What about using real pop culture characters/figures for near-time dystopic science fiction? Legally, it should fall under fair use, if I read the available material. But would a publisher avoid a small piece of fiction that did something like feature a violent gang that named itself The Boy Scouts?

One of my worst habits in prose is exposing the already obvious. I tell the reader someone has spoken while they're already speaking. I mention a phone, when the fact that they're talking into a receiver is sufficient. I need the complete picture in my head. A story is a painting, not a photograph.

þæt

I'm comfortable with my adjective use. It's my conjunctions which can use some work.

The third man.

I've been working on a rewrite of a short story. I have just, grudgingly, gotten rid of my third man. I really wanted there to be three men. I wanted there to be three men because in an important bureaucratic moment, there would always be three representatives in attendance. Nobody in business would ever show up for something critical with just two people. My third man didn't need to *do* anything. He just needed to sit there in a mediocre suit and occasionally shake hands.

Can't be done in a short story, I fear. My third man took on all kinds of unreasonable importance. I tried giving him a line or two, but the lines took on inappropriate weight. When he was silent, there was tension in the lack of words. He was mystery. He was the cipher. All the gravity of the story flew away from my other characters and stuck to him.

So now he's gone. Third man, RIP.

It irritates me. Sometimes there is just a third man in the room. Sometimes he isn't important for anything except being that third person. And I'm not good enough to find a way to include him in the story without making that into the story.

Not yet, anyhow.

Gray vs. Grey

In a round of editing I've been doing lately, I noticed I use both "grey" and "gray". If I had to pick, I would say that "grey" looks a bit better to me. Sometimes. Grey eyes, gray suit. Why do I do that?

A little bit of research via Dr. Google tells me that "gray" is primarily used in the US and that "grey" is primarily used in the UK.

From some discussion boards, I read that The Associated Press Style Book wants "gray". So for US editors, "grey" is probably going to look funny. The New York Times is ""The Gray Lady", right?

In A Circle of Quiet, Madeleine L'Engle wrote:

When A Wrinkle in Time went into galleys, the copy editor -- I'm glad I haven't the faintest idea who it was -- had him/herself a ball. First of all, I do spell the English way; I was in an English boarding school when I was twelve, thirteen, and fourteen, and these are the years when spelling gets set. After I had been made to write h-o-n-o-u-r, for instance, a hundred times on a blackboard several hundred times, it was almost impossible for me to spell it h-o-n-o-r. The English use t-o-w-a-r-d-s and we use t-o-w-a-r-d. I like to use them both, depending on the rhythm of the sentence and the letter which begins the following word; sometimes the s is needed; sometimes not: this is, I realize, rather erratic, and I can't blame the copy editor who tries to talk me out of it. Then there's grey, which is English, and one very definite, bird-wing, ocean-wave color to me; and gray, which is American, and a flatter, more metallic color. Then there are the c and s words, such as practice or practise. Abour words like these I'm simply in a state of confusion, rather than aesthetic persuasion, as with grey or towards, and the copy editor can have his way. On the whole I tell the copy editor to go ahead and make the spelling American, but don't muck around with the punctuation.

I suppose I'll mostly strive for consistency in fiction, and go with sound in poetry. As I write that sentence, I realize that grey 'sounds' different in my head than 'gray'. Hm. Perhaps I need to think about this some more.