You either can or you won’t. That’s the story, isn’t it? When you’re doom scrolling on social media, could you be writing? Writing is waiting while you watch some video of a half-naked twenty-year-old who is doing Yoga poses you won’t see me in unless I get hit by a log truck while I’m in a Volkswagen Beetle.

Hopefully, you will not see that anytime soon.

But you could be writing. A video game entertains you idly, and by idly, I mean it’s not your creativity behind the storyline, scenery, or characters. It’s not the same as getting down to the soul of someone only you can bring forth into existence.

You have a scene in mind. It’s nagging at you to do something with it. Why wait? Why wait to see if it functions? Mary is walking down the dirty sidewalk, stepping over used condoms and plastic whiskey bottles. A puddle of puke spreads out from a man passed out, face down, and she keeps walking.

Mary is going somewhere, doing something, but what? Who is she? What does she look like? What timeline is this? London in 1888?

See how easy that was? In the space of a paragraph, we have an idea of a woman with a destination and scenery.

Mary looks up at the numbers on the building and hesitates. This is a hovel house where men with money rent women who need it. The building looks reputable in front, with a barber shop, shave and a haircut for a few pennies, and a shoeblack works out front. But the main draw for the men are the women who work inside the building, who enter by the back entrance. Mary has been given the address by a woman who sets up these meetings. Mary must keep the appointment if she wants another, but this is the first. She’s never sold her body before.

            And here we go. Now we know it’s London, back in the late 1800s, and we know Mary is young. We have to go back and change the way the story began to wooden walkways and get rid of the plastic bottle, but the feel of the scenery will be the same, won’t it?

            2.0 let’s go! Mary is walking down the dirty wooden walk, stepping over apple cores and chicken bones tossed from the upper floors of a tavern. Puke spreads out from a man passed out, face down in the muddy street, and she keeps walking.

            Unless Mary is heading into unknown territory here, we know she’s a denizen of the poorer sections of town. Then we add the next part, but what does Mary look like at this point? How do we find out in a time when Mary doesn’t take a selfie?

            Walking into the back door of the Hovel House, the woman who hired her waits, “It’s you then? I gots to make sure the new ones show. He likes fair hair and fair skin from what he tells, and your eyes are pretty enough blue. If’n he messes you up some it’s paid extra unless you need a nurse. Ain’t you eati’n regular, missy? You need some meat on your bone other than what the men put on ya. Up the stairs, second floor, stay off the lift, go to room seven on the right, get undressed and in bed and wait for him’n to show. Don’t say nothing less you asked and act like you like it, right?” the woman hands Mary a key and walks away.

Dialogue is an interesting tool, no? In the space of a short paragraph, the unnamed, unformed, and temporary character describes much about what is going on. Twainesque, the dialogue also demotes Mary to uneducated, poverty-ridden, second-class citizens not allowed to use the elevator. A little dialect goes a long way unless you write superbly, and I’m not there yet.

As a side note, in the wildly popular television series, “The Walking Dead,” characters would be introduced speaking in dialect, yet after the first two sentences, switch over to more standard speech. The story’s writers dialect slows the story down.

Now Mary is walking down a long hallway, the key clenched in her fist. She’s never sold herself and wonders if it will hurt or if the man will be cruel. Will he demand she do things she does not know how to do? Fear slowly builds into terror, her thoughts cycling through faster and faster.

She gets undressed, gets into the bed, admires the clean sheets, soft pillow, and warm room. She hopes the man doesn’t keep the appointment, and she can nap here. But he arrives on time, says hello absently, and takes his clothes off. Mary lies still, terrified, yet unable to resist as he climbs on top of her. Seconds later, it seems, he gets up, dresses, and leaves without a word. Mary is lying in the bed, wondering if that’s it, and gets up, cleans herself off, picks up the coins he’s left on the table near the door and leaves.

 And here we go. The scene of the man leaving, without speaking, without so much as looking at Mary, leaving a few coins on the table, can be pivotal. Mary has gone from a frightened young woman to one who has survived her first encounter with the oldest profession in the world. How does she feel? How has Mary changed from undressing to when she puts her clothes back on? The money is more than she would make in three days in the sweatshops, and here it is, a few moments later. Yet Mary has sold herself to a stranger. How does she feel now?

You sit idly and say you cannot write, but look at this. We’ve wandered through how writing comes together from thought, introduced three characters, maybe four if you count the puking man, and set up a lot of future conflicts.

You can, but you won’t. Is that what you are still saying?

I say you can.

Take Care,

Mike