>>1740009I'm basing it off the advice of Jack McDevitt
During the course of a recent writers’ seminar, I was reading a student story in which the first-person narrator encounters an old acquaintance on a clifftop overlooking the sea. The sky is ominous, rain coming, somewhere in the distance a dog barking. So far so good. I was there. I could feel the storm building, could hear the ocean rumbling against the rocks below.
Then, safely within the perspective of the viewpoint character, I turned my attention to the acquaintance, whose name was Michael. Michael was short, mildly overweight, with thick black hair. He delivered pizzas for a living. And the narrator mentioned almost casually that once, years ago, Michael had touched the stars.
I was drawn in. While the darkness gathered and the rain began to fall, I waited to hear in what way this magic had occurred.
Michael was, the writer added, pococurantic.
Pococurantic?
The storm vanished, as did the clifftop, the ocean, and the magic. I was back in my living room, consulting my dictionary.
The writer was showing off his Random House, and in doing so he’d blown away the illusion that the storm and the meeting were really happening. That illusion is the essence of what writers try to do. Popular opinion to the contrary, we do not tell stories. We construct experiences.
