The Deer Man, continued from Day Four...The old man sat in a chair, no walker nearby, so I knew he was one of the healthier ones. Still, his body arched over the table like he was half of a rainbow and I was reminded of Homer Simpson?s evil boss.I shrugged and started to turn away, but he stopped me with a grunt.?Figures,? he said. ?Guess the boy?s too chicken to play a decent game of chess with an old man.?I smiled at this, and sat myself down across from the man. There was something to him. He wasn?t like everyone else in the home. He was smart...and manipulative. I thought I just might come to like him.It took ten minutes and twenty-seven moves before I had him check-mated. He didn?t speak, but spent the entire game with the tip of his tongue pinched between his teeth in thought. I hadn?t really been trying, and some of his moves were kind of basic. But it felt mean to beat the poor guy. He slumped back in his chair, lips pressed tight together, and for just a moment I thought he might actually cry.I stood, then offered my hand. ?Good game,? I said. But rather than a sportsmanship-like handshake, he peered up at me and said, ?Do you have a car???Well, yes.?He grinned?the first I?d seen from him?and pointed to the seat. ?Sit down, and we?ll play again. But this time, let?s up the stakes.??I?m sorry, Mister...??Wilkens.??...Mr. Wilkens. But I really should be going.?He shrugged. ?Okay. Suit yourself. But I?ve got enough money to make it worth your while. You win, you make a hundred bucks. You lose, and you take me for a ride.??A ride? Where???Does it matter? I mean, you beat me the first time.?At that moment, a woman, perhaps my mother?s age, came over. She was carrying a large foil pan, the kind you?d expect to find at a picnic filled with macaroni and cheese or half-burned hot dogs. Aluminum foil covered the top.?Here you go, Mr. Wilkens,? she said, setting the pan on the table beside ours. The deer man waved her off, then started resetting the chess board. A hundred bucks. I figured it was akin to stealing, playing this man again. But clearly he was desperate for company, and who was I to turn down the cash? So I sat back down.* * *Mr. Wilkens shoved the foil pan into the trunk of my car, balanced on my gym bag, three bats, a pile of textbooks, a couple of jackets, a few pairs of pants, shirts, and some underwear. He wasted me, and after only ten moves, I knew I?d been tricked. The first game was a gimme. He?d let me win. But by the time I realized it in the second came, my side had already been decimated. I admired him for it, actually. Didn?t think he had it in him. But it also meant I?d be driving him to who knew where.The route weaved through town, out toward the municipal airport. He had me turn down a side street and pull into a dirt parking spot alongside a ?No Trespassing? fence. It was getting late, and dusk was fast approaching. I really needed to be going.Mr. Wilkens opened the trunk and pulled off the aluminum foil from the pan. Inside were corn cobs. Fully pealed, and cooked to a brilliant yellow. A few had some missing kernels, as though nibbled at by a mouse, but most were completely untouched.?What?s with all the corn?? I said.?They serve it, every week like clockwork. But we?re a bunch of old folks, for heaven?s sakes. We can?t eat corn off the cob. Gets stuck in our dentures.?Okay. I?m stopping here for now, mostly because it is a good place to stop and my time is limited. As you can tell, I write in short bursts, usually. I don?t generally have a lot of time to sit and write something from start to finish, unless I know where the story is headed ahead of time. In this case, I reached the point I needed to get to: why the deer man has the corn, and how he got to the place where he will feed the deer. So, that?s where I?ll pick things up next time.A few comments about some choices I made. First, I didn?t actually show the second game of chess. I didn?t think the game play would be all that exciting, for one. But also, I think I painted a picture that causes the reader to suspect that just maybe the deer man is going to win. I set things up with that intention, actually. The reader doesn?t know for sure, but certainly suspects it. So, there is no point in drawing out a game creating artificial suspense about something that the reader has pretty much already figured out anyhow.Instead, by creating a scene transition at that moment, and then immediately revealing that the deer man had, in fact, won, it allows an opportunity for some light-heartedness for the reader. It contrasts the cockiness of the POV character, and gives a sense of comeuppance. I was also trying to show some character development on the part of the POV character. He is learning to respect this man, but for reasons that are typically not respect-worthy: manipulation and trickery. This reveals something about this POV character that builds on what I had previously written. The guy is flawed, and he appreciates the flaws in others. Seeing the deer man as having flaws helps this POV character to see him as more human.And so there is the character development. He started out having trouble seeing the old folks as human, and now he?s discovering otherwise. Story will continue in the next entry, and hopefully will finish out the first draft. (Source: Ryan Bruner's blog)
Original source: http://ryanbruner.blogspot.com/2008/09/creation-of-story-day-five.html
