Ann: Beautiful! The kind of descriptive play with words that makes me want to savor each line again and again. Thanks for sharing.

DC

It’s tougher to see m&r in passages that aren’t give and take dialogue and action, isn’t it? I remember in Randy’s MRU article his recomendation that if it’s not M or R, then cut it out. No matter how attached you are to that heartbreakingly beautiful prose.

But……… now I’m beginning to think that you absolutely have to make sure you understand what classifies as M & R before you start hacking!!

I am currently working on cleaning a virus from my kids’ (#@!%&!) pc. I’ve got an online tech support dude working with me on it, which is good, because I only know enough to be dangerous. I can see things in the system files that look like they don’t belong, but if I were to go deleting files without better understanding how the files work together, I could delete valuable stuff.

Randy’s analysis of Ann’s passage shows me that my understanding of MRUs is limited to the basic cut and dried examples and with that knowledge alone, it would be dangerous for me to take a machette to my wip.

I’d run into a passage like this—not like this, but in the sense that it has extended portions of description, bits of explanation/inner monologue, etc, and probably think I needed to rewrite it into cleaner, more clearly defined MRUs, which totally would ruin this piece, and could make a mess of my story and hack up my style.

Beautiful writing, Ann, and thanks for sharing, Randy. I don’t think I’ll delete anything I suspect lacks MRU now until I get some professional help.

I didn’t get to read your blog yesterday because I was going on 4 hours sleep. Now that I’ve read it, all I can say is, WOW! I had never caught the concept of “The Author-Reader Contract” before and so what you said makes perfect sense. Thanks!

-Robert

I have a part in my story where after being deep in the woods, my characters travel to a big city subway station. Should I show all this traveling if there’s no conflict in it? Also, should I summarize the fact that they traveled in a paragraph or so at the beginning of the subway scene? If not, should I allude to it throught other things (ex. the main characters rides there on the back of a motorcycle; i was thinking that i could say that her legs were sore from the long ride).

Thanks Randy! I guess if you don’t want to post the answer on your blog (once again, off topic) you could e-mail me.

Thanks a ton and thanks for all the great writing tips!!!

is there any point at which not telling the reader about traveling becomes excessive. I know it can work the other way around, but it seems like just having the characters be one place and another place the next chapter would confuse the reader….

For the 1000th time: thanks!

And all! I’ve only just managed to read this as I am on hols in Loire Valley and in the Office de Tourisme in Tours but I didn’t want it to appear like I’d not valued this input. I will consider all comments back home, but thanks so much Randy and the rest of you!

Ann