Hero, Victim and Perpetrator: The Must-Have Relationships in Your Story

Hello, and welcome to the StoryGrid podcast. My name is Tim Grall. I'm the CEO of StoryGrid, and I'm a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works. Joining me shortly is Sean Coyne. He's the creator and founder of StoryGrid and a writer and editor with over 30 years of experience. Along with him is Danielle Kielski, the chief academic officer of StoryGrid University, and Leslie Watts, the editor in chief of Story Grid Publishing. This week, we're continuing the series, talking about my drafts, rewriting the masterwork Eyewitness by Ed McBain. So, last week, we talked a lot about changes I need to make to the protagonist in the story, figuring out how to tell truth in fiction. And so I rewrote the scene, focused entirely on accomplishing that goal.

And.

And I'm happy to say I made some real progress here. And so it was good to hear Danielle and Leslie and Sean give some good feedback on what I've done. But we did talk about several other things that I need to make changes on. The one that really stood out to me is this kind of trinity of victim, perpetrator, and hero and getting really, really clear, especially in crime. But anytime you're looking at that triangle, that trinity, getting really, really clear on the relationships between all of those people in that tr and how one of the issues with my scene is that two of those relationships are not working well together. So we talked a lot about that, and this is a thing that goes into so many stories, so I think you're really going to enjoy it. It helped me out a lot, so I'm excited for you to learn alongside me. So let's jump in and get started.

Okay. So last time we went over the need to make the protagonist more compelling by understanding his essential tactic more, making sure that's coming through on the page, making sure he has those breakdown moments that are so essential to our Sam understanding and connecting with him as. As a simulated person. So, Tim, you went away and worked on that and sent over your draft of the scene earlier this week. And so I think the thing to do is look at how you did on the updates to that concept of the protagonist and his red being. And then from there, we can move on to the things that we'd like you to change for next time. So thinking about how we were looking at Randall last time, the complaint that we had is that he was too put together in a couple of ways. So you had taken out the rocking, you had taken out anything that could have.

Marked him as someone who was untrustworthy. And so this was a reaction to something that we asked you to do before with changing up the narrative device. Right. But took it too far and took away the things that made him.

Seem.

Like he was wounded. And so that took away the power of your scene. Because he's seen a murder, of course he's going to have some trauma from that, and we want to make sure that's coming through on the page, as well as showing that he's not an integrated person yet, that he has to go. He has to undergo transformations in order to get to a place where he is actually put together. So looking at this draft, I thought that you made some really great improvements on that concept. Right. So he. We have the rocking back. And I think that that is a really interesting.

Qualification to have for Randall because, like, a couple of things. One is it plays into people's perceptions of what it. Of how homeless people act. So it's setting up that. That bias of, oh, this is a guy who. I know this guy. Right. And then what you do is you show us. No, he's rocking because he is deeply traumatized. So it's not. It subverts that expectation and takes it from being about a preconceived notion of this class of people into this particular instance of explaining how he got to this point. So I think that's really great. I love having that back in there. And then I think that you made some really, really good progress on that trope that we keep talking about, where he is telling his story to Detective Watson.

So when Randall is telling that story, what we talked about last time is that you need to have his official script, so his version of what happened. And then you need cracks to arise in that official script so that he's trying to cover stuff up. He's trying to make it seem like he's giving the whole story. But we're going to know from his having breakdowns that he does not actually. He's not actually telling the full story. And there are things at play that he.

Doesn'T want to share. So what I love in this draft is that at the end, you put a summary of what he. Of what happened, what he saw, and what happened up until the point that we see him at the beginning of the scene.

And I want to take a moment to focus on that, because sometimes, you know, you'll do stuff. And it's just these great practices that I think we really want to talk about, because they are great practices for our listeners. To do on their own, too. So you wrote a bunch of stuff that is not going to end up in the draft. Right? And it is so important because that's going to give you what you need to make sure that you're communicating what you want to communicate. And so it. And it shows us. So, you know, I'm seeing the breakdowns happen in that trope, and.

It'S clear that Randall is not telling Watson the full story, that he has things to hide. What's great about that passage that you wrote is that, as I said, that's not going to end up in the draft. But I know now, as your editor, okay, I need. I'm going to read that trope, I'm going to come up with what I think happened, and then I'm going to say, did Tim give me the clues that I need to infer the things that he meant for me to infer? And so I loved having that, because it does give you that map to figure out whether your signal is clear enough without being too on the nose. So, you know, if you included that, it would be on the nose. But I just want to encourage everyone who's listening, put on the nose stuff in your first draft, put it at the bottom like that as reference notes, and that way you're going to make sure that you're keeping your. Your signal clear and consistent. So I loved that. I think that it is a lot closer to where it needs to be. And with that said, it was very helpful having that passage, because I don't think that all of the.

Clues to your signal that you want to convey are coming through in that trope. There are some things that are coming through, like, yeah, he stole the badge in the. In the wallet. Got that. But I think that there's still room to work on.

Making sure that you are dropping in the clues that are going to give us the full story and the most important parts of the story that you came up with for Randall. And so I. I think that would be where I would focus on today, is just iterating on that execution of the protagonist's essential tactic, making sure we're getting his full covert action expressed in that trope.

No. Yeah, I hesitated putting that passage at the bottom because I think sometimes.

I can do this thing where, like, you know, when, you know, people say, well, that's not what I meant. And it's like, yeah, but that's what you said, you know, so it doesn't really matter what you meant. And so I don't want to do this Thing where I'm, like, trying to get you to like the scene better because you now know all of this stuff. But then I was like, I did. I did. It was helpful for me because we had kind of started doing that as a. As a dialogue last week, and so. And it helped me kind of drop into it a little better. So I'm like, well, let me just write out what happened between.

The murder and.

And when he shows up at the police precinct. And then I felt like it was easier to kind of write that in. And honestly, my. My concern was that. That the scene actually reads like he is the one that did the murder. Like, I didn't know if I went too far over the line of, like, somebody's gonna read this and be like, that dude killed him, you know, instead of the witness. Him being a witness, he's the perpetrator. And so I do feel like. And I'll be interested to see if you agree when you say it's not all in there. I don't think I was able to get in that the cop was still alive when he. When he stole the badge. And I kind of went over it three or four times and felt like, you know, I start especially with the last few weeks and everything, I'm like, I would rather change less things and get them more right than change too many things. So I was like, I kind of went back and forth, and I just sent it the way it was.

Yeah, I agree with you that. That is the component of it that I don't think is in there. And I think that's important because his. As we talked about last week, his leaving Barnes alive is the most damning part. So his theft of the We. I also had questions about. About the theft itself. You know, thinking about Randall's motivation, why he's stealing the badge as well as the money, those kinds of things. That. Those are some questions that I have lingering about the theft. But those are secondary, I think, because the theft is secondary. And really, you know, if you have to leave the theft off the page or if it's just like a way that we understand that he was close to the body, something like that. That's the role of the theft. The theft isn't about creating guilt for Randall. The guilt is coming from his leaving Barnes alive. So that's the most important thing we have to communicate to Sam.

And, you know, and Watson has this kind of magic moment where he's like, so you're not sure he was dead? And I'm like, oh, so Watson, he can't have these kind of magic moments of insight. It all has to be coming out of what Randall is saying. So he has to slip somehow.

And let. Let him know that he knows something or he's seen something that he couldn't have seen if Barnes was already dead.

Or, you know, protest too much about something. So one of the ways that we know that Struthers was having an affair with the lieutenant's wife is that Struthers says, well, of course I didn't know who she was at that time. Okay, Right. That's a. That's something you don't say unless it's not true. So those are the kinds of things to. I would say to start working in.

Okay.

Can we talk about the moment where. Could you talk about where you think the moment is that he breaks down and just your thoughts on that? Because that's the part I've been having trouble getting in. So I want to just, before I say anything, just kind of see if you're thinking it was in the same place that I was thinking. And then.

Yeah, okay. So the breakdown that I'm seeing is when Watson says, but you said he was going to come after you next. How could he if he doesn't know you saw or what you look like? I. Randall blinked. You know, I live out there. If there's a killer running around, he could grab me next. I live on the streets. People die every day. I'm always looking over my back. And you cops don't care about us, don't help us at all. Just let us live out there like animals until someone you care about gets hurt. Then you're all about us. And so that's where I'm seeing the breakdown. And I think it's really nicely executed because. So when we look at the masterwork pattern, Strother says, well, you know, I got a family. I got kids. He's trying to build sympathy for himself by changing the subject to something that is beneficial for him. So that's a type of breakdown where you run away from the current topic. You change the topic to something where you can win. And that's exactly what you have Randall doing here is he goes from, well, you know, how. Why are you worried about this? And he says, well, you don't care about me, you know? And so he's. He's moving into this area where he has ground to stand on. He's saying, it's very clear that nobody is going to protect me. And he's building sympathy for himself. So that's. That's where that breakdown happens.

Okay. And you think. Yeah, that's where I was thinking. And do you think my setup.

Because I felt like in the masterwork scene, the setup was in the moment and my setup was earlier. So I didn't know if that change worked because he reacts. What. What Watson reacts to in that moment is something that Randall said right at the beginning.

Which was the.

That he's afraid he's going to come after him next.

I mean, that's background information I think he's reacting to. I was hiding.

So he gets new information that makes it not make sense that Randall felt that he was going to be a target. So I think that's okay. You know, you don't want. What you don't want is, like, at the beginning, Randall says, well, I was hiding behind a girder, and then I saw this happen. And then he's like, but, you know, you do want those. The back and forth. But that's new information that inspires Watson's input. So I think that's okay. Yeah. So this. Yeah, I mean, I think we. We get there. The idea that he.

That Wilson has seen him. So that's not.

So we know that. That that's not a true part of the story, is that he was hiding there the whole time.

I might.

Make some changes to make that a little bit clearer, but the foundation is there. And so then. And we know that he created the theft. So it really is just about the. The timing of the death, which, as I said, is the most important thing. So if you have to de. Emphasize. Well, I think. I think if you have to stack rank them, the timing of the death is most important. The.

Clue that Wilson has seen him before is next important. And the theft is really, really just down from that. So if you have to de. Emphasize it, that's fine.

And I think you're right. I think you're right that the theft is there just to place him hovering over the body to see that he's still alive.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think I want to address your concern that people might think he did it. I think that's true, and I think it's fine. I think that when we read Eyewitness, we might think Struthers did it, but when we see the fear reaction at the end to Wilson, I think we learn.

That we were wrong. And again, I think that. Because part of the message that you're trying to convey is that people blame the homeless for things that are not on them, that people marginalize them and have these preconceived notions about them. I think that kind of reversal is actually helpful to communicate your signal.

Well, I think that's funny that. That's. Because a few weeks ago was when Sean was like, that's a worldview plot. Stop writing a worldview plot. Just write the crime plot. And now the signal I wanted to put through with the worldview plot is coming through clearer now that I focused in on the crime. The crime controlling idea. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So I need to. I need to rework it. I think I can do it. I think when I was. When I was feeling that fix, it wasn't that I couldn't do it, it was that I didn't. I had already changed a bunch, and I didn't want to change more.

Until I had some feedback. So I can make that change of de emphasizing. Of emphasizing that he was still alive and de emphasizing the robbery.

What. Is there something else that I could. I mean, what's next? So let's say I. Let's say I turned it in and I had done that. Right. What would we work on next? Because I feel like I could probably do that in something else on the next draft.

Well, before we move on from talking about Randall, I wanted to see if Leslie or Sean, you have any thoughts on. On Randall, aside from what we've talked about already, Because I think nailing Randall down is the most important thing. And then we can talk about other things that are auxiliary to that. But we want to make sure we fully explore that part of the draft.

Well, I think I would agree with everything that you've said about Randall.

I think it's much better. I think the signal is much clearer.

There is some.

There's something that's still squishy for me in terms of the. The signal that you talked about in the backstory at the bottom, when you mentioned that Randall was servicing the. The man who got killed and that didn't.

The man that did the killing. Okay, so I'm a little bit confused then, because I thought that.

What was going on was that the. The murder victim was being serviced by Randall and that Watson stumbled in and attacked them.

And now that I see that that is different.

I'm wondering if that was just a bad read on my part. And I. It would be interesting to know if that was.

If Leslie and Danielle felt the same way or if this was just. Maybe I didn't read it deeply enough or quickly. I read it too quickly. The relationship between the protagonist and the antagonist is one of the things that I was concerned about. But if that signal has been clear that they were, you know, a client and a, you know, a john.

Then I think I'm better about it because I was going to say I didn't know what the relationship. Why was Watson in this place at this time? And now I understand, but that brings up the question, why was the victim there? Did he just stumble upon them?

So the set. Well, so you're saying Watson. I think you mean Wilson. And it's probably because I have like eight different son names on this. That will change eventually. But yeah, the setup is Wilson, Lieutenant Wilson. The murderer is there meeting with Randall.

And then.

The cop stumbles on them. The kind of beat cop stumbles on them. And the reason the cop gets killed is he just found his lieutenant breaking the law. And so the lieutenant reacts by murdering him to keep him quiet. It's a reaction more than a plan, but just reacts and then runs off. So that's the setup that I'm, I was trying to get across.

Okay, so that makes sense to me. The only, the only thing that is a little bit fuzzy is.

That those relationships didn't, weren't clear to me. They're not clear to me. So you need to revise so that they are.

So the, the beat cop who's, who ends up being the murder victim.

I'm not sure why he was there, other than.

It seems to me that.

Wilson and Randall are probably. This isn't the first time that they've made this transaction.

And so Wilson is also a lieutenant in the police department, and I think he would be pretty good at finding a place that would be hidden from other eyes.

So the fact that the victim accidentally stumbled upon them strikes me as.

Highly improbable.

So I think oftentimes we forget that there's a trinity of relationships between perpetrator, victim and hero. And the, the relationship between the, the hero and the victim is not clear and the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim is not clear. So it's hard for me to understand why Wilson would kill the beat cop who stumbles upon him so violently so quickly. So there, there, there's something that just doesn't seem.

True or real about the setup. Because.

If the relationship between Randall and Wilson is that of a transactional relationship and that they're both professionals, Randall knows where to go to be unseen. Wilson certainly does. So the fact that they were seen seems improbable. So the only way they would be seen if that is that if someone were tracking them and had knowledge of this possibility of this transaction happening, and that would seem to me to be the role of this, this cop who stumbles upon them. And then we have to establish what's the relationship between Wilson and the victim beyond. Just like, you know, there's many things that you could do before you would kill someone. Hey, dude. Okay, you caught me. Why don't we keep this between ourselves? You know, that promotion's coming up. I can get you off the street, get you behind the desk. What do you say? Right. That's what you would do before you would kill someone, I suspect, because you want minimum viable reduction. You want to get rid of the problem with minimum viable risk. Right. So if you kill someone, the risk of being discovered is pretty high.

So there had to be some relationship between Wilson and the victim that is not on the page.

So this, this is again, we're really in the. The tightness of this construct of hero, victim and perpetrator. And when you have a crime story that has to be very, very clearly signaled. And right now it's a little squishy. I get the relationship between the hero, who's Randall, and the perpetrator, who's Wilson, But I don't know where the victim is in this trinity, in this triangle, in this triangle of relationship.

You know, so it could be. I'm just throwing out a concept here that may or may not work for you. Maybe the beat cop's a woman and it's Wilson's wife who stumbles upon this transaction.

I don't know, but maybe that's. That's a little bit too far. But what I'm looking for is the minimum viable, very loud signal of relationship between the perpetrator and the victim, which would enable and make sense that the perpetrator would go to such great lengths so quickly beyond just being startled at being caught at in a transaction, because you're very vulnerable in that transaction that you're describing. So they're just. They're sort of having sex, right? So. So when you're in that position, you're very vulnerable. You're literally. You're. Your vulnerabilities are exposed to the world, right? So moving quickly from vulnerability to violence, there's a gap between that happening. First you want to cover up, I would suspect, and then you would start to problem solve. You freeze. Then you want to.

Excuse me. So this is a breakdown at the foundations. And what we talk about in story grid all the time is the process of breakdown. First thing you do is freeze. Second thing you do is run away. How can I get out of here as quickly as Possible. And the third thing you do is fight. So what happened is Wilson went from zero to fight. And we don't see and we haven't heard because Randall hasn't told us the freeze and the flight before the fight.

So Randall was the witness to the murder. So when he doesn't, he immediately says, oh, he just clubbed him to death with his, his baton. That doesn't. That seems like a lie to me because he's not really giving the full truth. And remember, he's there to give the truth. He's not there to cover up. He's there to cover up his, His. His thievery, to protect himself. But he's not. He wants to give the truth. So he's going to say, first this happened, there was a freeze.

The next thing that happened was a flight.

Sorry, I'm going to do that again because my Internet's a little shaky.

So what Randall was going to want to do is first explain the freeze. This has to be in a script. Right. The second thing is the flight. And the third thing is the complete meltdown fight.

And so the means to describe the relationship between Wilson and the victim are going to be in those. In that script that Randall gives Watson.

I think this is my hunch. So this is a way of telling Sam, your single audience member, the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim through the use of the witness, of the hero, Randall.

Because Randall, remember, Randall's goal is to make this an ironclad, perfectly reasonable, perfect.

Description of what happens. And he does so. So much so that Watson lets him get away with the, the crime. Because Watson knows. Yeah, the guy lifted the wallet after. And I'm not, I'm gonna let that go because there's a higher, higher justice at stake here, which is getting that murderer.

So I think I, I think I really did kind of come to. The focus of the problem here is what's the relationship between Wilson and.

Yeah, I. Well, when you said it has to be ironclad, I'm like, well, it is ironclad if it's true. Right. So.

You know, it's that, like, I'm.

Going to stop you there. Truth is what I just described in that sequential movement of breakdown. It's complex, the truth. Right. So you don't go from zero to a million miles per hour because it doesn't make sense.

Yeah. And like in I. In the masterwork scene, those first two had happened already because.

The kill. The lieutenant showed up there to kill her, or it had happened off the page or something. No, What I was saying is like, no, I like what I liked about you saying is Randall's there to deliver exactly what he saw, leaving out any role he had in it. But he didn't have a role in the killing. So he just has to tell the straight, the straight shot truth. And so if there's something off about the straight shot truth, that means what you're describing is off. Is.

So, yeah, I, I, I, well, I think one of the things I was wondering is like, is it helpful at this point to go through some options? And also because I think some of the options would arise. How much of that freeze flight fight has to be on the page? Because, like, again, in the masterwork scene, we only saw the fight, but we can spin up the story really easily. Like, we don't have, like, our mind automatically fills in the first two. But with my setup, if that setup's true, where, like, it's just a beat cop that happens upon them, which, like, I don't, I don't know, maybe I'm, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know how much I, I agree with the fact that like, like, random shit happens all the time where, like, you make a good, if you make a good plan of how we're not going to get caught, I still get caught, you know. But I think what you're saying is, if that's true, then we need to see it not just immediately go. If I am going to keep it where it immediately goes, I've got to change the relationship between, between the victim and perpetrator where that we can easily fill in where that happened. So, like, if it was his, like, wife that stumbled upon them or something, or that doesn't even make sense either. Like, there has to be something, I guess I'm trying to think like, okay, well then what are my options for fixing this problem? When I'm thinking about the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator, like, how do I start going through the process of fixing the fact that the relationship between them doesn't work right now with what I have.

Well, before I address that, I do need to address what you just said about random shit happens. Okay? Because this speaks to the setting, the context of your story.

Okay?

So.

Foreign.

I'm just waiting for the.

Video to come back online. Okay.

So the setting of your story, the context of Your story is 2022 in Nashville, Tennessee. The setting and context of McBain's is 1950s, early 50s New York City.

So you need to understand the difference of the content in both of those contexts, the content in 1950s New York, they have things called beat cops. Now, what a beat cop is, is someone who literally walks the street and checks the neighborhood. And they have, you know, patterns that they have to go through, and so they poke around. Now, what happened from 1950 to 2022 in policing is extraordinarily different. So what the police do now is they don't get out of the squad car.

They are in constant communication with the central command. And there's a lot of surveillance. There's a lot of cameras on the street. Everywhere you look is a camera. Okay? So the surveillance cameras of 2022 serve the purpose that the original beat cops do. So the reason why I'm saying this is that the probability that there is even a beat cop, as you're defining it in Nashville in 2022 doesn't ring true to me.

Because the majority of.

Policing is done by squad. So when you have a beat cop, you're bringing 1950 into 2022. So that goes in my mind as an editor. That doesn't make sense. Beat cops don't walk the street anymore. Right. Because they have surveillance cameras anyway. And, and, and when they do leave the car, they turn on their camera. So we're constantly being videoed. Okay, so that means that if the lieutenant of a police department is going to be serviced by a prostitute, he is going to be very clear about finding a place where he will not be under the surveillance of the police department, the video cameras, because that will be the signal that will send the squad car.

Okay, so that would mean that the only way anyone would discover. The probability of anyone randomly discovering these two is pretty slim. So that means there had to be directed action from the victim to discover them. It was their goal state to discover the lieutenant in whatever they call it, the flante director or whatever it's called. Right. So that was the goal of this victim, was to get the goods on Wilson. Why? Because the only way he would discover him is if he had targeted him for. So I'm hoping that when we're exploring the context and content of the time period of your story, it's enabling you to start piecing together who would target the police lieutenant for a shakedown or confrontation. This is a pretty powerful figure.

So to target them would require a lot of motivation. Either a personal motivation, like they already have an intermittent relationship and they're mad that they're cheating on them. That's a good one. Or a professional one. I'm going to get the goods on my boss. So that I can get a promotion and then I get to hold it over his head for the rest of my career. And he's gonna be my right. I'm gonna have power over the power. That's awesome. So somebody wants either power over the power for a professional in impersonal. They don't care about the lieutenant, they just want his power. Or they want have a personal relationship with the lieutenant. And it's a very personal blow to their understanding of their relationship. Both are deal with relationships, one's personal and one's impersonal. So that's a.

Good split to think about. Thinking like, well, how do I establish this relationship.

Personal relationship, better than an impersonal one? Or is it better to do it as an impersonal to personal.

Well, a personal one. This is just fun to talk about. A personal relationship requires many interactions. It requires a long history of building up of a commitment and a responsibility. So personal relationships require more time on the page to establish, I suspect, than impersonal ones. Because that means that the impersonal does not. Is all about one aspect of relationship, the power of the other person.

I guess I would say like in Eyewitness, one word establishes a very long personal relationship and that's wife. And so where. If it was not personal, you would have to explain more. Although I was leaning towards writing the. The unpersonal just so it would be different. And I had some thoughts about that. But to me it's like you can establish a personal relationship pretty quickly because there's really clear labels or an unpersonal.

One at the very beginning of the story.

You can't drop it in three quarters of the way through because then it seems like a trick. So when you're establishing the story and you're establishing the roles of the players, hey, you know, his wife was murdered. That happens very early on in the Ed McBain scene. So you're like, that's a. Granted, that's a, that's a constraint of the story from the very start. When you bring in a constraint 3/4 of the way through, it doesn't ring true. It's like, oh, he just threw out the whole. Right. So that's what I, you know, he's just like, oh, it's his wife. You know, it's like, okay.

So it's, you know, you can't, you can't formalize these rules unless you take in the whole of the, you know, this, the story itself. So I, I don't mean to tell you it's. This is a hard and fast rule. It's always go for the impersonal. If you're writing a short story. No, you can. You can put the personal in, but it's got to be a constraint at the beginning.

I mean, I could see a scenario here where the witness. Because if as soon as somebody comes on them, so if that person's there on purpose, he runs and then watches from a distance. You watch it escalate to the point where you see the flight, I think is easy to go out the window because the only reason to run would be if you weren't seen there. Like, if you could still get away without being seen and. But then we could see the, like the.

The negotiation happen by just watching an argument escalate from afar.

Yeah. So if it. I mean, we could watch from afar as the witness as a argument escalates between the two. And this also makes me start thinking that it can still be a copy, but it would be in plain clothes. Like, even the witness doesn't know it's a cop until later or until it finds a badge in the pocket.

But I like the idea of the things we've talked about. I lean towards. It's somebody basically trying to set up a blackmail situation to get what they want.

Could I just pop in and address one thing you said, which is that flight would go out the window if you've already been seen. So I just want to call that out, because the freeze flight fight progression is not reasoned. It's not rational. And so you don't stop and think, well, does it suit me to fly in the circumstance? Instead, you just do it. And so. And it might not be physical flight, but it's something like changing the subject. I mean, that's what you have Randall doing. Right. So changing the subject or, you know, questioning someone's authority, that kind of thing, that's just going to happen naturally. And so I just want to call that out because it still is really important to include that even if. And especially if actually it seems irrational. It's like it wasn't me. And it's like I just saw you do it. No, but it wasn't me. I didn't do it. You know, that kind of a thing. That's something that people do because they're belying an emotional reaction.

So I have a few things on a. On a different topic. And one of the things I want to talk about is the. Is the opening and what I think that you're accomplishing with that, with the adjustments that you made there, that. Now when I read those, especially the first two paragraphs, I get this sense that he's wedged, right? That. That Randall is. Is wedged. He's in a. He's in a corner. He's in the last place he wants to be, right? And I think that's a really lovely way to open it because the, you know, the words that you are choosing are valenced in such a way that I'm having this experience as I'm reading it, of feeling wedged, right? I'm associate. I'm relating to the protagonist and feeling that, too. It's different from what Ed McBain does in Eyewitness, but it. It serves. It's a similar function. And so I think that's a really. Those adjustments that you've made there are really, really nice.

And the. The only adjustment that I was thinking about is actually in the third paragraph, and it's in how we. How we understand that the. That the shirt is new. And I was wondering, like, maybe there are some creases in it or something like that.

Like.

Like how we. How we know A is new as opposed to old.

So.

And then that kind of. It brings that detail. It transports that detail from the Ed McBain story into your story, but in a different way, which I. I think that was kind of fun.

Then. The other thing I wanted to mention is that.

Is that there's this moment in the. In the Ed McBain story that I'm. That I missed in. In reviewing it this time. And it's the moment when.

When Capelli notes about Struthers, I'm not seeing stubbornness in him. It's fear. And so this isn't a. This is his assessment of the trustworthiness of the.

Of the. Of Struthers. And I think it's really important because it. It's. It marks a shift for Capelli. So when we get around that. In. Around that area, I think the line that you're using for that is the rocking stopped again and his yellow bloodshot eyes slid up to mine. I think it's about that place, but it's. It's not performing that function in the same way that, for example, what you do with the wedging in the. In the opening is doing the same thing that Ed McBain is doing, but just in a. In a different way. So I think that on the assessment comes later.

In your story, and it's. I think it's the line, the last thing this man wanted was attention from me or any other cops. And so I think if you find a way to move that assessment of trustworthiness earlier, then you'll be performing that function because. And. And the function it performs is. It changes the way that we're looking at. At Randall, and that's what we really want. So that little bit of binding that we get is helping Sam or the reader reassess their own.

Conclusions about the protagonist. And that's a really important thing to happen at that point, before he proves that he's, you know, being a little.

He's.

He's not.

It's.

Before we go into the talking about the story fully. So it's like that. That opening tells us who he is and what you know, that. That's. It's an actual. It's an assessment that's coming after the fact.

Right.

Remember when we talked about the Ed McBain story, we talked about how you read it through, you get to the end. It's kind of puzzling. You go right back up to the start. So it's actually leading with Capelli's conclusion. And. And then that point when he says.

I saw not stubbornness, but fear, there is like the next note in that series of notes. And so I think that's a really important thing. And if you wanted to, you might consider the repeating, that sense of his being wedged.

Right.

Like as a. A kind of, you know, a suggestion in some way, in the same way that that opening does, to repeat that sense and that Watson is able to see that and is communicating that to Sam.

Yeah, I actually.

I didn't love forced as that verb in that first sentence, so it's interesting to hear you say that, because I actually kept going back and forth between forced and dragged.

Because I. In my mind, it's like the. The guilt is what. Kind of like he didn't want to. I felt like he came in with his heels in the ground and he was being pulled in by something else instead of almost like you. I don't know how much this matters, but, like, when you were talking about him, like, I felt more like he's being pulled by something than pushed by something. And so.

So. And I feel like it's the guilt of the fact that he let the guy die is what ends up dragging him in. And so since we like to talk ad nauseam here about verbs, that was. That was the one I was struggling with too, is like that opening line.

Anyway, that I just wanted to mention that since you had brought up the opening, not to talk you out of liking something, but.

Yeah, but can you. Can you see how that's what you're creating in that. And then if you feel like, oh, wedged is not what I was. Not really what I want here, then how you could make adjustments so that the sense is that he is being pulled rather than pushed.

Yeah, I don't. For me. And I don't feel like, because to me, a wedge is when you're getting pushed from two sides. And to me, there's. There's only one. One thing, and that would be the guilt that's pulling him in because there's no other reason for him to come in. It's not like he's getting trapped, chased, or it's not like. I mean, I guess you could make the argument that he was, you know, Wilson, the lieutenant might come after him later. But I keep thinking of it more as like he could have just walked away.

And so the only thing that got him in there was his guilt for letting the guy die.

So I don't. I don't think of it as a wedge.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it's interesting because it's.

It's a highly subjective reading of it.

But it. It felt really strong. And this is kind of, you know, this is part of my. The simulation that I run at the red level is like, what does that feel like? Oh, it feels like being wedged. Okay, so then.

Witnessing a murder had forced.

Forced feels like pushing rather than pulling.

So I think your instinct on that is correct. So if you want to, you know, so there may be another. Another verb that suggests that, and maybe. I don't know if the synonym finder that we've talked about before might have some.

Some variations on that word that you could play with and that you could. You know, if you're looking at the rest of the story, you might put. Though you might see other verbs that. That would be.

That could be tweaked in that way as well.

I just wanted to offer a perspective here because, Leslie, I agree with your reading about the wedging. I think that that's very clearly in there, and I agree with the characterization of forced as pushing. What I don't agree with is that the target should be pulling, because I feel like guilt.

You know, guilt. Guilt is an emotion, not something that you are pursuing. So when we talk about.

Pushing and pulling, I think we should, as with most things in story, I think we want to get out of that emotional realm, and we want to talk about the goal state and the objects of desire. What does he want? I think if you are being pulled towards something, you're saying this police station is My oasis. This is where I'm going to find peace. This is where I'm going to find serenity in those. The context that you have, the police station, will never be that for Randall, because of the marginalization, because of the bias that exists. So I think that the pushing is the correct.

Valence for the setup that you have. Because the way that I think about it is that he had. There's danger on the street. This is pushing him. He wants to avoid that danger. Right. So that's pushing him off of the street. There's marginalization and all of the attendant things in the police station that's pushing him out of the police station. He does not have a place to belong, so he can't be pulled anywhere. He's pushed out of everywhere. And it's just, where am I being pushed out of the least? And that's, you know, I think that's. That's getting at what it is to be a fish out of water is that you're pushed out of everywhere. You don't belong anywhere, and you're just looking for the place where you don't belong the least, where you can have a temporary place to sit and, you know, maybe accomplish some sort of an object of desire. But, you know, it's getting at that idea, getting at those foundational ideas of that fish out of water, of that the best bad choice. And. And it is that being pushed from all sides instead of pulled in two directions. He's not pulled in two directions to me. He's. He's pushed from everywhere, and he's just. That. That wedging, I think, is very accurate to describe what's going on.

Okay. I mean, so I feel like the next thing for me to work on is.

Getting the hierarchy of the important things in that we talked about landing on something.

Between the victim and perpetrator and then making sure that's in there. And so, to me, the exercise would be basically re. Adding to, rewriting that section at the bottom to include that, and then going through the story the same way to look for opportunities to signal that to the audience.

Does that sound like a good place for me to work?

Yeah, I think that sounds great.

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