Date:         Fri, 23 Aug 1996 23:55:38 EDT
From: herr tink <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
Subject:      EXERCISE: A Basket of Joy?

Drawing on "Teaching Your Children Joy", by Linda and Richard Eyre, ISBN
0-671-88725-4

From Chapter 1. Preserving the Joy of Spontaneous Delight

"...On one hand, we admire spontaneity; we speak of the free spirit, the
unconventional, with at least a lingering trickle of envy.  On the other
hand, we associate maturity with words like _sophistication_, _reserve_, and
_proper_."

"There are many ways to encourage and sanction a particular behavior;
perhaps the best way of all is by participating in that particular behavior
yourself.  (And perhaps the great benefit of preserving the natural,
childlike joys in our children is that we may recapture them in ourselves.)"

Some of their suggestions:
1.  Get excited with children
2.  Help them relive spontaneous joy moments by remembering
3.  Do spontaneous things with them
4.  Make spontaneity a high priority
5.  Play surprise-oriented group games
6.  Open packages
7.  Put new surprises into old fairy tales
8.  Do things with children that are a little silly and that show how
acceptable it is to enjoy unexpected things.

So, today's exercise is about putting surprises into stories.  Here's what
we're going to do.  Start with a scene that is a little bland, fairly
predictable.  Got it in mind?

Pick a number from one to six.

1.  a joke - what's the punchline?
2.  a sealed, wrapped box - and what's inside?
3.  a newspaper - and what's the story that makes your character jump?
4.  an envelope - with fanmail from some flounder inside?
5.  a purse (backpack, briefcase, etc.) left behind - by who?
6.  a picture - of what, who, when?

So work this bit of business into the scene, teasing us with the background
piece, having one character pick it up, put it down, the other fondle it,
then forget it for a few lines, wait a while (note the comma spice just
sprinkled wildly hither and yon?) and at last - reveal the surprise!

What surprise?

Only the writer knows for sure!

Short start?  How about...

        He touched it as though he'd never seen it before, shook his head, and
looked me in the eye again.

Don't forget - this is the merest background (counterpoint?  Embroidery?
Contrapuntal scribbling?) to the main ploy of the scene, wherein our
hero(ine) revels in showing off his/her ambitions, goals, hopes and fears -
and is crushed, thwarted, even tripped up through the wicked machinations of
the epitome of eeeeevil - the antagonist!  So don't lose the arterial
pulsation of your beating heart in the baroque stitching on the edge of the
open vein, but don't ignore the value of small surprises and disclosures
charmingly evoked.

(Bill says I've got many and many a word to misuse before I rest these weary
little phalanges, so I'm doing my best to exercise a variegated collection
of entities through all their intersections, unions, and disjunctions.  So
don't spare the malaise, mustard and relish, just slather them all over the
fine literary heap of a Dagwood special into which we shall sink our canines.)

tink
in thesaurus disquietus