Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Prose Instructions

The little guy remembered a day in the city, just feeling the pace of the space, and the Moment when the Whole Vision, large as it was in his life and mind, had to be spilled out into the ear of an overtaxed, distracted Person with Resources while they were together in an elevator. Yet he was unable to speak at first, burdened by an accumulated history of debt, unpaid bills, scraps of paper with momentary worries scrawled on them, little accounts of dollars of the days when there was no flow. But now there could be flow. The Scouts had scouted, the Puffers had puffed, and the Agents of Talent, now scouted and puffed, were out there in the thick of it, representing his agency in the offices and hot tubs of the Decision Makers.

Please rewrite this sentence to include more concrete details.

Maggie Johnson had gone to Pine Hillock Community Players' Hall to see Mike Peasely perform in "Harry Pothead and the Quisling Unicorn". After the performance she went backstage, via her connection to the Theater Director, with a proposition for Peasely and his parents: she wanted to schedule Mike's audition with Harvey Grapejuice of Trillium Films for the upcoming Rachel Lodestone movie Suburban Shark Tank. Peasely and his parents became very excited about this chance for success. Dreams of adoring audiences, endless travel, good food, new technologies and fantastic interesting and wealthy friends to jaunt about with were now projecting themselves onto the silver screen of the Peasely Family imagination. These magnificent images began their parade the instant Johnson uttered the words "eighty thousand dollars to sign". The next day Johnson went to see Aaron Billings, Grapejuice's secretary and casting director. They met in his office. They talked. Aaron had met Maggie before and enjoyed their witty conversations about other casting directors and talent agents, especially Julia Richmond, that bitch, and Jerry Clinkslip, the biggest whipped poodle Billings had ever met, you know, that one time, at the industry convention in Las Vegas. After lunch (they hit it off that well) at Khan Dogs, when the waiter dropped the bill onto the table and Johnson elegantly swooped it away, Billings gave the exact hour, minute and date for Mike Peasely's audition with Grapejuice.

This sentence has a lot more detail, but it still doesn't have what people really want: the engagement of the senses. Please rewrite this entire scene in order to engage the senses.

The little guy sensed things, but couldn't give them much attention. Only this: now that the landlord had finally turned on the heat, the piles of clothes sitting on the radiator had dried and begun to fry. This caused the otherwise airless room to fill with a smell somewhere between cooked cotton, burnt armpit, and melting plastic.

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