March of Microanalysis Day 12
Microfiction Entry Day 12:
“Heads or tails?” asked the blind man. “It’s tails,” said the liar.
Shades of Bob Dylan here. “Online research” (aka the Wikipedia rabbit hole) led me to the “All Along the Watchtower” lyrics a while back. Anyhoo, the joker/thief pairing lurked in my brain for a long time, and is probably at the root of this wee story. And I think this is a story. There’s two characters, interacting, there’s a conclusion, there’s tension. What more do you want?
I didn’t have to fiddle too much with this one. For some of these stories, I had to prune and pluck and substitute words when the length just wasn’t working out. That can be frustrating, because I found myself settling for the words I could afford rather than the words I really wanted.
But this one just fell into place. And I’m glad. Because what could I have taken out while still preserving the meaning of the story? It’s? No, because that would have made it unclear whether the blind man was proposing a coin toss, or (as is clear now) asking for the outcome of one. And I couldn’t really chop the tags (said/asked) or the subjects (blind man/liar), without losing everything that makes this story this story. Which...duh.
I wonder what they were betting on, the blind man and the liar...
Through March, I'm posting a breakdown/analysis of the microfiction I posted on the corresponding day in February. This is probably only interesting to you if you care about the mechanics of writing, or if you know me personally.