Smash hit, crowd-puller, winner, knockout, sensation, a wow. Pick any superlative you fancy 'cause they all apply to SCWW Greenville Chapter's seminar with Mindy Friddle.

Mindy, a fellow with the South Carolina Academy of Authors, spoke for over two hours relating some of her extensive experience with agents, publishers, and writing. Forty folks from as far away as Columbia joined us at the Greenville Library to hear Mindy's writing wit and wisdom. Ms. Friddle graciously stayed until the hall was empty, giving advice, signing books and answering all questions.

Our thanks to Mindy and all who made the Greenville Chapter's "First Seminar In A Long Time" a rousing success.

Help! The Greenville chapter's newly installed board members are on the hook for door prizes and silent auction items for the conference in October.

So far, we're not finding a lot of enthusiasm for donations from the business community - hurricanes, literacy, terminal diseases and the like get most of corporate America's charity bucks, and there's not a lot of payback for local small businesses to contribute since the conference is held in Myrtle Beach and attended by folks who will never make it to Greer or Simpsonville.

If anyone has a connection to a business who would be willing to contribute anything that would be useful to a writer, please, please, please, hit them up for it. A general rule of thumb is, if you could use it, so could other writers. If anyone wants to donate a door prize or auction item that would be most excellent.

We will also be collecting cash or checks at the next few meetings so that we can purchase some smaller prizes. Any contributions are tax deductible and very much appreciated.

If you have prizes or suggestions, contact Bob, Sarah or Susan. And we thank you for your support!

Note: This review is from the May meeting, but was a little late for last month's Printed Matters.

As always, Phil Arnold supplied us with excellent writing and more information about Elvis than anyone but Phil would know.

In "Scotty Moore," Phil allows us to virtually visit another web site. After reading Phil's piece, I don't know how anyone could resist taking a read. If the stories didn't draw you in, the promise of pictures would. The suggestions for improvements were sparse and trivial. One was to give us a link so the when you hook us, we'll be just a click away from the scottymoore web site. There were also a few suggestions on rewording in the last paragraph, but I'm sure Phil got them back with his marked up copies. The last suggestion was how to get lamé out of lame. Even after the meeting I'm not sure I achieved it. Lame.

In "Southern Maid Donuts," Phil transported us back to Elvis's beginnings and his one and only commercial. For some reason, I can't see Elvis doing a commercial, but if I did, it would be for donuts. Phil gave us a lot of great history along with telling us about the commercial. We learned about Southern Maid Donuts and the Louisiana Hayride. Apparently the donuts were fresh and wonderful. The Hayride was a poor man's Grand Ole Opry. The largest suggestion for this piece was to change the name. Phil asked a question in the first paragraph that was answered in the title. Personally, I liked "Elvis Goes Commercial" or "Commercial Elvis".

Phil is always a good time and this time he didn't disappoint.

Go Phil.

John Migacz's "A Single Man" is a well-written story involving two brothers who fought together in - and lost - a long-ago battle in the War Between the States. As the two chat over coffee, they wonder what might have happened had Lawrence, the Union troops' commander, not been wounded. In this "alternative history" version of the battle of Little Round Top, the Confederates won the battle and the war.

Panama enjoyed many of John's witticisms: "The Confederacy is becoming an indentured servant to England, if not a slave. It's almost fitting." And of course, General Pettigru's famous quote about South Carolina's being, "too small to be a nation and too big to be an insane asylum."

In the critique, some felt that an earlier "heat of battle" version of John's story was more to their liking. Unfortunately this reviewer didn't hear the first version and can't comment on which I might have preferred. A compromise suggestion involved using a flashback approach to incorporate some action in this more introspective piece.

Not being familiar with the battle for Little Round Top, I probably don't appreciate the irony in this work as much as a history buff might. Nevertheless, I like the way the story ends as Thomas seeks to console his older brother: "Lawrence, we did our best. I think the South was destined to win the war. Whatever you did that day would have made no difference. A single man cannot change destiny." (Emphasis added)

Bob Strother read his story, "Silver Britches," at the June 1 meeting. I must admit I'm not a football fan and I had to have someone explain what a "flea flicker" pass was. After hearing the details, I still had no idea what happens during a "flea flicker" pass.

But I did like Bob's story and how it ended. David Canfield, a journalism student, met a black man at the hospital where his injured Georgia football player friend ended up in the same room.. The elderly man, Moses Rollins, had fallen off the train trestle where he watched the game.

It wasn't the first time and he went on to tell about another fall from the trestle. Canfield went on to visit Moses in the hospital and hear his story about how he followed the Georgia team through its "Silver Britches" days. As an avid Georgia fan he'd had several falls from the trestle.

Canfield wrote it and sent it as an article to "Sports Illustrated." Later it was published in the magazine. Canfield went back to visit Moses at his home. Moses' daughter told him that Moses had passed away. The end of the story is that Canfield used the money from the story to put a monument on Moses' grave. It was a feel-good ending that I liked.

One suggestion was to omit all the first paragraph after the introductory sentence. Another questioned whether a black would be in the same room with a white in a 1967 Georgia hospital.

Any football fan would like the story and Bob made it one a non-football fan would enjoy.

The guru of all things Elvis, Phil Arnold, brought an article he's been working on to our first Thursday meeting in June. "Al Wertheimer - 50 Years Ago He Took 4,000 Photos of Elvis," when complete, will include an interview with Al himself. Phil asked for our help with the subtitle, which he doesn't particularly care for, and we bounced it around a while. I think consensus settled on the original subtitle Phil came up with, "He Took 4,000 Photos of Elvis 50 Years Ago."

We debated the merits of the phrase "really took lots of pictures." Some thought it was a little vague while others thought it sounded like Phil's easy-going voice and he should leave it alone. We nitpicked a few other sentences, but the biggest issue seemed to be that the story needed more progression, more of a sense of building.

Phil also brought another blog entry, "Cirque de Soleil, Elvis Style." We pounced on the confusion about who had made this brilliant move, and pointed out that Phil was inconsistent in his list of shows: two were followed by parenthetical phrases, and two were not. Several of us felt that Phil needed to describe exactly what Cirque de Soleil is, since he promises to do just that with the statement, "Let me fill you in."

Again, we did a lot of nitpicking and hemming and hawing, but it's hard to find fault with Phil's work. I think I've figured out why it's hard for me, personally, to review him: he doesn't write fiction. I find fiction easier to deal with than reality.

Few people remember the Steven Spielberg stinker 1941 and fewer know that the movie was based on an actual fact - the Japanese did shell Santa Barbara in 1942.

Kevin Coyle knows, and has delved into another Japanese plan of attack called "F-Go" to create an alternate history story that raised the hair on Fatz' arms.

In Kevin's story, "Genshi Bakudan", the Japanese have finished their "F-Go" program and, though the war has ended, a renegade Imperial Navy commander has decided to take his special airplane-equipped submarines and attack New York and Washington with nuclear bombs.

Planes on submarines in 1945? Japanese with nuclear weapons?

Slow the down skepticism destroyer there, John Wayne. It's not as far-fetched as it seems. Three airplane-carrying submarines were built by Japan and were the largest submarines in the world at that time. The trio were actually on their way to bomb the Panama Canal when they were called back to defend Japan.

On the other hand, Japan's WWII nuclear program is still shrouded in mystery and incredulity. Some say it was in its infancy, others say Japan actually tested a weapon. Kevin ties these events together to create a chilling "what if" story that is terrifying in its implications.

Kevin's research once again astounds Fatz. He has spent hours combing the web and days reading historical tomes to add realism to a 1500 word story. That research pays off as the details bring the submarine Sen-Toku I401 to life.

Kevin, the master of pronunciation, flawlessly read through real names such as Ariizumi Tatsunosuke, Arakatsu, Shinsei, etc., as if they were childhood friends. Where he faltered is in the story's timeline.

By not establishing quickly when in history the story occurs, he leaves too many questions in the minds of the readers. Some of the group thought that if he began the story with the scientist hearing of Japan's surrender, it would ground the reader in the correct timeline. The table wondered about the scientist's knowledge of Hiroshima and how rumors of Japan's surrender had spread through the ship. The last line of the story was "Amaterasu, great-grandmother of the Imperial line, rose twice more that day, her divine fire burning the skies over the cities of New York and Washington." By never translating the title of the story (Genshi Bakudan = Uranium Bomb) Kevin loses the heavy impact he intended the last line to deliver.

Kevin has written this story as an entry for an alternate history magazine. If they award the prize based on intrigue, research and originality, Fatz says Kevin's entry certainly won't "Bakudan."

Pat Stewart touched me with her story "Club Rose," even though it was obviously an early draft. It would have to be, because it was dated May 30, and it told of her church group's volunteer work in Bay St. Louis, MS, from May 21-27. Nineteen members of the Prince of Peace Catholic Church in Greenville gave their time and talents to help the unfortunate folks who suffered from the rage of Hurricane Katrina.

Pat said she wrote the essay to give to the church members who made the trip to Mississippi, and they will surely treasure it along with their poignant memories of their week there. Many will return to help again, for, as Pat wrote, "It will change your life. You will never be the same again." Her story is full of little vignettes that show why this is so.

Pat hardly had time to unpack and wash clothes before setting down at the keyboard to compose her story. So, she can be forgiven for little problems like having "gutted" three times in a three-line paragraph or starting consecutive sentences with the word "one." After Pat tweaks her essay, it will be a perfect to present to the members of Prince of Peace Church who did such a good deed for the hurricane victims.

In this month's installment from Lowcountry Boil, by Susan Boyer, we learn about Deanna Devlin who works side-by-side with her lout of a husband in a hardware store. Deanna spots a ubiquitous Palmetto bug scurrying across the floor, which sends her scurrying for her husband's Rollodex, where she finds a card marked "Exterminator." She calls the number and has a strange conversation with a man about the "job" her husband had ordered. She also tells the man, who's equally confused by her call, that she wants "the big rat in the hardware store removed permanently." What she doesn't know - and what the reader is left to surmise - is that she has just unintentionally "put a hit" on her husband.

Susan sets the scene well and carries the misunderstanding to its comic conclusion with ambiguous dialog much like what you'd find in just about every episode of Three's Company (not that there's any comparison between Susan's novel and that silly '70s sit-com, but c'mon - that show was ALL ABOUT double entendres and the misunderstandings they can cause, right?).

Where I got hung up, though, was on one word: "especially," as in "She especially liked working in the paint, wallpaper and floor-covering sections." With this word juxtaposed with the preceding sentence - "In addition to her bookkeeping duties, Deanna worked in the store beside her husband nearly every day" - we have a "telling" that runs contrary to the "showing" that Susan does so well. The "especially" in the second sentence suggests that she at least "liked" working "beside her husband nearly every day." Now, I understand that women in abusive relationships often have mixed and conflicting feelings about their situations, but I got the strong impression from Susan's writing that whatever emotion Deanna felt about her husband, at best she "tolerated" working beside him nearly every day - she certainly didn't "like" it.

As someone in our group suggested, remove the word "especially" and you fix the problem. Just like, as it seems, Deanna is about to fix the problem in her own life.

Bob Strother's novel Burning Time picks up the morning after Fannie's husband Will is brought home unconscious from a bar fight. He is awake and sitting in his parlor chair holding a fireplace poker. He and Fannie argue, then Will smashes the picture frames and porcelain figurines off the mantle with the poker. When Jesse and Laurence appear in the doorway, Will leaves with the threat, "Just you wait." For weeks after, nothing much happens. Then the week after Christmas as Fannie and the children are curled up in bed reading, Will breaks in with a bottle of gin in one hand and an open straight razor in the other. He sits in a chair and tells them, "Go on to sleep. ... The minute you do, I'm going to cut your goddamn throats." After what seems like hours to Louise, Will finally falls asleep himself. Fannie immediately sends Louise to go get Laurence to help. Laurence and See-Boy go off to help Fannie while Louise stays with Jesse.

Kevin Coyle's Saga of Snorri the Priest continued as Snorri leaves the Judgment Circle after being outlawed. He arrives at the beach where he and his followers are preparing ships to leave Iceland for his three-year exile. There are three ships and more than a hundread men, women, and children on the shore including two of Snorri's blood brothers, and another ship is expected. One of the ships is owned by a man unknown to Snorri - Steinraud the Strong. Steinraud, who sold everything he owned to buy his ship, tells Snorri, "Only the Fates know what's in store for a man ... and rarely do those toothless old hags reveal their secrets beforehand." Then he admits that his wife, Geirhild the Witch-Woman, dreamed of this island more than a month ago and knew that they should join Snorri. Snorri wants to know what he'll do when they return to Iceland in three years. Steinraud replies, "My wife says we shall never return. And neither will you."

Jim McFarlane skipped ahead in The Widow Dunn. Angus and Laura Ann are married and Angus is trying to learn to be a cotton farmer. He asks the opinion of an experienced farmer at church, and in the second week of May, plants his cotton. By the fourth week of June, the lack of rain is threatening to destroy the cotton and the vegetable garden. Sitting on the porch one morning, Angus tells Laura Ann and Hampton how they used sluices and ditches to irrigate land in California. After much discussion and calculation, Laura Ann convinces Angus to attempt to irrigate their land in the same way, and he heads off to start building sluices and to devise a way to lift ten gallons of water a minute from the well.

Phil Arnold read two blog items: "Elvis Departs For Germany" and "Elvis and Johnny Bago." The first was the result of Phil's three-plus hour phone interview with Al Wertheimer, a man who took thousands of photos of Elvis in 1956. Through Phil, Al described the day that Elvis left basic training in 1958 to board a troop ship in New York Harbor. The official Army Band played Elvis songs, Elvis gave a press conference, and after boarding, Elvis flipped playing card sized autographed photos of himself over the railing to the lucky fans below.

In "Elvis and Johnny Bago," Phil describes an episode of a short-lived TV show from 1993 that centered around "an older and fatter Elvis who lives in a mobile home deep in the woods." Phil liked the way Elvis was portrayed as a hero, a peacemake, and "a decent, down to earth, next-door neighbor type." Phil had "mixed feelings about one thing in the show. When we cut to a scene of Elvis asleep in front of the TV, we see a beer can sitting unattended on his substantial belly, rising and lowering as he snores. When I first watched that scene, I hated to see Elvis depicted like that, but it was so funny. Now, thirteen years later, I can do the beer can trick on my own belly, and it isn't nearly so funny."

Steve Heckman began with a limmerick, then continued his novel Genghis. Gegen, the commander of the troops that oversaw the burial of Genghis, now lays dead with his troops outside their home city of Karakorum. His wife Hentaliyn and his teenage son Ajii walk out on the steppe to bury Gegan. They find his horse standing nearby, and attempt to lift Gegan onto the horse's back. Hentaliyn realizes that Gegen's breastplate makes the body too heavy to lift, so she and the boy remove it. They get the body up and secure it to the horse, then she slaps the horse and it runs "beyond the field of death and racing out into the open steppe, racing to that place where the Mongol warrior's soul comes to rest." She turns back to the boy and finds him studying the breastplate. "Look, Mother. It is a map!"

In Lowcountry Boil, Susan Boyer takes us to the beach with Liz Talbot. Liz realizes two things as she walks alone on the sand: God's plan involves her staying on Stella Maris, and He has a very sepcific to-do list for her. On returning home, Liz finds her brother Blake waiting for her. They joke about why he hasn't gotten married yet, and Liz tells him she's sworn off men since she feels that getting divorced and then remarried is against Canon Law. At the end of the conversation, Blake comes to the real point of his visit - he tells Liz that their grandmother didn't fall down the steps; she was probably murdered. He says, "No one outside the department ... and the immediate family knows about this. I'd like to keep it that way."

To close, John Migacz shared a piece called "What's New," written as an exercise in setting scenes. In their living room, Jack and Mary exchange barbs - his delivered with rage and hers full of frost. In the kitchen, Mary reflects on Jack's question: What do you want? She thinks she wants everything new, including a new man. At the same time, Jack is in the bedroom retrieving the already-packed suitcase from the back of his closet. As Jack passes through the living room with his suitcase, Mary is flipping through the Yellow Pages deciding where to order dinner. "Jack stormed past her, flung the door wide open and left. She walked to the door and looked out. Jack stood on the sidewalk. He looked up the street then down. He didn't seem to know where to go. She firmly shut the door."

The next meetings of the Greenville Chapter of SCWW are as follows:

• Thursday, July 6 - First Thursday Meeting, 6:00 p.m. at The Open Book
• Tuesday, July 18 - Third Tuesday Meeting, 6:00 p.m. at The Open Book

All genres welcome at both meetings. Suggested limit for reading selections is five double-spaced, typed pages, although longer selections may be possible if time permits.

The Open Book, 110 S Pleasantburg Drive, Greenville, SC

Last month we talked about point of view, or POV. This chapter is about another subject that veteran critiquers often mention, usually to blank stares from newcomers, and that is beats. Put simply, a beat is an interruption of dialog.

Many writers these days try to avoid attributions as much as possible. If it is obvious to the reader who said something, then the "he said" or "Sue replied" is superfluous and can interrupt the rhythm of the dialog. This avoidance is not without consequence, however. What you can end up with is a long string of dialog, one character speaking then the other, with no interruptions, no pauses. The conversation can take on a sing-song rhythm, and the reader can lose track of who is saying what, lose a sense of place, a sense of interaction with the surroundings. That's OK if the writer is trying for a rapid fire, staccato conversation, but most real conversations have an ebb and flow, a changing rhythm.

Inserting a beat at appropriate times can introduce a natural pause in the conversation. It can also serve as an attribution, or help set the scene, or fill in backstory, or reinforce POV.

Here's some dialog from a short story by Annie Proulx:

"Is he still workin for that roofin contractor?"

Printed Matters is the newsletter of the Greenville Chapter of South Carolina Writers Workshop.

Thanks to our contributing writers and news reporters:
Howard Lewis, Bob Strother, Pat Stewart, Susan Boyer, John Migacz, Phil Arnold, Kevin Coyle and Steve Heckman

Copyright 2006 by Marcia Migacz, Editor. Contributing writers retain all rights to their work.

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