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This is part two of our series on massaging a scene that was sent in last week by a listener who was anxious to hear Taylor’s thoughts on the scene.
The first show in the series was focused on dialogue and the last will be focused on point of view issues. This show covers everything else, so it’s a bit of a hodgepodge episode where we deal with telling versus showing and changing some “showing” language to inner dialogue to add immediacy to our scene.
Here’s the piece we used at the start of this week’s show:
“What does that mean?” Michelle had taken an instant dislike to the man, but at this point she’d gone so far down the ladder of possible agents she didn’t have much other choice. She was repelled by his office, which was filthy and grimy, and by the man himself, who, sadly, fit in with it.
Fat. Comb-over. Dirty fingernails and a stained white shirt with the tails out in the back. Brown plaid jacket. What a repulsive mess.”
Taylor sees some telling versus showing in the two paragraphs above and makes some verbal changes to improve the immediacy of the scene.
Taylor’s notes this section are below:
Here’s the original for the next section we covered:
Michelle breathed a heavy sigh, despite the stench and smoke. She was getting nowhere. So far, she’d spent over two years and most of her savings trying to catch a break. If something didn’t work out soon she’d have to admit defeat and go back to Charlotte. She’d hate doing that, but staying with her parents was her only option until she figured out what to do next. She didn’t want to walk out of here empty-handed though.
“Can you recommend anyone else I might try?”
Taylor’s notes on this section, where we go from reading about Michelle to being Michelle and really ramping up the immediacy of the scene.
Here’s the revised version, where we ARE Michelle.
Michelle breathed a heavy sigh of stench and smoke. This was going nowhere. Over two years and most of her savings trying to catch a break and if something didn’t work out soon she’d be forced to admit defeat and go back to Charlotte. Which meant staying with her parents until she figured out what to do next. She refused to walk out of here empty-handed.
“Can you recommend anyone else I might try?”
Thanks so much for joining us again this week.
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