Consider the Average Reader

One of my favorite books is Kurt Vonnegut's Timequake, which is part time travel story, part memoir. In fifty years when everyone's forgot about it, I'm going to write my own. With dragons. That breath time.

Anyway, in Timequake Vonnegut says that every author writes for one specific person. He claimed he wrote for his sister Alice, who died decades before this particular book came out. KV, as I call him when I visit his grave, said that every author crafts the story so that this one specific person will enjoy it.

I like to write (SURPRISE! I also like to steal, but I have medication for that), and I like to think I write with my mother in mind. She's very easy to please. The two leads must be happy at the end. Evil must be vanquished, and if someone falls down and it's funny, so much the better.

Recently back in Arkansas where my parents live, there have been nasty snowstorms. Wood is scarce, and no one leaves their houses for fear of frost giants. Though they don't have cable, my parents do have Netflix, and in the course of the blizzard have watched many movies, including The Last Airbender. Afterward, my mother emailed me to ask some questions (she incorrectly references the movie as The Last Hairbender).

On returning home, we watched the Last Hairbender.....and loved it!!!!!!  But i have some unanswered questions......

• when will the little boy avatar learn to use his earth and fire bending skills?
• Who will teach him?
• Will the Prince of the Fire nation turn from the darkness to the light and become friends with the Avatar?
• What happens to the white-haired water princess who gave her life for the glowing fish....will she be resurrected?
• Does the majority of the people who see this movie understand the false theology sublimely embedded in the mystic spirituality of the film?
• When is the next sequel coming out?

Since I haven't seen it, I couldn't answer her (maybe you can). But I look at these and see some basic elements that, when I write, I need to cover in order to make my mom happy, including closure and possibly a redemption plot. But she's definitely hooked.

Who Actually Like Crime and Punishment?

The first day of Modern American Literature, we went around the room and introduced ourselves to the professor. She's an older woman who looks like Professor Trelawney. I honestly cannot remember her name. It's my senior year. This class isn't very important.

Modern American Literature is a sophomore level class; freshman can take it if they declare English, so most students are younger than I. Each person had to give their favorite authors. Walt Whitman. John Milton. Albert Camus. Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

You are all liars, and I am extremely embarrassed because you are not wearing pants since you took them off when they caught fire on account of your great deceptions. These are not your favorite authors. These are no one's favorite authors. Hard human truths and favorite authors have never held hands. And who gives Dostoyevsky's first name when they talk about Crime and Punishment? It's like your trying to pretend you knew him; it's impossible that you would know him, because he would never hang out with anyone who looks like you do. I know him. We play Settlers of Cataan every other Wednesday.

The skinny acne farm who said Albert Camus was his favorite author also said that it was because of the dichotomy which Camus creates between a presumed life and a true life. That's when you pokes a hole in someone's throat, right?

Last summer when I was in Galway, I paid 50 euros to attend a "Master Screenwriting Class" hosted by Christopher Hampton, who adapted Atonement and Dangerous Liaisons and such (see clay face, above). A good writer. A terrible class. The advertisement didn't say this, but it was actually a pump up the jam party for the audience's egos. Hampton, who said less than nothing that you can't read in Syd Field's Screenplay (which is the go to book, if you're interesting in screenwriting), fielded questions from "students."

Sample question: "I was a writer on a major motion picture, and the director kept asking me to rewrite this one scene for the big name actor in the major motion picture, and he was never satisfied. What should I have major motion picture?"

That's not a question; that's a high five. You might as well give yourself your own nickname. Like Major Motion Picture Lips, or Very Poor Self Esteem Face.

My favorite quotation, besides some really arrogant things Hampton said, came from one student who tossed Hampton an abstract softball that began with the statement, "Film is a very esoteric medium." That's where the salt water and the freshwater meet, right?

On the first day of class, the guy who introduced himself right before me said his favorite works were Eastern spiritual tomes and egalitarian love texts. Egalitarian? That's with horses, right? You're sick, greasy eighteen year old on my left.

When it came to me, I said currently my favorite author was Richard K. Morgan. What has he written? A trilogy of novels, with this same character Takeshi Kovacs. And what are they about? Five hundred years in the future, this ex-Navy Seal of the Universe who has a really bad attitude solves mysteries. He always gets his man. And he sleeps with a lot of women.