Several of the pieces presented in workshop involved violence, physical action and tension. Smashing of a father’s hand, encounter with an amputated kid, getting kidnapped and robbed by Chinese thieves. Murdering a Chewbacca actor. And a fight scene. I came away with several observations (which are not necessarily what Chuck actually said):
At first, Pete’s short piece about a man talking about his father’s encounter with brutal men reminded me of Flannery O’Conner’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” An innocent family run into violent men. But I realized a crucial difference. In O’Conner’s story, we are right there in the old woman’s head as she tries to reason with the men who have just killed her family. She has no time to judge these men, only try to connect with them in her limited perspective. But in Pete’s story, we hear a man bitterly recount an event that happened years earlier. Time has buffered the pain so the man can give us his conclusions. I would have liked to hear this scene from the young boy’s perspective and witness the event up front so that I could make my own judgement about what happened and how this might affect the boy.
One of the participants flew in from Canada just to attend the workshop. (I should have held onto my copy of the stories so I remember the writers’ names.) His story “Knockers” was interesting. An armless kid knocks on the door to offer to cut the grass for $20. When I heard that, I immediately remembered my encounter with a gypsy child beggar on the streets of Bucharest back in 1968 Romania. The beggar waved her arm in front of me. Her hand was mutilated. I was filled with shock, horror and wonder. Was she deliberately mutilated so that she could earn more? What would drive a person to hurt his own child? I’ll never forget that encounter. But in the Knockers story, none of these emotions are present in the man who answers the door. He only wonders how the kid knocked on the door and how he will cut the grass. Especially if this encounter happens in our modern suburban world, I would expect more emotion.
Scott (?) the gonzo businessman shared his story of his encounter with Chinese thieves who kidnap him, tie him up and try to use his credit cards to get cash. Although there is the painful experience of a cigarette burn, several hints in his story gave me the impression the encounter was not as significant as Scott wanted it to be. With one foot still in his American world (the flights, the hotel, the embassy) he knew he was not in real danger. The thieves were clearly amateur, hoping to use pin numbers (which Scott couldn’t remember) to withdraw cash. I got his sense of outrage and anger towards these thieves but this seemed to be a random crime that could have happened anywhere. I wanted to have a better sense of his emotions and the significance of this event in his life.
In my piece, half of a chapter about Henry and Grace’s incarceration in Manzanar in 1942, the scene centers around a fight between Henry and Debu, a huge mixed blood hoodlum. The fight is brutal and bloody. Chuck very astutely noticed my use of words like left and right. These words distracted the reader from the fight itself. Such words are remnants of my efforts to map out the action in my head. After all, I’ve never been in a fight. Which hand is Henry using? How would Henry try to topple Debu? Especially in something like a fight scene, I need to eliminate such factual words in the final draft and focus on the action.
At the same time, I appreciated Chuck’s acknowledgement of my efforts to “pull back the camera” in the last paragraph. After such an intense closeup into a bloody fight scene, I felt I had to give the reader an unusual perspective and breathing room. Sometimes my writing works.
Teal was the person that presented the knockers story.