Like thought provoking, but not as strong as that. Thought poking.

I'm trying a writing technique that I haven't tried in more than five years. It's the first writing technique that I ever used, and I haven't used it in five years because it's kind of crap in some ways, and kind of limiting in all its other ways. It can be effectively pulled off, but it hasn't often been done well. So I haven't used it.

But now I am. And it isn't making me think of much except that I haven't used it in a while. I'm using it in a way slightly different than I had back then, though, and that's proving a little interesting.

Ya'll might be able to guess what technique it is from this clue: maximum immediacy.

The Most Dangerousest Game

Yesterday, the Vikings met for the third time. Last month, in our discussion, somebody started talking about beginning stories with dialog effectively. And, as inevitably happens when talking about what we've written, he mentioned something that he'd read that he thought was a good illustration of his point. "The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell, he said was the story.

A couple days later, this brilliant Viking sent me an e-mail and said, "Hey, look, I found the story I mentioned on the interwebs. What say I lead a discussion on the technique I talked about?"

I was all over that, man. It sounded like a brilliant idea. I e-mailed the link to the other Vikings and said we'd discuss it.

Yesterday at our meeting, therefore, we discussed beginning a story with dialog in lieu of how Richard Connell with "The Most Dangerous Game" seemed to have effectively used dialog to kick-off his story. And we found some interesting stuff. It was excellent educationing.

Here's the story: http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/danger.html It's a good bit of fiction.

Fatima

Writing fiction and talking to people who write fiction has taught me that everyone's a sadist. Everyone likes seeing misfortune happen to other people. It's given me a kind of pessimistic view of, like, everything, but in an ironically funny way. Suffering is entertaining, apparently. Weird, but seemingly true. We take a cruel pleasure in seeing people messed with, or messing with them ourselves. Just for chuckles, we're all out to get each other.

Are we all doomed, then, to being quietly and politely evil forever? I posit not.

Sometimes, I see people with a kind of reverse sadism. Two days ago, I was at the dentist, and this fellow walked in, clearly not feeling that great. Feeling bitchy, I thought. And, upon seeing this dude, the hygenist got this huge, wicked smile on her face, and proceeded to try and cheer him up. The thing being that her methods were distinctly insidious. Through evil prodding and jabbing she probably got him in a tolerable mood inside of five minutes. They walked out of the room, and I didn't see the guy again. But I'd talked to that particular hygenist before, and she's kind of contagious.

There she was, taking a wicked pleasure in insidiously causing another human being happiness. It was kind of weird, but not really all that weird.

We aren't all evil, that's what the moral of the story is.... Or maybe we are all evil, but sometimes our evil would prefer seeing happiness rather than suffering. We greedily want our way. That's kind of evil. Maybe some people evilly just want good stuff to happen.... I'm confused, now.

Second submission of "Totem"

Stardate 18409.6/The Year of Our Lord 2009, July the second

Thursday

Dear persistent pariahs of proud pedigree,

I've just submitted "Totem" a second time. I slightly redrafted the first two paragraphs because the last ones didn't feel good. It's hard writing a first paragraph when I feel like the rest of the story is, more or less, completed. Kind of hard to go back, after reading the whole thing and seeing what it says, and try and encapsulate the message in a paragraph when you've just seen evidence that it took you twenty pages to put your message across. Odd dichotomy. But things gotta starts someplace.

Anyhow, fingers crossed.

Sincerely

Lord Pandaman