Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Characters with Warts

Characters with Warts

Yesterday I got a comment to my blog that raised half a dozen other questions each of which merits at least a blog's worth of response. I encourage readers to read Leger's comment because I will be exploring it in the next series of blogs.

The first of these is what a writer should write. It is my position that a writer should write with a view towards getting read. At WDC the measure of what is being read is “Views.” What we do here at WDC prepares us for publication. Once published the new measure becomes, “book sales".

My strategy at WDC is to keep an eye on the “Views” of what I write for clues as to what provokes reader interest. One of the most highly viewed items I have posted here was an entry to the Quickie Contest called Pageant. This item is approaching 300 views and there is something about it that made it a best seller on this site….

When I read Leger’s comments I placed them in the context of what made this vignette soar to the level of twice the views of anything else I had written. I am confounded by what made it so popular and maybe by examining it in light of Leger’s comments will have a better appreciation for why it viewed so well
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The vignette involves an organized crime figure named Manny Harden. He is recruiting women for a mysterious enterprise that is so sensitive to the Cosa Nostra that it must be safeguarded at all costs. In a sense it is like the ULTRA secret in WW2 where the workers were threatened with death if the secret was compromised. Thus Manny must screen the candidates (young woman) to make sure they have the qualities and attributes suited for the job. I.e. that they could resist interrogation and are totally committed. Thus a series of trials have been devised to see if a young woman has the necessary traits and qualities for the job. In this framework in the file “The Car Builder and real estate Agent” the vignettes are stored on my portfolio
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Now keep in mind most of these vignettes were written for the quickie contest. The prompts for this contest often involve fetish based concepts such as bondage, blindfolds, roleplaying, and peeping. There is something about appealing to dark compulsions and leading readers into the realm of the forbidden that resonates. If done artfully and in moderation these yearnings that many readers have can prove enhancing from within the context of a broader story.

So now you have the overall context of what I’ll be discussing for the next couple of days