’m an idiot? Let me know in a comment.
Either way, we’ll both learn something.
Get copies of my books because it’s a nice thing to do, you care, you can follow along, and I need the money.
Minor changes to some of the other preceding files. Nothing worth mentioning.
Yet.
Rhonda Gilbert lost her Company tail in a fifteenth-floor custodian’s closet at Trump Tower. The custodian’s closet contained one of her many New York City caches, one of hundreds across the globe. Wherever she posted, she used a mathematical formula based on the host city’s name to determine which buildings to use, which floors to use, and what to cache there. LiquidKey – a sweet little Special Services gadget – provided access to any mechanical lock. A Special Services app provided access to electronic locks.
Each cache contained a complete makeover. In this case, the athletically thin, black suited, middle-aged woman with thick, hip length blonde hair went in and an older, matronly woman with thick glasses, a slight lisp, ruddy complexion, and dark, Mediterranean features came out, each makeover took less then sixty seconds thanks to a special Quick-Change class her Russian handlers arranged for her when she first approached them.
Rhonda enjoyed playing both sides. She enjoyed having her own island which nobody knew about. She enjoyed the Russians paying her while they figured out how they could resurrect their empire, what shape it would take and who would run it. She enjoyed going to them, not waiting for them to come to her, with bona fides of a high-level US intelligence/security weapons research group they knew nothing about.
“Don’t beat yourselves up too much. Most of the people who should know about it don’t know about it.”
Irregular meetings were set up at various hotels – dives to five-star – at odd intervals and wherever her missions took her.
Lots of the stuff she told her handlers returned a nod, a “good job,” a “just continue what you’re doing.”
But everything changed when she mentioned Shaman to them, the US’ latest and greatest attempt to determine if ESP and now labeled PSI abilities existed, and if so, how to screen for them, how to foster them, how to develop them for strategic and tactical purposes.
One or two or her handlers completely lost their composure when she first mentioned it. Many sat forward. Most reached across the table for the files like greedy children seeing handfuls of candy for the taking. A few knocked phones off their cradles to make sure they got their candy first.
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A technique I love for involving the reader/listener AND providing necessary story information ASAP is world-building via 1stP POV.
I won’t get into how the term world-building is a glom for all sorts of other things writers need to know in order to write well, things like atmosphere, character, dialogue, storytelling, style, tone, conflict, description, exposition, …
No wonder they glom it all together into “world-building!”
I mean, it’s a lot easier to do one thing poorly than develop the skills so you can use some while developing others and constantly adding to your repertoire/took kit, right?
Harrumph!.
As mentioned in experiments 5, 14, 25, and in other experiments, 1stP POV is immediate and intimate. The narrator is talking directly to the reader/listener. Someone talking directly to you and being vulnerable (whenever anyone shares their take on something – be it the weather, politics, food, people, … – they are being vulnerable. Being vulnerable, by the way, is how confidence players do their thing) is a quick way to build rapport, and rapport equals readers’ increase interest in the story.
Think I’m onto something? Take a class with me or schedule a critique of your work.
Think I’m an idiot? Let me know in a comment.
Either way, we’ll both learn something.
Get copies of my books because it’s a nice thing to do, you care, you can follow along, and I need the money.
