First post of the month?

(looking back through blog post…)

Yep, my last post was in early April. Bad Dave, bad.

So… what’s new?

I’m so freaking tired.

(Start off your blog with whining, that’s an excellent way to spark people’s interest.)

😛

I snuck off to see Doctor Strange 2 last week. It was “okay”. Not great, not bad.

I’m currently working on chunk 29 of my “A New Day” story.

So a funny thing happened last night. Our group got together online via Zoom and went over our submitted works—actually a couple of funny things.

Funna Ting #1) One person, a retired military person, didn’t like the way I had my various characters interacting with one another, it was too informal or “unprofessional” to describe it better. The person just could not accept that an Admiral person would joke around with one of their subordinates. I asked them if they had ever seen the TV show MASH? They had but said that wasn’t a good example as they weren’t a real military portrayal. Uhhh… Okay? I tried humoring the person but thanks to my own personal experiences (82nd Airborne) my portrayal, while skewed for the author’s discretion and attempted humor, was closer to how I understood things played out. Yes, the TV show MASH isn’t a real thing, but it is an exaggeration of stuff that can/does happen everywhere. As they say, “life can be often stranger than fiction”, or, “you can’t make this stuff up.”

I’ve come to accept that he is not my target audience.

Later on in the evening, another person joined the group as they were stuck at work for longer than expected. They then went over some of the very same pieces that the first person went over. They stated they enjoyed the interactions or bickering between the characters.

Huh…

Four out of Five Dentists agree that using this product will blah blah blah…

My goal is not to write the book so it matches the first person’s expectations. I’m writing the book because it’s my story and I’ll tweak/bend it as needed while still trying to minimize the reader’s sense of disbelief over what might really happen. Is it plausible versus is it likely? Being honest with yourself is important for readers will know bullshit when they come across it.

Plausible vs Possible vs Probable. There is a difference and it should be sprinkled out accordingly.

Funna Ting #2) Speaking of bullshit. One of the other persons who submitted a story had a character thinking (I’m changing the actual details, author’s or plagiarist’s prerogative) think of something very specific. Half a page later, they had the second character think the very same thing for no logical reason.

For example, Dick, a middle-aged man, gets on the subway in New York. He finds himself a bench to sit on until the train gets to his stop. While seating, he finds a stain on the floor which reminds him of the stain on the back of his high school wall locker. The combination of that locker flashes through his mind. At the next stop, a woman named Lisa gets on, she boards the next car, so she never interacts with Dick. She gets a text from he mother reminding her that it’s her Aunt’s birthday and she needs to call her. They then both randomly get off at the same stop and both wander over to the newspaper stand and reach for the same magazine. As they lock eyes, she blurts out for no reason whatsoever, the combination to his locker. It’s not as if those numbers are the dates of her Aunt’s birthday either. She just blurts them out and they have a bonding moment over this shared experience.

EXCUSE ME…???

This is not a psychic story. There is no reason for the second character to have this specific information.

Where is the fireplace poker to harpoon my eyeballs out when I need it?

You need to set rules and have plausible precedence for events like this. If it’s an ESP thing, then set it up as being ESP. Otherwise, there is no logical reason for something like that to happen.

Yeah, I’m kinda cranky today.

(I don’t like the heat and its warm today, maybe that’s part of what’s bugging me)

Guess that’s it for today…

Tootles all.

😛