Feeding the Inner Wolf

I had an odd insight at the supermarket the other day, watching a guy use the motorized shopping cart. He was a double-wide, for sure, carrying enough extra weight for it to be an obvious handicap, with tree-stump calves and thick ankles that probably indicated diabetes - but all of this beside the point. It got me thinking. He never set out to be that fat guy, he didn't do it by choice. It almost certainly had more to do with genetics, environment, the luck of the draw. We have a tendency to look at people with physical problems, obesity, rotten teeth, or bad skin, and hold them responsible, as if it were a moral failure.

I began to wonder about the corollary. What about people with glowing skin and great smiles and a body by Botticelli who turn out to be misshapen, or damaged underneath, but without visible injury? Perhaps some crippling trauma, or maybe no explanation at all. Maybe they're just plain ugly at heart.

There's a scene in John Crowley's novel LITTLE, BIG, where you encounter a crazy old drunk on the subway - or at least he seems like a crazy old drunk - and he's staggering up and down the cars, talking to himself. "I met the woof the other night, out back the churchyard. He didn't look like no woof, look like a man, but I knew him for who he was. He were hairy on the inside." The werewolf of folklore is known as Turnskins, a shape-shifter, wearing human covering as a disguise.

So, begging the question, Are there monsters? Some of us would say no, that it's nurture, or the lack of. I'd lean toward yes, though, the argument that it's nature, that evil is somehow innate, and not learned behavior. In other words, we can simply be hardwired the wrong way.

Do we come to the Manichean view that Absolute Good and Absolute Evil exist, as opposites? "Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it," Mephistopheles says, meaning he lives in the absence of God. But why shouldn't evil exist, without respect to virtue? Why do we imagine salvation is our reward for avoiding sin, when sin might prove to be its own reward? Bad isn't necessarily good taking a dive.

There was a time - the early days of the Church, say - when the world was seen as the earthly battlefield between the forces of light and dark, a struggle manifest, the war for men's souls. The stake was literal, not a metaphor. You could burn, your fatty tissue popping in the fire, and given the cooking time, it must have felt like an eternity. Then we have the misreading of Freud, as if a plausible explanation serves us as an excuse, or a note from teacher. ("Did you like Mr. Clutter?" "Why, yes, I did - right up to the moment I cut his throat.") Just supposing, however, that we don't see the dark silhouetted against the light, that there isn't any contrast, that the dark doesn't cast a shadow. It isn't the absence of God, or moral weight, or empathy, or some other frame of reference. Evil sufficient to the day. It stands on its own.

We're the ones who need help. We invent a mechanism that tells us the good is thrown on the scales with the bad, and they counterbalance. The one is necessary for the other. Yes, for dramatic tension in a fiction, a narrative, which is a construct, using familiar conventions. Not so much, we begin to think, in life. What if what goes around don't come around no more?

We appear conditioned to this idea of opposition: action, reaction, synthesis. I read a book one time about what the author described as The Bicameral Mind. The short version is Right Brain/Left Brain, but there's more to it than that. There was a long period in our development when we heard voices - the voices of the gods, perhaps? - but for a far longer period than our present psychological state, the accepted diagnosis or perceived reality, which has probably only obtained for about the last three thousand years, sake of argument, where such Voices signal mental illness, or at least the gateway to a less rational or linear world.

Presupposing the unspoken or the unseen, is the notion of duality functional? It seems like an enabling device, a comforting alibi. Rooted, as may be, in the bicameral mind, our physiology, the left a mirror of the right. This doesn't mean any of it has objective reality.

We might say, then, that evil exists for its own purposes. Not the opposite of good, but a force with no counterweight or equivalency. Thomas Pynchon, in THE CRYING OF LOT 49, says of Rapunzel, waiting rescue, what if the tower is everywhere, and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic? During the Middle Ages, many people thought the Black Death was evidence of God's abandonment, Not, we remark, a visitation of His disapproval - rather, a sign God had simply given up on us. But the disease vector of plague is a bacillus answering to its own necessities, unconcerned with the host bodies. We flatter ourselves, if we imagine we're any higher on the food chain, or that there's malice aforethought. In this sense, evil bears us no ill will. It's not retribution, and perhaps that's what makes it harder to bear. Evil is indifferent.

Envy and Writing: Real-Life Noir

On September 10^th, Sleuthsayer Eve Fisher described her story “Presumed Guilty,” published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Detective that I am, I deduced that it was the cover story.

I thought, Hmm. Not only have I never cracked the pages of AHMM, I’ve only received one slightly personalized rejection to date. Usually it’s just a straight bounce.

I could’ve gotten envious of Eve. Seethed about Eve. In fact, years ago, I might have done exactly that.

At my book club last month, we did a round table and each picked which deadly sin personified us. I chose both anger and envy. I’m also an enormous glutton—people are always astonished how much I eat and ask where I pack it away—but I don’t feel guilty about loving food. I have, however, blown up at people and swallowed a lot of bile and worked hard to change both these traits.

First, dictionary time.

• Envy means you want what someone else has, whether it’s a fat bank account or the perfect family.
• Jealousy means you’re afraid of losing what you’ve got, so you monitor your pretty young mistress to make sure she doesn’t take up with her dashing co-worker.

I bring this up for two reasons. I think writers are particularly susceptible to envy because there’s no clear path, so it feels like everyone else is always getting ahead.

“[A] woman with three poems in [Poetry Magazine] had been born two years after me, which was enough to ruin my day—and I didn’t even desire to write poetry. The notion of people my age or younger having written books, some of them quite good books, was more than upsetting. I did not precisely want them to die, but, wondering why they hadn’t the simple courtesy to allow my achievements to be recognized first, I wanted them, somehow, stopped. The moral of this little story, I believe, is that it is difficult to be ambitious without also being envious.”—Joseph Epstin, Envy

Edgar-nominated writer Kris Rusch/Nelscott told me, "In writing, there is no hierarchy, which is really strange.  It's the only profession I know where we don't compete against each other. We compete against ourselves--trying to outdo ourselves.  That's because each writers' career is different.  No one career is the same as another.  So we're always comparing apples and broccoli."

Still, when Kris asked for suggestions about topics for her Freelancer’s Survival Guide, I asked her to write about jealousy. She initially said no. But eventually she did write about it, and it was so popular that it became a two-part article.

“First, let me be clear about the reasons I initially declined to cover this topic.  I think jealousy is one of the most destructive emotions in the world.  I think you can attribute more horrible things to jealousy than you can to most other emotions, including anger. I see nothing positive about jealousy. I’ve watched it ruin friendships, marriages, and professional relationships. I’ve watched it destroy careers.  I know of cases where jealousy has led to actual physical harm, including murder.” http://kriswrites.com/2010/01/14/freelancers-survival-guide-professional-jealousy/

To my surprise, the follow-up article was called “Surviving Other People’s Jealousy.” 

I don’t think I ever harmed anyone, just gnashed my teeth a bit. And no one had envied me, as far as I knew, since I was such a newbie.

I needed more advice. Luckily, bestselling author Jennifer Crusie had me in mind for this: http://jennycrusie.com/for-writers/essays/green-is-not-your-color-professional-jealousy-and-the-professional-writer/

You’re human…Wallow in it...For five minutes. That’s all you get, five minutes to be seethingly, teeth-achingly bitter.

Then think about what the person did to get what she got….

Then take that analysis of what she did and see if you can apply it to your career. Whatever it was that she did, it obviously worked. 

I noticed a common recipe for success: hard work. I could do that.

Jennifer Crusie again:

Bette Midler said, “The hardest thing about being successful is finding somebody to be happy for you.” The one thing that I have noticed about all the successful people I know is that their circle of friends gets smaller and smaller…..

Well, that’s no good.

While I threw myself into writing, mostly toiling in isolation but occasionally selling a story, I slowly, slowly relinquished my grip on envy and admired my writing friends.

That was a relief. I even wrote a book about it, Apples, Broccoli & Rats with Islands: Short thoughts on envy and positivity for writers (and human beings in general).

Here’s one Cinderella ending. My name appears in the latest AHMM. No, I didn’t get to write the cover story. But Ken Wishnia’s Trace Evidence guest editorial appears on the cover, and the entire third paragraph describes my appearance in Jewish Noir: 

And thanks to our generous “You don’t have to be Jewish to write Jewish Noir” policy, I also got to collaborate with writers like Canadian author Melissa Yi, who was a joy to work with. She sent me two stories for consideration, and I ended up replying with a carefully worded email explaining that I liked the first half of the first story and the second half of the second story, and asked if she would be willing to combine the two stories along these lines to create a totally new story. That’s asking a lot, but not only was she willing to do it, after revising the two stories into one, she ended up adding a new section that gave her story “Blood Diamonds” a crack-of-the-whip sting of an ending that will linger in your mind for long after you’ve read it.

May we all live and write happily ever after.

The Little Murders

by Susan Rogers Cooper

We who write and read at SleuthSayers share a common bond: We love a good mystery. There are a lot of reasons people come to mystery: escape from their own lives; the purity of the store – good vs. evil; or simply because of the entertainment value.

There are those of us who only like cozies, and those of us who prefer our mysteries hard-boiled. And those who'll read anything they can get their hands on – that's the category I put myself in.

I admire people like John D. MacDonald and John Grisham who deal with the big murders – the corporate crime and national intrigue that leads to someone's untimely death. But those are not my stories. My stories are about the little murders, what we do to each other, to those we love and those we fear, for very personal reasons.

For years I was a trainer for new volunteers at Crisis Hotline in Houston. One of the exercises I taught the new trainees was a way to empathize with suicide calls. I told them: Start taking things away from yourself – your home, your family, your job, your friends, your health – until, in your imagination, you can feel that point where you might consider suicide.

That's the way I deal with the little murders. What would it take for you to commit murder? Not self-defense or defense of a loved one, or even a stranger – that's not murder. But under what circumstances could you see yourself calculating to take a human life? Planning it? Putting that plan into action?

A lot depends on the kind of person you are – or the kind of character I'm dealing with. What could seem a very legitimate reason to take a life to one person, to another is total insanity.
As writers we want to be clear as to motive – whether someone slept with someone else's spouse, or the dog down the street told them to do it. As readers, we need to feel satisfied as to the whys and wherefores. We want answers.

Frightful Fun– a Short History of Halloween

by Leigh Lundin

Halloween has long been a festival of the dying year or, as the Celts (Irish, not Boston) viewed it, a conjunction of seasons where death met the birth of the then new year, the 1^st of November. The Church frowned upon things not churchly, but the leadership was socially astute. While officially opposing syncretization, the Church often absorbed popular pagan festivals into Christian celebrations, such as turning the Roman Saturnalia into Christmas and fertility festivals into Easter. Thus the ancient Irish observation of their new year became the Christian All Saints Day.

Roman Holiday

The present date of Hallowmas and its vigil Hallowe'en was likely determined by Pope Gregory III (731-741), then extended throughout the Frankish Empire in 835 by King Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne. In the 11^th century, Abbot Odilo of Cluny established the November date of All Souls Day to pray for the dead. Allhallowtide bridged the three holidays as observed by adherents around the world. The night before All Saints Day, the 1st of November, became a commemoration of all people hallowed– Hallowed Evening or Hallowe’en. The calendar appears as

31 Oct		All Hallows Eve
01 Nov		All Saints Day
02 Nov		All Souls Day

Some religionists don’t observe Halloween because it is Christian and others because it’s not Christian enough. Whatever its past, the holiday is based upon a complex and diverse history. The hallowtide holidays have become an exercise of imagination, a chance to reveal and grapple with our inner fear of things that go bump in the night.

The Celtic Connection

According to the History Channel, many practices have lent their observations to our modern holiday, souling and guising.

Samhain

Much of our tradition came from Irish immigrants and grew out of Samhain (Gaelic pronunciation rhymes with how-when), a pagan fest where people disguised themselves to fool the ghosts and burnt bonfires to keep away the spirits. When the Church instituted All Saints Day, the ancient Celts saw little reason to give up the joy of their autumn celebration.

Souling

In medieval England and as far south as Italy, a ritualized form of door-to-door begging was called souling. In return for food and treats, they would offer to sing and pray for the dead. Often a traditional ‘soul cake’ was offered, typically filled with raisins or currants, apples or plums, and flavored with allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, or other sweet spices. They were marked with a ‘cross’ (hot-crossed buns) and often served with a tipple of wine.

Guising

Modern trick-or-treat carries an implied threat, a hint of blackmail that pranksters might T.P. your house or leave a salamander in your mailbox if you don’t pay off with a candy bar. In the Scottish custom of guising, children dressed in a mask and costume ‘in disguise’ would go house to house and offer a trick or treat– a magic trick, a song, a dance, or a riddle– and the lord of the manor would reward them with fruit, coins, a sweetmeat or cake.

Guy Fawkes

The British tradition of wearing masks while begging for coins on Guy Fawkes Night (also known as Bonfire Night commemorating the foiling of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot) may have influenced latter day Halloween celebrations. By the early 19^th century, children roamed the streets on the evening of 5 November begging for “a penny for the Guy.”

Robert Browning

Much of our tradition of Halloweening goes back to a famous poem of Robert Browning, Halloween. Read the annotated version.

Jack O’ Lanterns

Bonfires and fire-lit lanterns have long had a Halloween history. Setting fire to ghosts and ghouls dates back centuries in ‘bone fires’, which became known as bonfires. Those may have evolved into setting masks on fire in ‘neep’ or turnip lanterns, where turnips where hollowed out and a lit candle placed inside. Pumpkins in the New World turned out to be much more convenient for hollowing and pumpkin lanterns have made their way back to Scotland, Ireland, and northern Britain. Some people used potato lanterns in much the same way called ‘tattie bogles’.

The Mexican Connection

Norte Américanos may be unaware of the Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) festival of our neighbor to the south. This Mexican form of Halloween is also celebrated on 31 October and their larger All Saints and All Souls festival as part of Hallowmas or Allhallowtide.

The 1^st of November celebrates the loss of little children, Día de los Inocentes ("Day of the Innocents") but also as Día de los Angelitos, Day of Little Angels. The 2^nd of November is the actual Day of the Dead.

The Mexican tradition mirrors our own in many ways with ghouls, ghosts, and skeletons. Like our Celtic ancestors, they light bonfires, which we continue at homecomings and on a small scale with jack-o’-lanterns. The Mexican season is even more strongly associated with the color orange. In the US and lower Canada, the leaves turn and we celebrate with pumpkins and squash. Mexico celebrates with red-orange cempasúchitls– marigolds of the Aztecs.

Our North American holidays grew out of auld world traditions, but American and Mexican enhancements have influenced the rest of the globe, linking prayer for the dead, mitigating fright with fun.

Mystery Missteps

by John M. Floyd



Over the past few weeks, I've finished three mystery-writing projects: a 7500-word short story, a 110-page screenplay, and a 90,000-word collection of thirty of my stories. The short story will be submitted soon to one of the mystery magazines, the collection is scheduled to be released by my publisher next year, and the screenplay will probably be used to prop up a table leg--but all three were great fun to put together. What wasn't fun was proofreading my late-to-final drafts. I tend to make silly mistakes when I write, and the sheer volume of those mistakes gave me the idea for this column, which will probably contain even more mistakes. Believe me, I try to find and correct these before they go out into the world, but still . . .

Thorns in my side

Here are some writing errors (some minor, some not-so) that show up a lot in my fiction manuscripts:

Pet phrases. For some reason I apparently enjoy writing things like "she narrowed her eyes," "he scratched his chin," "she plopped into a chair," "his face darkened," etc.--there are a couple dozen of these--and I find myself using them over and over. Why? Who knows. My characters also seem to like sighing, staring, shrugging, and turning. Especially turning. They turn and leave, turn to reply, turn and look out the window, turn to answer the phone, and so on. It's the kind of repetition that annoys me when I discover it in my drafts, and if I left it in it would certainly annoy editors and readers. (Actually, if it bothers the editors it'll never get a chance to bother the readers.)

Overuse of dashes. I love dashes. Maybe because it's hard to use one improperly: under the right conditions they can be substituted for semicolons, colons, parentheses, and almost anything else. I use them often for asides--like this--and I also like the notion of "interrupted speech" (because real people interrupt each other all the time when they talk), and dashes are an effective sentence-ending way to indicate that. Even so, too much of anything is not a good thing.

Cliches. Boy do I like cliches. My excuse, I think, is that I use so many in real life it's only natural to want to put them into my writing as well. But if it's not in dialogue, a cliche probably doesn't belong in the story. When/if I come to my senses, I try to locate them and weed them out.

Backward apostrophes. This error occurs only when using certain fonts, but in Times New Roman, an apostrophe before something like em (Round 'em up and cuff 'em) winds up turned in the wrong direction--which looks ridiculous. To correct it, I type a letter immediately before it, then put in the apostrophe, then delete the preceding letter. A good way to remember it: type th'em and then delete the "th."

Too many combined words. This is something else I love, probably because it speeds up the pace. Examples: doublecheck, halfwit, ballplayer, dumptruck, kindhearted, mothership, workboots, overanalyze, mumbojumbo, coattails, thunderclap--and especially when they're used as adjectives, like smalltown politics or livingroom furniture or quartermile run. But I have to be careful not to do it when it really shouldn't be done (bluejeans, divingboard, machinegunfire, etc.). Being innovative goes only so far.

Extra spaces between words. This is pure carelessness. They're hard to catch, and they're distracting if you don't. If, for instance, you prefer to put only one space after a period, you should be consistent and do it every time.

Repetition. Especially in early drafts, I repeat so many things it's hard to believe: ideas, words, phrases (see "pet phrases," above), even locations and character names. In my defense, I think some of this comes from trying to make things extremely clear to the reader--but the truth is, today's readers are smart enough not to require everything spelled out for them in detail, or--to use another cliche--to have writers beat them over the head with something in order for them to understand it. Cutting out repetition is a large part of my self-editing process. It becomes even more important when putting previously published stores together in a collection, because those stories, when first written, weren't expected to ever be read back-to-back with other stories.

Omitted quotation marks (usually close quotes). More carelessness.

Using a for an, and vice versa. Why do I encounter this so often in late drafts, since I truly do know when to use one and when to use the other? Probably because I've gone back and changed things in the manuscript, and when I happen to change a noun that doesn't begin with a vowel sound to one that does, etc., I might've unintentionally created an "a vs. an" error.

Thorn removals

Some of the missteps I seem to have gotten better at avoiding, over the years:

Overuse of semicolons. I think semicolons are a great way to divide two complete sentences that are too closely related to be separated by the finality of a period. But semicolons do look a bit formal in genre fiction (certainly in dialogue), and too many of them can be distracting. These days, I go through my manuscripts-in-progress and try to turn most of my semicoloned sentences into two separate sentences, or add a "comma followed by an and," or substitute one of those overused dashes. But--just shoot me--I still like semicolons.

Too many "ly" adverbs. There's always been a difference of opinion as to whether this is even a problem, but most writers agree that it's better to use stronger verbs than to have to prop them up with modifiers.

Too many back-and-forth lines of dialogue without identifying the speaker. The reason I don't commit this error as often as I used to, I think, is that it irritates me so to find it in stories/books that I read. Nothing is more maddening to a reader than having to count lines backward to find out who's saying what.

Too many italics. Thank God I'm finally beginning to bring this weakness under control. You don't always need to put emphasis on a word, or italicize an unspoken thought; sometimes it's obvious from the way the sentence or paragraph is written. (Oh no, she thought, flattening her back against the wall. Did anyone see me?)

Overuse of ellipses. Unless you're hesitating . . . and even if you are . . . too many of these can become bothersome.

Unnecessary exclamation points. I almost never use an exclamation point anymore. When I do, it's in dialogue, and it has to be something like Your socks are on fire! or Look out, it's a werewolf!

Overuse of dialect. There's a fine line here. Some writers feel that any use of dialect is overuse. I maintain that using too many misspelled words to convey dialect can be a mistake. Sho nuff.

POV switches. These still sneak through at times, especially in stories with third-person-limited viewpoint. (Example: Judy looked at him, and her face turned red. If we're in Judy's POV, she can't see her own face turn red, even though she might "feel her face grow warm.") Other switches might include, in a third-person-multiple story, two characters having a conversation and jumping from one's POV to the other's too abruptly, without something like a scene break in between.

Afterthoughts

Not that it matters, but here are some things I find fairly easy to write, probably because I like them so much: dialogue, humor, plot twists, weird characters, action scenes, and surprise endings.

Things I find hard to write, probably because I don't like them much: descriptions of people and places, backstory, exposition, unspoken thoughts, flashbacks, and symbolism. I realize how necessary these can be, and I hope I'm getting better at them, but for me they require a lot of effort.

What are your strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes? What are some writing errors that constantly seem to find their way into your stories and novels even though you know better? Which ones bother you the most when you encounter them in the writing of others?

Whatever they are, here's to better mysteries and fewer (mys?)steps. For all of us.

Last Call

It's getting late.
While there are all types of published writers out there, some literary, some commercial, some humorous, some serious, I have always considered myself to be like the guy relating stories to friends in a bar. We all relax, have a few drinks, and tales get told around the table. Not much literary about it, just common everyday folk getting together for a good time. Some tales are funny, some are sad, most are stories of people, life and just plain living, but in the end they seem to be entertaining to the listeners. Maybe even to folks we don't know who are sitting at nearby tables and listening in to what we say. Anyway, that's how I've tried to approach my story writing and my blogs.

My characters have mostly been drawn from people I've worked on or somehow met on the streets. A few are good guys, but most had at least one foot standing in the criminal element while they rationalized their actions. Don't know if they did the rationalizing in an attempt to convince others they were in the right to do what they did, or to convince themselves they had justification, or both. Personally, my vote would fall on the both category. And then, I also had relatives, friends and neighbors who unknowingly contributed phrases or gestures which helped tag a story character. Some of the latter group would not recognize themselves on the printed page even if the phrase or gesture was pointed out to them in the story.

Because of dealing with street thugs, con men, gangsters, dopers, crooked cops, outrageous lawyers, politics and the flashy adrenaline fueled side of life, most of my stories dealt with criminals as the protagonist. And while my main character may have been a bad guy, he was more likable than the antagonist and generally had some redeeming values. You could say it was our bad guy preying on worse bad guys who deserved what they got. Naturally, all of them could rationalize their actions.

My blogs have covered a wide range of storytelling in this SleuthSayers bar of ours. Past articles have covered stories from the street; topics on writing, getting published and writers conferences; backgrounds on various criminals; and trade craft on surveillance, undercover, raids, firearms and working informants. A couple of times I even ventured into the criminal backgrounds of popular songs from the past.

It's been a good run, but now it's last call and time for me to leave the bar.

I have truly enjoyed your company, everyone of you, whether you came on four years ago when our bar first opened or entered later on and took a seat at the table. This has been a fun, friendly get-together.

Take care and be safe.

Secondary Characters, Primary Purpose

by Brian Thornton

Excerpt from the script for Wayne's World 2 (1993):

Wayne: Excuse me, what are you guys doing here in the middle of the street? 
Chicken-man: Well, I'm putting these chickens in crates, and stacking them right here. Jim's job is to make sure we always have plenty of watermelons. 
Wayne: Oh, so you're selling watermelons. 
Jim: No, no sir. We just have to make sure we have plenty of them stacked at all times, just like with these here chickens. 
Garth: What do these guys do? 
Chicken-man: Well, their job is to walk back and forth with this big plate-glass window every couple of minutes. 
Garth: Weird. 
Wayne: Yeah, you've got to wonder if this is gonna pay off later on. 

As a long-time fan of Mike Meyers' work, I have to say that the excerpt quoted above is, for me, the funniest thing he's ever done.  And it's not because of the dialogue, or the way that Meyers gives his trademark smirk at the end of the exchange in order to make sure that the audience is in on the joke.

It's because of how utterly, nakedly subversive the whole set-up is.

Meyers is able to get laughs here out of parodying the sheer laziness of Hollywood film-making with regard to the introduction of, and subsequent uses for secondary characters.

I mean, come on, how often in a thriller have we spent the first act trying to figure out which of the hero's buddies is going to be the "plucky comic relief," and which one is going to be cannon fodder in the writer's attempts to "raise the stakes"?

The brilliant Sam Rockwell as "Guy Fleegman," being reassured by the equally brilliant Tony Shalhoub, in "Galaxy Quest"

Why?

Because that's the pattern. You see it in every action movie ever made.

Now, don't get me wrong, every character introduced into any work of fiction must serve a purpose, or they must be cut. No exceptions.

And getting back to Meyers' bit about the secondary characters whose jobs are a naked set-up for a mayhem-filled prat fall to come in the film's final act, that's what makes it so funny, for me. Meyers doesn't even attempt to pretend to clothe these characters in legitimacy. They're simply set pieces for the bigger joke down the line.

(It's even funnier than the fact that Meyers breaks the fourth wall, a la Woody Allen, to speak directly to the audience)

And in so doing he pokes merciless fun at those who half-ass their background work, populating their fiction hurly-burly with flat, stock secondary characters who serve one naked purpose, moving through their portion of the story back and forth like a duck in a shooting gallery (or, if you prefer, like the two guys in Wayne's World 2 who move that piece of plate glass back and forth across the street) just waiting to fulfill that that singular purpose, and then be dropped.

I have been thinking of this sort of thing quite a bit lately, as I toil on my current Work-In-Progress. How do I make my secondary characters more organic? More believable? Less stock? How do I ensure that everyone who appears in my work serves a vital purpose, and isn't just some guy putting watermelons in a crate, or one of a couple of guys carrying a plate glass window back and forth across a street?

I have some answers, and I'll share them next week. If you've got ideas, drop them in the comment section, and I'll share them with the rest of the class in my next blog post in two short weeks.

Until then....