Writing Lessons
WRITING LESSON 10:
SUMMARY OF WRITING CLASSES
LET'S SUMMARIZE THESE FICTION CLASSES:
* WRITING SHORT STORY OR NOVEL REQUIRES A CERTAIN STRUCTURE
* WRITING FICTION CAN BE FUN BUT YOU HAVE TO WRITE IN ORDER TO FINISH
* WRITING TECHNIQUES ONCE LEARNED OFFER PLENTY OF VARIETY
Keeping this simple. Below you find a document with various structure and techniques highlighted. Simply read the story once to familiarize yourself with it and as you read notice the notes on the right. This simple exercise matches what you should be willing to do (consciously or unconsciously) when reading fiction.
SUMMARY STRUCTURE AND TECHIQUES BELOW
GOLDEN FLEECE
By Fannie Hurst, 1918
How saving a dispensation it is that men do not carry in their hearts
perpetual ache at the pain of the world, that the body-thuds of the
drink-crazed, beating out frantic strength against cell doors, cannot
penetrate the beatitude of a mother bending, at that moment, above a crib.
Men can sit in club windows while, even as they sit, are battle-fields
strewn with youth dying, their faces in mud. While men are dining where
there are mahogany and silver and the gloss of women's shoulders, are men
with kick-marks on their shins, ice gluing shut their eyes, and lashed with
gale to some ship-or-other's crow's-nest. Women at the opera, so fragrant
that the senses swim, sit with consciousness partitioned against a
sweating, shuddering woman in some forbidding, forbidden room, hacking open
a wall to conceal something red-stained. One-half of the world does not
know or care how the other half lives or dies.
When, one summer, July came in like desert wind, West Cabanne Terrace and
that part of residential St. Louis that is set back in carefully conserved,
grove-like lawns did not sip its iced limeades with any the less
refreshment because, down-town at the intersection of Broadway and West
Street, a woman trundling a bundle of washing in an old perambulator
suddenly keeled of heat, saliva running from her mouth-corners.
At three o'clock, that hour when so often a summer's day reaches its stilly
climax and the heat-dance becomes a thing visible, West Cabanne Terrace and
its kind slip into sheerest and crêpiest de Chine, click electric fans to
third speed, draw green shades, and retire for siesta.
At that same hour, in the Popular Store, where Broadway and West Street
intersect, one hundred and fifty salesgirls--jaded sentinels for a
public that dares not venture down, loll at their counters and after the
occasional shopper, relax deeper to limpidity.
At the jewelry counter, a crystal rectangle facing broadside the main
entrance and the bleached and sun-grilled street without, Miss Lola
Hassiebrock, salient among many and with Olympian certainty of self, lifted
two Junoesque arms like unto the handles of a vase, held them there in the
kind of rigidity that accompanies a yawn, and then let them flop. "Oh-h-h-h, God bless my soul!" she said.
Miss Josie Beemis, narrowly constricted between shoulders that barely
sloped off from her neck, with arms folded flat to her flat bosom and her
back a hypothenuse against the counter, looked up.
"Watch out, Loo! I read in the paper where a man up in Alton got caught in
the middle of one of those gaps and couldn't ungap."
Miss Hassiebrock batted at her lips and shuddered. "It's my nerves, dearie. All the doctors say that nine gaps out of ten are nerves."
Miss Beemis hugged herself a bit flatter, looking out straight ahead into a
parasol sale across the aisle. "Enough sleep ain't such a bad cure for gaps," she said.
"I'll catch up in time, dearie; my foot's been asleep all day."
"Huh!"--sniffling so that her thin nose quirked sidewise. "I will now
indulge in hollow laughter--"
"You can't, dearie," said Miss Hassiebrock, driven to vaudevillian
extremities, "you're cracked."
"Well, I may be cracked, but my good name ain't."
A stiffening of Miss Hassiebrock took place, as if mere verbiage had
suddenly flung a fang. From beneath the sternly and too starched white
shirtwaist and the unwilted linen cravat wound high about her throat and
sustained there with a rhinestone horseshoe, it was as if a wave of color
had started deep down, rushing up under milky flesh into her hair.
"Is that meant to be an in-sinuating remark, Josie?"
"'Tain't how it's meant; it's how it's took."
"There's some poor simps in this world, maybe right here in this store,
ought to be excused from what they say because they don't know any better."
"I know this much: To catch the North End street-car from here, I don't
have to walk every night down past the Stag Hotel to do it."
At that Miss Hassiebrock's ears, with the large pearl blobs in them,
tingled where they peeped out from the scallops of yellow hair, and she
swallowed with a forward movement as if her throat had constricted.
"I--take the street-car where I darn please, and it's nobody's darn
business."
"Sure it ain't! Only, if a poor working-girl don't want to make it
everybody's darn business, she can't run around with the fast rich boys of
this town and then get invited to help hem the altar-cloth."
"Anything I do in this town I'm not ashamed to do in broad daylight."
"Maybe; but just the samey, I notice the joy rides out to Claxton don't
take place in broad daylight. I notice that 'tall, striking blonde' and
Charley Cox's speed-party in the morning paper wasn't exactly what you'd
call a 'daylight' affair."
"No, it wasn't; it was--my affair."
"Say, if you think a girl like you can run with the black sheep of every
rich family in town and make a noise like a million dollars with the horsy
way she dresses, it ain't my grave you're digging."
"Maybe if some of the girls in this store didn't have time to nose so much,
they'd know why I can make them all look like they was caught out in the
rain and not pressed the next morning. While they're snooping in what
don't concern them I'm snipping. Snipping over my last year's
black-and-white-checked jacket into this year's cutaway. If you girls had
as much talent in your needle as you've got in your conversation, you might
find yourselves somewheres."
"Maybe what you call 'somewheres' is what lots of us would call
'nowheres.'"
Miss Hassiebrock drew herself up and, from the suzerainty of sheer height,
looked down upon Miss Beemis there, so brown and narrow beside the
friendship-bracelet rack.
"I'll have you know, Josie Beemis, that if every girl in this store watched
her step like me, there'd be a darn sight less trouble in the world."
"I know you don't go beyond the life-line, Loo, but, gee! you--you do swim
out some!"
"Little Loo knows her own depth, all righty."
"Not the way you're cuttin' up with Charley Cox."
Miss Hassiebrock lowered her flaming face to scrutinize a tray of
rhinestone bar pins.
"I'd like to see any girl in this store turn down a bid with Charley Cox. I
notice there are plenty of you go out to the Highland dances hoping to meet
even his imitation."
"The rich boys that hang around the Stag and out to the Highlands don't get
girls like us anywheres."
"I don't need them to get me anywhere. It's enough when a fellow takes
me out that he can tuck me up in a six-cylinder and make me forget my
stone-bruise. Give me a fellow that smells of gasolene instead of bay rum
every time. Trolley-car Johnnies don't mean nothing in my life."
"You let John Simeon out of this conversation!"
"You let Charley Cox out!"
"Maybe he don't smell like a cleaned white glove, but John means something
by me that's good."
"Well, since you're so darn smart, Josie Beemis, and since you got so much
of the English language to spare, I'm going to tell you something. Three
nights in succession, and I can prove it by the crowd, Charley Cox has
asked me to marry him. Begged me last night out at Claxton Inn, with Jess
Turner and all that bunch along, to let them roust out old man Gerber there
in Claxton and get married in poetry. Put that in your pipe and smoke it
awhile, Josie; it may soothe your nerve."
"Y-aw," said Miss Beemis.
The day dwindled. Died.
At West Street, where Broadway intersects, the red sun at its far end
settled redly and cleanly to sink like a huge coin into the horizon. The
Popular Store emptied itself into this hot pink glow, scurried for the open
street-car and, oftener than not, the overstuffed rear platform, nose to
nose, breath to breath.
Fortunately the Popular Store took its semi-annual inventory of yards and
not of souls. Such a stock-taking, that of the human hearts which beat from
half after eight to six behind six floors of counters, would have revealed
empty crannies, worn thin in places with the grind of routine. The
eight-thirty-to-six business of muslin underwear, crash toweling, and
skirt-binding. The great middle class of shoppers who come querulous with
bunions and babies. The strap-hanging homeward ride. Supper, but usually
within range of the range that boils it. The same smells of the same foods.
The, cinematograph or front-stoop hour before bed. Or, if Love comes,
and he will not be gainsaid, a bit of wooing at the fountain--the
soda-fountain. But even he, oftener than not, comes moist-handed, and in a
ready-tied tie. As if that matters, and yet somehow, it does. Leander wore
none, or had he, would have worn it flowing. Then bed, and the routine
of its unfolding and coaxing the pillow from beneath the iron clamp. An
alarm-clock crashing through the stuff of dreams. Coffee within reach of
the range. Another eight-thirty-to-six reality of muslin underwearing,
crash toweling, and skirt-binding.
But, not given to self-inventory, the Popular Store emptied itself
with that blessed elasticity of spirit which, unappalled, stretches to
to-morrows as they come.
At Ninth Street Miss Lola Hassiebrock loosed her arm where Miss Beemis
had linked into it. Wide-shouldered and flat-hipped, her checked suit so
pressed that the lapels lay entirely flat to the swell of her bosom, her
red sailor-hat well down over her brow, and the high, swathing cravat
rising to inclose her face like a wimple, she was Fashion's apotheosis in
tailor-made mood. When Miss Hassiebrock walked, her skirt, concealing yet
revealing an inch glimmer of gray-silk stocking above gray-suede spats,
allowed her ten inches of stride. She turned now, sidestepping within those
ten inches.
"See you to-morrow, Josie."
"Ain't you taking the car?"
"No, dearie," said Miss Hassiebrock, stepping down to cross the street;
"you take it, but not for keeps."
And so, walking southward on Ninth Street in a sartorial glory that was of
her own making-over from last season, even St. Louis, which at the stroke
of six rushes so for the breeze of its side yards, leaving darkness to
creep into down-town streets that are as deserted as cañons, turned its
feminine head to bear in mind the box-plaited cutaway, the male eye
appraising its approval with bold, even quirking eye.
Through this, and like Diana, who, so aloof from desire, walked in the path
of her own splendor, strode Miss Hassiebrock, straight and forward of eye.
Past the Stag Hotel, in an aisle formed by lounging young bloods and a curb
lined with low, long-snouted motor-cars, the gaze beneath the red sailor
and above the high, horsy stock a bit too rigidly conserved.
Slightly by, the spoken word and the whistled innuendo followed her like
a trail of bubbles in the wake of a flying-fish. A youth still wearing a
fraternity pin pretended to lick his downy chops. The son of the president
of the Mound City Oil Company emitted a long, amorous whistle. Willie
Waxter--youngest scion, scalawag, and scorcher of one of the oldest
families--jammed down his motorgoggles from the visor of his cap, making
the feint of pursuing. Mr. Charley Cox, of half a hundred first-page
exploits, did pursue, catching up slightly breathless.
"What's your hurry, honey?"
She spun about, too startled. "Charley Cox! Well, of all the nerve! Why didn't you scare me to death and be done with it?"
"Did I scare you, sweetness? Cross my heart, I didn't mean to."
"Well, I should say you did!"
He linked his arm into hers.
"Come on; I'll buy you a drink."
She unlinked.
"Honest, can't a girl go home from work in this town without one of you
fellows getting fresh with her?"
"All right, then; I'll buy you a supper. The car is back there, and we'll
shoot out to the inn. What do you say? I feel like a house afire this
evening, kiddo. What does your speedometer register?"
"Charley, aren't you tired painting this old town yet? Ain't there just
nothing will bring you to your senses? Honest, this morning's papers are a
disgrace. You--you won't catch me along again."
He slid his arm, all for ingratiating, back into hers.
"Come now, honey; you know you like me for my speed."
She would not smile.
"Honest, Charley, you're the limit."
"But you like me just the same. Now don't you, Loo?"
She looked at him sidewise.
"You've been drinking, Charley."
He felt of his face.
"Not a drop, Loo. I need a shave, that's all."
"Look at your stud--loose."
He jammed a diamond whip curling back upon itself into his maroon scarf. He
was slightly heavy, so that his hands dimpled at the knuckle, and above
the soft collar, joined beneath the scarf with a goldbar pin, his chin
threatened but did not repeat itself.
"I got to go now, Charley; there's a North End car coming."
"Aw, now, sweetness, what's the idea? Didn't you walk down here to pick me
up?"
An immediate flush stung her face.
"Well, of all the darn conceit! Can't a girl walk down to the loop to catch
her car and stretch her legs after she's been cooped up all day, without a
few of you boys throwing a bouquet or two at yourselves?"
"I got to hand it you, Loo; when you walk down this street, you make every
girl in town look warmed over."
"Do you like it, Charley? It's that checked jacket I bought at Hamlin's
sale last year made over."
"Say, it's classy! You look like all the money in the world, honey."
"Huh, two yards of coat-lining, forty-four cents, and Ida Bell's last
year's office-hat reblocked, sixty-five."
"You're the show-piece of the town, all right. Come on; let's pick up a
crowd and muss-up Claxton Road a little."
"I meant what I said, Charley. After the cuttings-up of last night and the
night before I'm quits. Maybe Charley Cox can afford to get himself talked
about because he's Charley Cox, but a girl like me with a job to hold down,
and the way ma and Ida Bell were sitting up in their nightgowns, green
around the gills, when I got home last night--nix! I'm getting myself
talked about, if you want to know it, running with--your gang, Charley."
"I'd like to see anybody let out so much as a grunt about you in front of
me. A fellow can't do any more, honey, to show a girl where she stands with
him than ask her to marry him--now can he? If I'd have had my way last
night, I'd--"
"You was drunk when you asked me, Charley."
"You mean you got cold feet?"
"Thank God, I did!"
"I don't blame you, girl. You might do worse--but not much."
"That's what you'd need for your finishing-touch, a girl like me dragging
you down."
"You mean pulling me up."
"Yes, maybe, if you didn't have a cent."
"I'd have enough sense then to know better than to ask you, honey. You
'ain't got that fourteen-carat look in your eye for nothing. You're the
kind that's going to bring in a big fish, and I wish it to you."
"Lots you know."
"Come on; let me ride you around the block, then."
"If--if you like my company so much, can't you just take a walk with me or
come out and sit on our steps awhile?"
"Lord, girl, Flamm Avenue is hot enough to fry my soul to-night!"
"We can't all have fathers that live in thirty-room houses out in
Kingsmoreland Place."
"Thank God for that! I sneaked home this morning to change my clothes, and
thought maybe I'd got into somebody's mausoleum by mistake."
"Was--was your papa around, Charley?"
"In the library, shut up with old man Brookes."
"Did he--did he see the morning papers? You know what he said last time,
Charley, when the motor-cycle cop chased you down an embankment."
"Honey, if my old man was to carry out every threat he utters, I'd be
disinherited, murdered, hong-konged, shanghaied, and cremated every day in
the year."
"I got to go now, Charley."
"Not let a fellow even spin you home?"
"You know I want to, Charley, but--but it don't do you any good, boy, being
seen with me in that joy-wagon of yours. It--it don't do you any good,
Charley, ever--ever being seen with me."
"There's nothing or nobody in this town can hurt my reputation, honey, and
certainly not my ace-spot girl. Turn your mind over, and telephone down for
me to come out and pick you up about eight."
"Don't hit it up to-night, Charley. Can't you go home one evening?"
He juggled her arm. "You're a nice little girl, all righty."
"There's my car."
He elevated her by the elbow to the step, swinging up half-way after her to
drop a coin into the box. "Take care of this little lady there, conductor, and don't let your car skid."
"Oh, Charley--silly!" She forced her way into the jammed rear platform, the sharp brim of the red sailor creating an area for her. "S'long, Charley!"
"S'long, girl!"
Wedged there in the moist-faced crowd, she looked after him, at his broad
back receding. An inclination to cry pressed at her eyeballs.
Flamm Avenue, which is treeless and built up for its entire length with
two-story, flat-roofed buildings, stares, window for window, stoop for
stoop, at its opposite side, and, in summer, the strip of asphalt street,
unshaded and lying naked to the sun, gives off such an effluvium of heat
and hot tar that the windows are closed to it and night descends like a
gas-mask to the face.
Opening the door upon the Hassiebrock front room, convertible from bed- to
sitting-room by the mere erect-position-stand of the folding-bed, a wave
of this tarry heat came flowing out, gaseous, sickening. Miss Hassiebrock
entered with her face wry, made a diagonal cut of the room, side-stepping a
patent rocker and a table laid out with knickknacks on a lace mat, slammed
closed two windows, and, turning inward, lifted off her hat, which left a
brand across her forehead and had plastered down her hair in damp scallops.
"Whew!"
"Lo-o, that you?"
"Yes, ma."
"Come out to your supper. I'll warm up the kohlrabi."
Miss Hassiebrock strode through a pair of chromatic portières, with them
swinging after her, and into an unlit kitchen, gray with dusk. A table
drawn out center and within range of the gas-range was a blotch in the
gloom, three figures surrounding it with arms that moved vaguely among a
litter of dishes.
"I wish to Heaven somebody in this joint would remember to keep those front
windows shut!"
Miss Ida Bell Hassiebrock, at the right of the table, turned her head so
that, against the window, her profile, somewhat thin, cut into the gloom.
"There's a lot of things I wish around here," she said, without a ripple to
her lips.
"Hello, ma!"
"I'll warm up the kohlrabi, Loo."
Mrs. Hassiebrock, in the green black of a cotton umbrella and as sparse of
frame, moved around to the gas-range, scraping a match and dragging a pot
over the blue flame.
"Never mind, ma; I ain't hungry."
At the left of the table Genevieve Hassiebrock, with thirteen's crab-like
silhouette of elbow, rigid plaits, and nose still hitched to the star of
her nativity, wound an exceedingly long arm about Miss Hassiebrock's trim
waist-line.
"I got B in de-portment to-day, Loo. You owe me the wear of your spats
Sunday."
Miss Hassiebrock squeezed the hand at her waist.
"All right, honey. Cut Loo a piece of bread."
"Gussie Flint's mother scalded her leg with the wash-boiler."
"Did she? Aw!"
Mrs. Hassiebrock came then, limping around, tilting the contents of the
steaming pot to a plate.
"Sit down, ma; don't bother."
Miss Hassiebrock drew up, pinning a fringed napkin that stuck slightly in
the unfolding across her shining expanse of shirtwaist. Broke a piece of
bread. Dipped.
Silence.
"Paula Krausnick only got C in de-portment. When the monitor passed the
basin, she dipped her sponge soppin'-wet."
"Anything new, ma?"
Mrs. Hassiebrock, now at the sink, swabbed a dish with gray water.
"My feet's killin' me," she said.
Miss Ida Bell, who wore her hair in a coronet wound twice round her small
head, crossed her knife and fork on her plate, folded her napkin, and tied
it with a bit of blue ribbon.
"I think it's a shame, ma, the way you keep thumping around in your
stocking feet like this was backwoods."
"I can't get my feet in shoes--the joints--"
"You thump around as much as you darn please, ma. If Ida Bell don't like
the looks of you, let her go home with some of her swell stenog friends.
You let your feet hurt you any old way you want 'em to. I'm going to buy
you some arnica. Pass the kohlrabi."
"Well, my swell 'stenog friends,' as you call them, keep themselves
self-respecting girls without getting themselves talked about, and that's
more than I can say of my sister. If ma had the right kind of gumption with
you, she'd put a stop to it, all right."
Mrs. Hassiebrock leaned her tired head sidewise into the moist palm of her
hand.
"She's beyond me and the days when a slipper could make her mind. I wisht
to God there was a father to rule youse!"
"I tell you, ma--mark my word for it--if old man Brookes ever finds out I'm
sister to any of the crowd that runs with Charley Cox and Willie Waxter and
those boys whose fathers he's lawyer for, it'll queer me for life in
that office--that's what it will. A girl that's been made confidential
stenographer after only one year in an office to have to be afraid, like I
am, to pick up the morning's paper."
"Paula Krausnick's lunch was wrapped in the paper where Charley Cox got
pinched for speedin'--speedin'--speedin'--"
"Shut up, Genevieve! Just don't you let my business interfere with
yours, Ida Bell. Brookes don't know you're on earth outside of your
dictation-book. Take it from me, I bet he wouldn't know you if he met you
on the street."
"That's about all you know about it! If you found yourself confidential
stenographer to the biggest lawyer in town, he'd know you, all right--by
your loud dressing. A blind man could see you coming."
"Ma, are you going to stand there and let her talk to me thataway? I notice
she's willing to borrow my loud shirtwaists and my loud gloves and my loud
collars."
"If ma had more gumption with you, maybe things would be different."
Mrs. Hassiebrock limped to the door, dangling a pail.
"I 'ain't got no more strength against her. My ears won't hold no more. I'm
taking this hot oil down to Mrs. Flint's scalds. She's, beyond my control,
and the days when a slipper could make her mind. I wisht to God there was a
father! I wisht to God!"
Her voice trailed off and down a rear flight of stairs.
"Yes _sir_," resumed Miss Hassiebrock, her voice twanging in her effort at
suppression, "I notice you're pretty willing to borrow some of my loud
dressing when you get a bid once in a blue moon to take a boat-ride up to
Alton with that sad-faced Roy Brownell. If Charley didn't have a cent to
his name and a harelip, he'd make Roy Brownell look like thirty cents."
"If Roy Brownell was Charley Cox, I'd hate to leave him laying around loose
where you could get your hands on him."
"Genevieve, you run out and play."
"If--if you keep running around till all hours of the night, with me and ma
waiting up for you, kicking up rows and getting your name insinuated in the
newspapers as 'the tall, handsome blonde,' I--I'm going to throw up my job,
I am, and you can pay double your share for the running of this flat. Next
thing we know, with that crowd that don't mean any good to you, this family
is going to find itself with a girl in trouble on its hands."
"You--"
"And if you want to know it, and if I wasn't somebody's confidential
stenographer, I could tell you that you're on the wrong scent. Boys like
Charley Cox don't mean good by your kind of a girl. If you're not speedy,
you look it, and that's almost the same as inviting those kind of boys
to--"
Miss Lola Hassiebrock sprang up then, her hand coming down in a small crash
to the table.
"You cut out that talk in front of that child!"
Thus drawn into the picture, Genevieve, at thirteen, crinkled her face for
not uncalculating tears.
"In this house it's fuss and fuss and fuss. Other children can go to the
'movies' after supper, only me-e-e--"
"Here, honey; Loo's got a dime for you."
"Sending that child out along your own loose ways, instead of seeing to it
she stays home to help ma do the dishes!"
"I'll do the dishes for ma."
"It's bad enough for one to have the name of being gay without starting
that child running around nights with--"
"Ida Bell!"
"You dry up, Ida Bell! I'll do what I pl--ease with my di--uhm--di--uhm."
"If you say another word about such stuff in front of that child, I'll--"
"Well, if you don't want her to hear what she sees with her eyes all around
her, come into the bedroom, then, and I can tell you something that'll
bring you to your senses."
"What you can tell me I don't want to hear."
"You're afraid."
"I am, am I?"
"Yes."
With a wrench of her entire body, Miss Lola Hassiebrock was across the room
at three capacity strides, swung open a door there, and stood, head flung
up and pressing back tears, her lips turned inward.
"All right, then--tell--"
After them, the immediately locked door resisting, Genevieve fell to
batting the panels.
"Let me in! Let me in! You're fussin' about your beaux. Ray Brownell has a
long face, and Charley Cox has a red face--red face--red face! Let me in!
In!"
After a while the ten-cent piece rolled from her clenched and knocking
fist, scuttling and settling beneath the sink. She rescued it and went out,
lickety-clapping down the flight of rear stairs.
Silence descended over that kitchen, and a sooty dusk that almost
obliterated the table, drawn out and cluttered after the manner of those
who dine frowsily; the cold stove, its pots cloying, and a sink piled high
with a task whose only ending is from meal to meal.
Finally that door swung open again; the wide-shouldered, slim-hipped
silhouette of Miss Hassiebrock moved swiftly and surely through the kind
of early darkness, finding out for itself a wall telephone hung in a small
patch of hallway separating kitchen and front room. Her voice came tight,
as if it were a tense coil in her throat that she held back from bursting
into hysteria.
"Give me Olive, two-one-o." The toe of her boot beat a quick tattoo.
"Stag?... Say, get me Charley Cox. He's out in front or down in the grill
or somewhere around. Page him quick! Important!" She grasped the nozzle of
the instrument as she waited, breathing into it with her head thrown back.
"Hello--Charley? That you? It's me. Loo ... _Loo_! Are you deaf, honey?
What you doing?... Oh, I got the blues, boy; honest I have. Blue as a
cat.... I don't know--just the indigoes. Nothing much. Ain't lit up, are
you, honey?... Sure I will. Don't bring a crowd. Just you and me. I'll walk
down to Gessler's drug-store and you can pick me up there.... Quit your
kidding.... Ten minutes. Yeh. Good-by."
* * * * *
Claxton Inn, slightly outside the city limits and certain of its decorums,
stands back in a grove off a macadamized highway that is so pliant to tire
that of summer nights, with tops thrown back and stars sown like lavish
grain over a close sky and to a rushing breeze that presses the ears like
an eager whisper, motor-cars, wild to catch up with the horizon, tear out
that road--a lightning-streak of them--fearing neither penal law nor Dead
Man's Curve.
Slacking only to be slacked, cars dart off the road and up a gravel
driveway that encircles Claxton Inn like a lariat swung, then park
themselves among the trees, lights dimmed. Placid as a manse without, what
was once a private and now a public house maintains through lowered
lids its discreet white-frame exterior, shades drawn, and only slightly
revealing the parting of lace curtains. It is rearward where what was
formerly a dining-room that a huge, screened-in veranda, very whitely
lighted, juts suddenly out, and a showy hallway, bordered in potted palms,
leads off that. Here Discretion dares lift her lids to rove the gravel
drive for who comes there.
In a car shaped like a motor-boat and as low to the ground Mr. Charley Cox
turned in and with a great throttling and choking of engine drew up among
the dim-eyed monsters of the grove and directly alongside an eight-cylinder
roadster with a snout like a greyhound.
"Aw, Charley, I thought you promised you wasn't going to stop!"
"Honey, sweetness, I just never was so dry."
Miss Hassiebrock laid out a hand along his arm, sitting there in the quiet
car, the trees closing over them.
"There's Yiddles Farm a little farther out, Charley; let's stop there for
some spring water."
He was peeling out of his gauntlets, and cramming them into spacious side
pockets.
"Water, honey, can wash me, but it can't quench me."
"No high jinks to-night, though, Charley?"
"Sure--no."
They high-stepped through the gloom, and finally, with firmer step, up the
gravel walk and into the white-lighted, screened-in porch.
Three waiters ran toward their entrance. A woman with a bare V of back
facing them, and three plumes that dipped to her shoulders, turned square
in her chair.
"Hi, Charley. Hi, Loo!"
"H'lo, Jess!"
They walked, thus guided by two waiters, through a light _confetti_ of
tossed greetings, sat finally at a table half concealed by an artificial
palm.
"You don't feel like sitting with Jess and the crowd, Loo?"
"Charley, hasn't that gang got you into enough mix-ups?"
"All right, honey; anything your little heart desires."
She leaned on her elbows across the table from him, smiling and twirling a
great ring of black onyx round her small finger.
"Love me?"
"Br-r-r--to death!"
"Sure?"
"Sure. What'll you have, hon?"
"I don't care."
"Got any my special Gold Top on ice for me, George? Good. Shoot me a bottle
and a special layout of _hors-d'oeuvre_. How's that, sweetness?"
"Yep."
"Poor little girl," he said, patting the black onyx, "with the bad old
blues! I know what they are, honey; sometimes I get crazy with 'em myself."
Her lips trembled.
"It's you makes me blue, Charley."
"Now, now; just don't worry that big, nifty head of yours about me."
"The--the morning papers and all. I--I just hate to see you going so to--to
the dogs, Charley--a--fellow like you--with brains."
"I'm a bad egg, girl, and what you going to do about it? I was raised like
one, and I'll die like one."
"You ain't a bad egg. You just never had a chance. You been killed with
coin."
"Killed with coin! Why, Loo, do you know, I haven't had to ask my old man
for a cent since my poor old granny died five years ago and left me a world
of money? While he's been piling it up like the Rocky Mountains I've been
getting down to rock-bottom. What would you say, sweetness, if I told you I
was down to my last few thousands? Time to touch my old man, eh?"
He drank off his first glass with a quaff, laughing and waving it empty
before her face to give off its perfume.
"My old man is going to wake up in a minute and find me on his
checking-account again. Charley boy better be making connections with
headquarters or he won't find himself such a hit with the niftiest doll in
town, eh?"
"Charley, you--you haven't run through those thousands and thousands and
thousands the papers said you got from your granny that time?"
"It was slippery, hon; somebody buttered it."
"Charley, Charley, ain't there just no limit to your wildness?"
"You're right, girl; I've been killed with coin. My old man's been too busy
all these years sitting out there in that marble tomb in Kingsmoreland
biting the rims off pennies to hold me back from the devil. Honey, that old
man, even if he is my father, didn't know no more how to raise a boy like
me than that there salt-cellar. Every time I got in a scrape he bought me
out of it, filled up the house with rough talk, and let it go at that. It's
only this last year, since he's short on health, that he's kicking up the
way he should have before it got too late. My old man never used to talk it
out with me, honey. He used to lash it out. I got a twelve-year-old welt on
my back now, high as your finger. Maybe it'll surprise you, girl, but now,
since he can't welt me up any more, me and him don't exchange ten words a
month."
"Did--did he hear about last night, Charley? You know what came out in
the paper about making a new will if--if you ever got pulled in again for
rough-housing?"
"Don't you worry that nifty head of yours about my old man ever making a
new will. He's been pulling that ever since they fired me from the academy
for lighting a cigarette with a twenty-dollar bill."
"Charley!"
"Next to taking it with him, he'll leave it to me before he'll see a penny
go out of the family. I've seen his will, hon."
"Charley, you--you got so much good in you. The way you sent that wooden
leg out to poor old lady Guthrie. The way you made Jimmy Ball go home, and
the blind-school boys and all. Why can't you get yourself on the right
track where you belong, Charley? Why don't you clear--out--West where it's
clean?"
"I used to have that idea, Loo. West, where a fellow's got to stand on his
own. Why, if I'd have met a girl like you ten years ago, I'd have made you
the baby doll of the Pacific Coast. I like you, Loo. I like your style and
the way you look like a million dollars. When a fellow walks into a café
with you he feels like he's wearing the Hope diamond. Maybe the society in
this town has given me the cold shoulder, but I'd like to see any of the
safety-first boys walk in with one that's got you beat. That's what I think
of you, girl."
"Aw, now, you're lighting up. Charley. That's four glasses you've taken."
"Thought I was kidding you last night--didn't you--about wedding-bells?"
"You were lit up."
"I know. You're going to watch your step, little girl, and I don't know as
I blame you. You can get plenty of boys my carat, and a lot of other things
thrown in I haven't got to offer you."
"As if I wouldn't like you, Charley, if you were dead broke!"
"Of course you would! There, there, girl, I don't blame any of you for
feathering your nest." He was flushed now and above the soft collar, his
face had relaxed into a not easily controllable smile. "Feather your nest,
girl; you got the looks to do it. It's a far cry from Flamm Avenue to where
a classy girl like you can land herself if she steers right. And I wish it
to you, girl; the best isn't good enough."
"I--I dare you to ask me again, Charley!"
"Ask what?"
"You know. Throw your head up the way you do when you mean what you say
and--ask."
He was wagging his head now insistently, but pinioning his gaze with the
slightly glassy stare of those who think none too clearly.
"Honest, I don't know, beauty. What's the idea?"
"Didn't you say yourself--Gerber, out here in Claxton that--magistrate that
marries you in verse--"
"By gad, I did!"
"Well--I--I--dare you to ask me again, Charley."
He leaned forward.
"You game, girl?"
"Sure."
"No kidding?"
"Try me."
"I'm serious, girl."
"So'm I."
"There's Jess over there can get us a special license from his
brother-in-law. Married in verse in Claxton sounds good to me, honey."
"But not--the crowd, Charley; just you--and--"
"How're we going to get the license, honey, this time of night without
Jess? Let's make it a million-dollar wedding. We're not ashamed of nobody
or nothing."
"Of course not, Charley."
"Now, you're sure, honey? You're drawing a fellow that went to the dogs
before he cut his canines."
"You're not all to the canines yet, Charley."
"I may be a black sheep, honey, but, thank God, I got my golden fleece to
offer you!"
"You're not--black."
"You should worry, girl! I'm going to make you the million-dollar baby doll
of this town, I am. If they turn their backs, we'll dazzle 'em from behind.
I'm going to buy you every gewgaw this side of the Mississippi. I'm going
to show them a baby doll that can make the high-society bunch in this town
look like Subway sports. Are you game, girl? Now! Think well! Here goes.
Jess!"
"Charley--I--You--"
"Jess--over here! Quick!"
"Charley--honey--"
* * * * *
At eleven o'clock a small, watery moon cut through a sky that was fleecily
clouded--a swift moon that rode fast as a ship. It rode over but did
not light Squire Gerber's one-and-a-half-storied, weathered-gray, and
set-slightly-in-a-hollow house on Claxton countryside.
Three motor-cars, their engines chugging out into wide areas of stillness,
stood processional at the curb. A red hall light showed against the
door-pane and two lower-story windows were widely illuminated.
Within that room of chromos and the cold horsehair smell of unaired years,
silence, except for the singing of three gas-jets, had momentarily fallen,
a dozen or so flushed faces, grotesquely sobered, staring through the
gaseous fog, the fluttering lids of a magistrate whose lips habitually
fluttered, just lifting from his book.
A hysterical catch of breath from Miss Vera de Long broke the ear-splitting
silence. She reached out, the three plumes dipping down the bare V of her
back, for the limp hand of the bride.
"Gawd bless you, dearie; it's a big night's work!"
* * * * *
In the tallest part of St. Louis, its busiest thoroughfares inclosing it
in a rectangle, the Hotel Sherman, where traveling salesmen with real
alligator bags and third-finger diamonds habitually shake their first
Pullman dust, rears eighteen stories up through and above an aeriality of
soft-coal smoke, which fits over the rim of the city like a skull-cap.
In the Louis Quinze, gilt-bedded, gilt-framed, gilt-edged bridal-suite _de
luxe_ on the seventeenth floor, Mrs. Charley Cox sat rigid enough and in
shirt-waisted incongruity on the lower curl of a gilt divan that squirmed
to represent the letter S.
"Charley--are you--sorry?"
He wriggled out of his dust-coat, tossing it on the gilt-canopied bed and
crossed to her, lifting off her red sailor.
"Now that's a fine question for a ten-hours' wifey to ask her hubby, ain't
it? Am I sorry, she asks me before the wedding crowd has turned the corner.
Lord, honey, I never expected anything like you to happen to me!"
She stroked his coat-sleeve, mouthing back tears.
"Now everybody'll say--you're a goner--for sure--marrying a--Popular Store
girl."
"If anybody got the worst of this bargain, it's my girl."
"My own boy," she said, still battling with tears.
"You drew a black sheep, honey, but I say again and again, 'Thank God, you
drew one with golden fleece!'"
"That--that's the trouble, Charley--there's just no way to make a boy with
money know you married him for any other reason."
"I'm not blaming you, honey. Lord! what have I got besides money to talk
for me?"
"Lots. Why--like Jess says, Charley, when you get to squaring your lips and
jerking up your head, there's nothing in the world you can't do that you
set out to do."
"Well, I'm going to set out to make the stiff-necks of this town turn
to look at my girl, all right. I'm going to buy you a chain of diamonds
that'll dazzle their eyes out; I'm--"
"Charley, Charley, that's not what I want, boy. Now that I've got you,
there ain't a chain of diamonds on earth I'd turn my wrist for."
"Yes, there is, girl; there's a string of pear-shaped ones in--"
"I want you to buck up, honey; that's the finest present you can give me. I
want you to buck up like you didn't have a cent to your name. I want you
to throw up your head the way you do when you mean business, and show that
Charley Cox, without a cent to his name, would be--"
"Would be what, honey?"
"A winner. You got brains, Charley--if only you'd have gone through school
and shown them. If you'd only have taken education, Charley, and not got
fired out of all the academies, my boy would beat 'em all. Lord! boy,
there's not a day passes over my head I don't wish for education. That's
why I'm so crazy my little sister Genevieve should get it. I'd have took to
education like a fish to water if I'd have had the chance, and there you
were, Charley, with every private school in town and passed 'em up."
"I know, girl, just looks like every steer I gave myself was the wrong
steer till it was too late to get in right again. Bad egg, I tell you,
honey."
"Too late! Why, Charley--and you not even thirty-one yet? With your brains
and all--too late! You make me laugh. If only you will--why, I'm game to go
out West, Charley, on a ranch, where you can find your feet and learn to
stand on them. You got stuff in you, you have. Jess Turner says you was
always first in school, and when you set your jaw there wasn't nothing you
couldn't get on top of. If you'd have had a mother and--and a father that
wasn't the meanest old man in town, dear, and had known how to raise a
hot-headed boy like you, you'd be famous now instead of notorious--that's
what you'd be."
He patted her yellow hair, tilting her head back against his arm, pinching
her cheeks together and kissing her puckered mouth.
"Dream on, honey. I like you crazy, too."
"But, honey, I--"
"You married this millionaire kid, and, bless your heart, he's going to
make good by showing you the color of his coin!"
"Charley!"
She sprang back from the curve of his embrace, unshed tears immediately
distilled.
"Why, honey--I didn't mean it that way! I didn't mean to hurt your
feelings. What I meant was--'sh-h-h-h, Loo--all I meant was, it's coming to
you. Where'd the fun be if I couldn't make this town point up its ears at
my girl? Nobody knows any better than your hubby what his Loo was cut out
for. She was cut out for queening it, and I'm going to see that she gets
what's her due. Wouldn't be surprised if the papers have us already. Let's
see what we'll give them with their coffee this morning."
He unfolded his fresh sheet, shaking it open with one hand and still
holding her in the cove of his arm.
"Guess we missed the first edition, but they'll get us sure."
She peered at the sheet over his shoulder, her cheek against his and still
sobbing a bit in her throat. The jerking of her breath stopped then; in
fact, it was as if both their breathing had let down with the oneness of a
clock stopped.
It was she who moved first, falling back from him, her mouth dropping open
slightly.
He let the paper fall between his wide-spread knees, the blood flowing down
from his face and seeming to leave him leaner.
"Charley--Charley--darling!"
"My--poor old man!" he said in a voice that might have been his echo in a
cave.
"He--his heart must have give out on him, Charley, while he slept in the
night."
"My--poor--old--man!"
She stretched out her hand timidly to his shoulder.
"Charley--boy--my poor boy!"
He reached up to cover her timid touch, still staring ahead, as if a mental
apathy had clutched him.
"He died like--he--lived. Gad--it's--tough!"
"It--it wasn't your fault, darling. God forgive me for speaking against the
dead, but--everybody knows he was a hard man, Charley--the way he used to
beat you up instead of showing you the right way. Poor old man, I guess he
didn't know--"
"My old man--dead!"
She crept closer, encircling his neck, and her wet cheek close to his dry
one.
"He's at peace now, darling--and all your sins are forgiven--like you
forgive--his."
His lips were twisting.
"There was no love lost there, girl. God knows there wasn't. There was once
nine months we didn't speak. Never could have been less between a father
and son. You see he--he hated me from the start, because my mother died
hating him--but--_dead_--that's another matter. Ain't it, girl--ain't it?"
She held her cheek to his so that her tears veered out of their course,
zigzagging down to his waistcoat, stroked his hair, placing her rich, moist
lips to his eyelids.
"My darling! My darling boy! My own poor darling!"
Sobs rumbled up through him, the terrific sobs that men weep.
"You--married a rotter, Loo--that couldn't even live decent with his--old
man. He--died like a dog--alone."
"'Sh-h-h, Charley! Just because he's dead don't mean he was any better
while he lived."
"I'll make it up to you, girl, for the rotter I am. I'm a rich man now,
Loo."
"'Sh-h-h!"
"I'll show you, girl. I can make somebody's life worth living. I'm going to
do something for somebody to prove I'm worth the room I occupy, and that
somebody's going to be you, Loo. I'm going to build you a house that'll go
down in the history of this town. I'm going to wind you around with pearls
to match that skin of yours. I'm going to put the kind of clothes on you
that you read of queens wearing. I've seen enough of the kind of meanness
money can breed. I'm going to make those Romans back there look like
pikers. I'm--"
She reached out, placing her hand pat across his mouth, and, in the languid
air of the room, shuddering so that her lips trembled.
"Charley--for God's sake--it--it's a sin to talk that way!"
"O God, I know it, girl! I'm all muddled--muddled."
He let his forehead drop against her arm, and in the long silence that
ensued she sat there, her hand on his hair.
The roar of traffic, seventeen stories below, came up through the open
windows like the sound of high seas, and from where she sat, staring out
between the pink-brocade curtains, it was as if the close July sky dipped
down to meet that sea, and space swam around them.
"O God!" he said, finally. "What does it all mean--this living and dying--"
"Right living, Charley, makes dying take care of itself."
"God! how he must have died, then! Like a dog--alone."
"'Sh-h-h, Charley; don't get to thinking."
Without raising his head, he reached up to stroke her arm.
"Honey, you're shivering."
"No-o."
"Everything's all right, girl. What's the use me trying to sham it's not.
I--I'm bowled over for the minute, that's all. If it had to come, after
all, it--it came right for my girl. With that poor old man out there,
honey, living alone like a dog all these years, it's just like putting him
from one marble mausoleum out there on Kingsmoreland Place into one where
maybe he'll rest easier. He's better off, Loo, and--we--are too. Hand me
the paper, honey; I--want to see--just how my--poor old man--breathed out."
Then Mrs. Cox rose, her face distorted with holding back tears, her small
high heels digging into and breaking the newspaper at his feet.
"Charley--Charley--"
"Why, girl, what?"
"You don't know it, but my sister, Charley--Ida Bell!"
"Why, Loo, I sent off the message to your mama. They know it by now."
"Charley--Charley--"
"Why, honey, you're full of nerves! You mustn't go to pieces like this.
Your sister's all right. I sent them a--"
"You--you don't know, Charley. My sister--I swore her an oath on my
mother's prayer-book. I wouldn't tell, but, now that he's dead, that--lets
me out. The will--Charley, he made it yesterday, like he always swore he
would the next time you got your name on the front page."
"Made what, honey? Who?"
"Charley, can't you understand? My sister Ida Bell and Brookes--your
father's lawyer. She's his private stenographer--Brookes's, honey. You know
that. But she told me last night, honey, when I went home. You're cut off,
Charley! Your old man sent for Brookes yesterday at noon. I swear to God,
Charley! My sister Ida Bell she broke her confidence to tell me. He's give
a million alone to the new college hospital. Half a million apiece to
four or five old people's homes. He's give his house to the city with the
art-gallery. He's even looked up relations to give to. He kept his word,
honey, that all those years he kept threatening. He--he kept it the day
before he died. He must have had a hunch--your poor old man. Charley
darling, don't look like that! If your wife ain't the one to break it to
you you're broke, who is? You're not 'Million Dollar Charley' no more,
honey. You're just my own Charley, with his chance come to him--you hear,
_my_ Charley, with the best thing that ever happened to him in his life
happening right now."
He regarded her as if trying to peer through something opaque, his hands
spread rather stupidly on his wide knees.
"Huh?"
"Charley, Charley, can't you understand? A dollar, that puts him within the
law, is all he left you."
"He never did. He never did. He wouldn't. He couldn't. He never did. I
saw--his will. I'm the only survivor. I saw his will."
"Charley, I swear to God! I swear as I'm standing here you're cut off.
My sister copied the new will on her typewriter three times and seen the
sealed and stamped one. He kept his word. He wrote it with his faculties
and witnesses. We're broke, Charley--thank God, we're flat broke!"
"He did it? He did it? My old man did it?"
"As sure as I'm standing here, Charley."
He fell to blinking rapidly, his face puckering to comprehend.
"I never thought it could happen. But I--I guess it could happen. I think
you got me doped, honey."
"Charley, Charley!" she cried, falling down on her knees beside him,
holding his face in the tight vise of her hands and reading with such
closeness into his eyes that they seemed to merge into one. "Haven't you
got your Loo? Haven't you got her?"
He sprang up at that, jerking her backward, and all the purple-red gushed
up into his face again.
"Yes, by God, I've got you! I'll break the will. I'll--"
"Charley, no--no! He'd rise out of his grave at you. It's never been known
where a will was broke where they didn't rise out of the grave to haunt."
He took her squarely by the shoulders, the tears running in furrows down
his face.
"I'll get you out of this, Loo. No girl in God's world will have to find
herself tied up to me without I can show her a million dollars every time
she remembers that she's married to a rotter. I'll get you out of this,
girl, so you won't even show a scratch. I'll--"
"Charley," she said, lifting herself by his coat lapels, and her eyes again
so closely level with his, "you're crazy with the heat--stark, raving
crazy! You got your chance, boy, to show what you're made of--can't you see
that? We're going West, where men get swept out with clean air and clean
living. We'll break ground in this here life for the kind of pay-dirt
that'll make a man of you. You hear? A man of you!"
He lifted her arms, and because they were pressing insistently down,
squirmed out from beneath them.
"You're a good sport, girl; nobody can take that from you. But just the
same, I'm going to let you off without a scratch."
"'Good sport'! I'd like to know, anyways, where I come in with all your
solid-gold talk. Me that's stood behind somebody-or-other's counter ever
since I had my working-papers."
"I'll get you out of--"
"Have I ever lived anywheres except in a dirty little North St. Louis flat
with us three girls in a bed? Haven't I got my name all over town for
speed, just because I've always had to rustle out and try to learn how
to flatten out a dime to the size of a dollar? Where do I come in on the
solid-gold talk, I'd like to know. I'm the penny-splitter of the world, the
girl that made the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store millinery department famous. I
can look tailor-made on a five-dollar bill and a tissue-paper pattern. Why,
honey, with me scheming for you, starting out on your own is going to make
a man of you. You got stuff in you. I knew it, Charley, the first night
you spied me at the Highlands dance. Somewhere out West Charley Cox is now
going to begin to show 'em the stuff in Charley Cox--that's what Charley
Cox & Co. are going to do!"
He shook his head, turning away his eyes to hide their tears.
"You been stung, Loo. Nothing on earth can change that."
She turned his face back to her, smiling through her own tears.
"You're not adding up good this morning, Mr. Cox. When do you think I
called you up last night? When could it have been if not after my sister
broke her confidence to tell me? Why do you think all of a sudden last
night I seen your bluff through about Gerber? It was because I knew I had
you where you needed me, Charley--I never would have dragged you down the
other way in a million years, but when I knew I had you where you needed
me--why, from that minute, honey, you didn't have a chance to dodge me!"
She wound her arms round him, trembling between the suppressed hysteria of
tears and laughter.
"Not a chance, Charley!"
He jerked her so that her face fell back from him, foreshortened.
"Loo--oh, girl! Oh, girl!"
Her throat was tight and would not give her voice for coherence.
"Charley--we--we'll show 'em--you--me!"
Looking out above her head at the vapory sky showing through the parting of
the pink-brocade curtains, rigidity raced over Mr. Cox, stiffening his hold
of her.
The lean look had come out in his face; the flanges of his nose quivered;
his head went up.
--THE END--
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<------ Title. A bit mysterious and no more than 3 words.
<------ Beginning. In those days long ago without TV more details and setting were needed to orient the readers. Now a days stories start much faster to compete with TV, Movies, etc. The next paragraph is where the story would begin in modern times.
<------ Point View seems like Third Person Omniscient (Objective)
<------ Narrative Hook. What the story really will explore, a woman trundling...
<------ Notice the rich narrative details of setting, time, season and place, sight and sounds.
<------ Hurst takes us from a wide view of the times, to the street in a neighborhood, to inside a store in that neighborhood for our first full scene.
<------ Symbolism and metaphors and moving action in Hurst characterization of the main character Lola. Introduce the main character first. Whoever is introduced first is who the readers give their sympathy too.
<------ Narrative showing an Opposition character enters next and notice the great efficient characterization of her.
<------ Great foreshadowing dialogue. Introduces a sense of mystery, danger.
<------ Attribution, staged action and dialogue. A small conflict begins.
<------ Attribution, staged action, objective reporting and dialogue. Notice the objective reporting is active "looking out."
<------ Foreshadowing and character sympathy building and no attribution..
<------ Conflict heats up! We will find out many things through dialogue now.
<------ Bingo! The irreversible problem main character Lola must overcome.
<------ Great metaphor, flung=snake=fang. We find out more about main character (MC) attire.
<------ You can use one character to characterize another!
<------ Short narrative blocks speed up the pacing of story.
<------ Dialogue, no attribution. We know who is speaking. Remember we heard about the streets and setting!
<------ Character characterizing the MC! Also a restating of the irreversible problem.
<------ No story without a conflict. This conflict is in full scene and full swing. It relates to the larger irreversible problem will poor girl get rich boy without damaging her reputation. The problem gets a name!
<------ Symbolism galore here. Great.
<------ MC tells how industrious she is.
<------ Notice the irony here. They are arguing beside the friendship-bracelet racks!
<------ Notice how one character picks up words from another character's reply and uses it to her own benefit.
<------ Again picking up another character's reply for her own benefit.
<------ Again, shorter narrative paragraph speeds up action further.
<------ Super short narrative ending the first full scene.
<------ Longer narrative block, followed by a really long narrative block giving the reader a break and setting up the next scene. But the narration is packed with sights, sounds, smells, information pushing the story plot forward and telling us things we need to know about the irreversible problem Lola faces: Will the poor girl marry the rich boy?
<------ Narration explaining fixed action, thoughts and feelings of the characters in the story in general
<------ Great action narration!
<------ We find out more how the MC dresses and walks. She get's "ten inches of stride" in her dress!
<------ As we can see in the narrative before the two ladies make peace. However they have basically agreed to disagree.
<------ In this half scene, the MC is still determined to get her man. One conflict ends with a minimal amount of success for Lola. She stood her ground Now she has the main irreversible change to deal with getting Charlie to marry her.
<------ Longer narration giving us a change in setting, sexes. Lola enters a new world, foretold early in the opening paragraph.
<------ Notice Greek Allusion, another form of symbolism.
<------ Problem of reputation all wrapped up in the irreversible complication of marrying Charlie Cox.
<------ Second full scene.
<------ A character's physical moving action can be just a clear as dialogue.
<------ Referring again to earlier argument in the store about limits.
<------ Always introduce the next irreversible complication or problem before the prior one is solved. Also the main irreversible problems is being worked on but other smaller irreversible problems still pop up for the MC to resolve. (THIS IS A SUBPLOT CHARLIE'S MONEY PROBLEMS)
<------ End of Second Full Scene.
<------ Emotional Action, part of moving action. If characters don't show emotion they seem fake.
<------ Notice how active this description of the room is. This narration along with the earlier one is bridging the second and third scene.
<------ Third Full Scene begins.
<------ Notice how efficiently one the new characters is described and introduced.
<------ The irreversible problem introduced again! Only one of two options for getting out of this 1) Marry the Bastard. 2) Call it off with the Bastard! 3) Start riding the Trolly and find another way to chase after rich boys more discreetly. Notice also Hurst starts her story not when Lola begins to chase rich boys, or even after she's chased rich boys for a while. She starts the story when Lola has been chasing rich boys so long her reputation is almost cast in stone.
<------ The irreversible problem gets even worse. Now all the 13 year olds know about Charlie Cox reputation tarnishing acts from the daily papers.
<------ Great metaphor here about ears!
<------ Mystery occurs. We'll soon find out about this. This keeps readers wanting to read more.
<------ The MC tries to help and look how it reflects back on the irreversible problems she hasn't solved yet!
<------ Foreshadowing threat!
<------ Notice the MC has to deal with her irreversible problem wherever she goes, work, on the street, even at home with family. Make your MC struggle!
<------ Great narration. Short narration picking up the pace. Also this is bound to make matters worse.
<------ By this point, we know for sure the point of view is Third Person Omniscient (objective). We got a major hint in the scenic opening paragraph. We spend very little time in these character's mind (subjective). Everything they do is done on the surface in action or dialogue.
<------ Mystery is solved for the MC but the readers must read on to find out what MC has learned! Suspense builds.
<------ A half scene. Lola talking on the phone to Charlie Cox.
<------ When you have a major scene shift in time or place do this.
<------ At this point we are midway into the story. Is it important? Yes, Lola found something out that will make or break her pursuit of solving this irreversible problem. Can you guess what it is?
<------ Incredible narration, cars darting in and out of traffic, potted palms, you get a sense of urgency here.
<------ We want them to get to the hotel to find out the mystery, but what happens a problem. He stops for water. hehehe. We go into a Full Scene Four now.
<------ Can it get any worse!
<------ SUBPLOT BEGINS. Again, Hurst starts this not when Charlie first got money from his granny, but, at the end, when he's spent all of his granny's money he inherited! Hurst also starts this subplot when Charlie's old man stated one more mishap and he'd be disinherited!
<------ As if this wasn't enough heart break already, we find out about the mystery conversation.
<------ The Climax is coming up next. Will they get married or not!
<------ SUBPLOT ENDS!
<------ The Climax!
<------ Notice how the MC struggles to solve her own problem. She doesn't let Charlie solve her problem, she solves it!
<---THE END. Notice you get a full feeling. Like you’ve had a good meal. If you feel too hungry at the end, probably the story needs a little more to it, wrapping it up. It may even need to be a novel, if you have lots more to say.
This page was last updated: May 11, 2011
