On the first day of Spring, to celebrate getting my daily
rara-avis back after my computer glitched (thank you, Bill,)
I thought I'd add my two cents. In 1974 or '75, at a
California writing conference, I heard this local hamburger
mogul asking these questions in a late-night workshop. (He
had made his fortune selling burgers in Southern Cal; now he
wanted to be a published mystery writer; for all I know he
became one.) "Is the opening chapter more dramatically
effective if I have the protagonist driving over a paper bag
of puppies? Or should that scene wait until later?" He was
dead serious. Achilles takes the corpse of Hector for a spin
around the city walls. Is that gratitious, or does it set up
Priam's late night visit in a stronger light? Obscenities?
Well, consider an obscenity to be a hand grenade. When a
writer says "Fuck" in a sentence, all the reader hears is
that word in that sentence, and all of the other information
in that sentence goes unheard. You can say "fuck" all you
want. You can run over a dozen paper bags of puppies. You can
drag Hector's body from here to Santa Monica bouldevard. But
think about playing pool. Before you take your shot, where do
you want the cue ball to be for your next shot?
Frederick Zackel
I
shot her in the back of her leg, not the kneecap. After I
examined her, I said, "I did not shatter your kneecap. The
fleshy part of your thigh got it instead. No major arteries
seem to be severed. You understand?"
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
--------------------~--> What would our lives be like
without music, dance, and theater? Donate or volunteer in the
arts today at Network for Good!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/pkgkPB/SOnJAA/Zx0JAA/kqIolB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
RARA-AVIS home page: http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rara-avis-l/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email
to:
rara-avis-l-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 20 Mar 2005 EST