
So tonight at workshop, after everyone was settled in with their whiskey and Xanax and whatnot, I passed out my pages. It was a troublesome plot-filled chapter of Empress, one that never quite did its job and I was open, really open, to having it eviscerated and fixed. A tummy tuck, maybe. A little light brain surgery.
My group came through, as they always do, with aces. Money stuff. A slew of concrete solutions. And then it was Chuck's turn, and he asked, "Why do we put dogs in a story?" (I had two in this particular chapter.)
I stumbled through some lame possibilities:
Because they're cute?
Comic relief?
Emotional fodder?
Wrong. Wrong and wrong.
"So we can kill them," he said.
Ah, (palm-to-forehead smack), of course! And in my particular case, by poisoning the spaniels, I'd be killing two dogs with one stone: raising the stakes by foreshadowing a bigger death, and ending the scene on action rather than conjecture. Always a better choice.
Can't wait to wake up tomorrow and poison the pooches!
wait, it's dogs?
ReplyDeletei thought that's why we put moms in stories.
You are too funny, Amy. Have you been talking to Chuck??
ReplyDelete