details

When can you have too many of the little suckers? If you "tell" and don't "show" enough, that's when. One of my current plot lines in Victory is suffering from this and I am attempting to fix it. I figure three good "showing" grocery scenes are needed. They should be fun to do. I may borrow from my own Hanna--hanna--[choke] experiences.

I can't think who the writer is--Nicholson Baker?--who spends four pages on tying his shoelace and going down an escalator. Talk about every single tiny detail--but that's his style and it works. It's funny.

There are plenty of good books and very good books that violate every rule you can think of. I read a very good book, MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS that is completely "telling." Two people stand chatting in the elevator. This one is not sure if the other knows she wasn't invited to the party, but in truth the other one already knows but doesn't care because she is sleeping with the neighbor across the street [MH is written much better than that]. I loved it and really enjoyed knowing all that stuff about all the characters. I myself don't usually write with an omniscient narrator. I like speaking in a character's voice.

Feedback I'm getting indicates that my most successful voice in Victory is the old lady. She is fun to write. But of course the challenge is to make all three voices compelling and interesting. If one is more so, then that's not always good.

PROBLEMS, PROBLEMS. If you worried too much about each one, you'd never get anything done. So I'm bludgeoning ahead.

My mother used to make me something she called "blushin' bunny," which was a slice of white bread covered by a thick slab of Velveeta cheese and smothered in Campbell's tomato soup. Yum. I grew up in the Velveeta section of the midwest and one of my early East Coast friends was appalled by this delicacy. He called it "bludgeoned bunny" and sort of ruined it for me. I haven't had it for years and it certainly isn't on the South Beach diet.

Vive la Velveeta
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