4.05.2011

Exhibit 1.2.24

On Editing a Novel #21

IT'S BEEN DONE BEFORE BUT HAS IT BEEN DONE...ON MARS? As we all know from that Al Gore documentary, America's most limited resource is heartbreaking family dramas that end with a drunken father having an epiphany about what is important while watching the sun set purple into the Western plains. If you must, blame Raymond Carver, LLC for drilling too deeply despite knowing what might poison the aquifer, but I'd rather you consider the possibility of abandoning this world of ruined plots much like our progeny will one day abandon Indiana. Instead, consider changing the setting of your novel to...Mars!

Watch how easy it is:

* A son struggles with telling his father that he doesn't want to take over the family business...on Mars!

* An alcoholic with a hilarious monkey gallivant around the country...of Mars!




* A series of people navigate interconnected stories of love and loss and...Mars!

* A scrappy group of teenagers have to fight off a foreign invasion. O, and did I mention the teenagers are...Mar!ions? I should have.


(The foreigners are still Soviets).

* A busy careerwoman discovers she has cancer...of the Mars!

* An Irishman locked out of his home wonders around Dublin..., Mars!

* Mars!...of Arabia!



* A touching story of a soldier's struggles to forget all the horror he saw on...Mars!

(Actually, that one has been done before).

* Pay it forward...to Mars!




* A young man discovers the emptiness of life in the modern corporate world until he discovers...and this is the twist...he's not on Mars!

Because Mars plots are over. Thanks, Updike.

1 comment:

Andrew Kozma said...

What about Edgar Rice Burroughs? Totally destroyed all the soldier-in-danger-goes-to-sleep-and-wakes-up-on-Mars-and-gets-involved-with-a-beautiful-Martian-princess plots everyone was working on. Back in the 1910s.

Okay, maybe that's a stretch.