Flashbacks!

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

original posting: November 10, 1995

[hi, ho, three days to blow...no time to lose, let's get to writing!]

1. Pick a character and a scene. You may have more than one character in the scene, but you will probably want us to identify with one character.

2. Sketch out enough of the scene so that we know where it is going.  Perhaps the main character is going to blow the brains out of the other person? or cheat at cards, kiss and throw up, you be the judge...

3. And, voila, something in the scene drives our poor little character into the throes of the flashback. Here, far from the maddening present, our character relives one of life's moments, and remembers...ah, that's what they remember?

4. Back to the present! However, due to the ameliorating influenza (germ of an idea, virus retrograde, or other twiddle), our character now acts differently, laying down the gun, playing an honest hand (5 Aces? How can this be?), swallowing and grinning, or hanging themselves on the old oak...

Simple, straight narrative technique. Start a scene, interruptus, and resume.

On those keys, get ready, tap-tap-tap!

[do you really, truly like those first sentence quirkies? okay, here's another one...

Uncle Ned lay dead on the dining room table.

and you thought ... what? no, I can't believe...really? wow!]

Over the Bridge...

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting: Nov. 3, 1995

[okay, we got to fryday, the oil's hot, the pan's not, let's see what kind of flames we can get ourselves into...]

     The rain brushed silver-gray scratches across the face of the world. It drummed impatient castanet rolls on her umbrella as she walked on the bridge.
     Autumn trees seemed to flame, red, gold, even browning leaves somehow glowing against the damp dark trunks. Silvery curtains of rain danced, grey banks of fog billowed and melted away, and when the buildings along the river appeared momentarily, they seemed unusually far away, wavering and shifting as the rain darkened the distance. She enjoyed the illusion of movement that seemed to make the end of the bridge shift around in the pouring rain outside the comfort of her umbrella.
     She never even noticed when she walked from the ordinary world into another one.

[so? who is she? what kind of world did she walk into? what happens to her?

take this beginning--drenched in melodrama? who said that?--and let it drip down your neural netting, squelch around in the mud of your clay feet, and eventually tingle out in a freshet of wordy wonder...WRITE!]

rainy days and moondays...