Before reading any of the chapter blogs, please Read This
A word in my own defense:
A common admonition to writers is “show, don’t tell”. This means do not give long expositions to set the scene, but rather compose your story so that the events and dialog reveal (show) the things you want to express. I violate that extensively in this chapter and, to a lesser degree, in the next. With the court’s indulgence, I shall now plead my case.
The circumstances that led to Ed Gulleif’s predicament, while not essential to the story, are essential in showing him not to be a villain (for as I say, “the villains are few”). He sacrificed greatly for the community, and those sacrifices landed him at the desperation point that Barris found him.
So step one of my defense: That background is necessary.
How then to cover the years of backstory? Two things occur to me.
- Reveal it in dialog. But covering these details in a conversation between Ed and Annie seemed unnatural, as they both already know the details. What is there to discuss? And adding another party (apart from the suits from Barris, who will be covered next) seemed like clutter. It would have to be someone on intimate emotional terms with Ed, for him to discuss these things, and the person would serve no purpose but exposition. It would seem forced.
And as for Barris? Discussing it with them would be foolish. Ed might be an idealist, but in business terms he was no fool. Taking financial risks for the sake of potential gain is could prove to be a mistake, but it doesn’t make one a fool.
- Reveal it by going back and “showing” the events. But then this becomes a different story. It becomes Ed’s story and the story of the El, instead of Annie’s story (as well as Andrew’s and Lewee’s, but we’ll meet them later)
So I opted to tell. And I will fight to the death (or at least to the point of tedium) anyone who disagrees with that decision.
Who is Annie Dale?
Well she’s me, of course. To varying degrees, virtually all of my characters are me. Some of them are definitely 95% someone else, but even then there is a slice of me kicking around.
Annie wandered into being an Accountant, and later stumbled into programming. I wandered into Application Development (computer programming with and attitude) and later stumbled into Accounting when a development project mandated it. Neither Annie nor I have “proper” official training in our main or secondary fields. Both of us have at times dealt with the fear of being “found out”.