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Continuing on, Goines couldn’t help wondering for the umpteenth time at what someone had whispered to Mrs. Goines about the couple’s having gotten together as the result of a “spouse exchange” among the members of a sports club in town.
Had the spouses they swapped with similarly divorced and married one another? Had the men suggested and encouraged the swap, or had the women? Goines guessed the men had, but what if it had been the women?
The opening for a short story started writing itself in Goines’ fingers.
Betty beckoned Ray to step with her into the shade behind a tall van in the club parking lot. She had long admired this man Ray’s lithe, athletic moves on the tennis court, the sound of his laughter, his longish blond hair. What would it be like to borrow him for a night? Or a weekend!Goines might continue the narrative later, back home on his computer. He smiled as he walked on, around the park and back toward home. The day was already heating up.
“What is it?” Ray inquired, “What’s up?”
Betty grinned and paused her sparkling eyes on Ray’s designer tennis shorts, pausing until she was sure he noticed. “I have a proposition to put to you, Ray.
“And I should tell you that Joan” – Ray’s wife – “is putting the same proposition to Bill” – Betty’s husband, whom she had more than once caught admiring Joan’s serves and backhands.
A little way farther on, thinking about an email he had opened that morning from someone who said she read a lot of James Patterson’s novels, Goines said “Aha!” aloud.
His blog could launch a new column that provided a 100- to 200-word opening and challenged readers to develop it as a short story. What interesting developments, what clever endings might they devise? What life lessons, or maxims? How might they title their stories?
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From my friend Lisa Austin:
ReplyDeleteI remember a story I read....someone challenged Hemingway to write a story of only two sentences. Here was his reply:
For sale. Baby shoes, never worn.
Very interesting and how many ideas would you get? Always thinking are you not?
ReplyDeleteSome very informative background from an acquaintance who met James Patterson way back when:
ReplyDeleteI actually met Patterson in NYC in the 1980s, along with his Asian-American partner whose name I forget. The other guy is not mentioned in Patterson's Wikipedia page. Anyway, they both worked at J Walter Thompson in the 1970s, where I also worked. Patterson was a copywriter (creative, no surprise). The other guy was a research expert. When Patterson mentioned to the guy that he might quit advertising to write novels, the other guy (I hate to keep calling him that but I only met him once and don't remember his name) said, "Let me do some research on the genre." This guy was also an early computer whiz. The guy ran 500 of the most successful American thrillers through a program and came up with a set of algorithms that rated elements like: number of chapters, number of pages in each chapter, number of main characters, gender of main characters, etc. Essentially, it was a formula for writing this type of novels. When Along Came a Spider was a blockbuster, Patterson just kept repeating the formula. Is it any surprise to you that the formula was used over and over again in Patterson's books? So much for creativity, eh?