Back to the main page

Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

From: Ratinac, Rand (NSW) RRatinac@*****.redcross.org.au
Subject: Opinions, please. (Small little format idea)
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 09:53:00 +1100
> I wondered if it would work better if I did it in first person.
<snipt!(TM)>

Good - just one thing. I'd tone down all the little asides. Or at least, not
put them all in brackets. You don't HAVE to do that when it's a first person
story. As it is, though, it's a bit jarring.

Here's a couple of examples from a first person story I wrote a few years
back.

This first one is a "pure" aside section from the beginning of the story.
The speaker is rambling on to the reader and "glossing over" certain events,
rather than going through them as they happen

==== Micky Donovan had been having a bad day. No, let me rephrase that.
Micky Donovan had been having a bad year. He'd also been having a very bad
day. So I suppose it was somewhat understandable when he went out that night
and got himself totally pissed.
Micky Donovan had a boss. Don't we all? The difference is, though,
who that is. See, I'm my own boss and most of the time I'm a pretty damn
decent boss. Micky, though - well, his boss' name was James. James Edward
Darcy-Rutherford. The Third. Mr. Darcy-Rutherford, quite unlike myself, was
an absolute bastard of a man to work for. He's the kind of boss people don't
just dream about killing - if you know what I mean. And that was on his good
days.
The big problem, you see, was that our Mr. Darcy-Rutherford
absolutely despised poor old Micky. Ever since Micky had transferred to his
department a year ago, Mr. Darcy-Rutherford had made it his mission in life
to turn Micky's life into a living hell. And if there was one thing you
could say for Mr. Darcy-Rutherford it was that he was good at his job. Very
good, in fact. Unfortunately for Micky. So it was understandable that, while
he was pissed that night, Micky started making threats. Vivid threats. In
excruciating detail.
The problem with that, however, was that Micky worked for Fuchi. In
particular, Micky worked in Fuchi's 'Resources Adjustment Department', or
RAD for short. If you don't already know, a 'Resources Adjuster' is
Fuchi-speak for a professional Johnson. In other words, Micky was the guy
who hired shadowrunners to do the dirty on other people. So when Micky
started making threats, the truth of the matter was that he was entirely
capable of having them carried out - if he'd been so inclined - which he
wasn't. He was just drunk.
Unfortunately for Micky, our Mr. Darcy-Rutherford was a paranoid
slot. As paranoid as they come. That was probably one of the reasons why he
was still around to be Micky's boss. He's the kind of guy who believes in
preemptive strikes. In other words, if you start making threats, he'll take
you out first. And he could do that - he was a Resources Adjuster too.
I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.
====
And here's the following action part - the speaker STILL rambles, but he's
narrating "as" things occur, which is what you were doing at the start of
your story.

==== I'd done some work for Mr. Darcy-Rutherford previously and,
according to him, my crew and I were the best runners he'd ever worked with.
Now I had no idea whether he was telling the truth, or just winding us up in
the hope that we'd work cheaper (knowing him as I did, it was most probably
the latter), but whatever the case he came to me first - or at least, no one
took the job before he approached me.
As I recall, I'd been in my favourite dive that night, drinking
heavily. It had not been a good day for me, either, but that was beside the
point. I wasn't drinking to forget, I was just drinking to get drunk. Not a
very intelligent pastime, I know, but there's something about waking up in
the morning with the mother of all hangovers to put all your problems into
perspective.
"Well," I remember slurring, "if it isn't Big Jimmy D!" I often
called him that. He absolutely hated it. I'm that kind of person, in case
you hadn't guessed. I think we'll call him that from now on in my little
manuscript. There's no way he'll ever set eyes on this in his lifetime, but
some day his ghost will look down and see that the only memorial to his
existence in the entire world is a book that calls him Big Jimmy D. And
that'll slot him off to no end.
"Blood," he said with a frown. He was always frowning at me. I
actually kind of liked it.
I waved my arm in an expansive gesture and just managed to avoid
ending up on the floor. "Take a seat, Jimmy! I'm feeling nice enough to put
up with anyone tonight, even a slot like you."
"So kind," he murmured, seating himself fastidiously. That was
another annoying thing about old Jimmy D. He was so careful about keeping
clean it made me want to yarf. I know, cleanliness is next to godliness and
all that, but there are limits. I always got the feeling that Big Jimmy
would have worn some kind of environment suit to our meets if that wouldn't
have gotten the drek beaten out of him. At the very least. Funny thing was,
good old Jimmy was such a weird, scrawny looking guy that anything, even a
bit of drek, could have improved his appearance.
"So what can I do for you, you old bastard?" I asked him. Jimmy D
was smart enough not to be offended by that - even if I did mean every word
of it.
"I have a job for you, Blood," he said to me and pulled out one of
his damned files. I really didn't like his files. If you didn't check out
anything and everything in them, you'd tend to get some rather nasty
surprises sprung on you.
"What kind?" It was always important to get that out of the way up
front with Big Jimmy D - otherwise you'd tend to get some rather nasty
surprises sprung on you.
Jimmy looked around rather furtively, somehow managing to look even
more shifty than usual - and that was saying something. Finally he leant
forward and whispered, "Wetwork."
====
Obviously - I would hope :) - this is a humourous story, so unless that's
what you intend to do, you don't want to use EXACTLY the same style. But I
hope it illustrates my point.

Doc'

Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.