Dark Fiction by Casper Vidor

So you’re gonna be on television;
congratulations, or my condolences as the case may be. Right now, I’m
sure you are elated or dejected, and unsure of what to say. You are
worried because you have heard that old saw: it’s not what you say
it’s how you say it. People want you to believe that your message
is more important than the words used to convey it. This, of course,
is bullshit—a huge steaming pile.

This is your big break! Camera crews
from all over the country are right there in your front yard where,
not an hour before, an F5 tornado swept your home and all your
belongings into the next county. This could be your only chance to
get your mug seen on millions of television sets across the country.
Don’t screw it up.

You have to decide what to say that
will make you so enagging the audience won’t be able to get enough.
You don’t have much time, and since you can never be sure when
television crews are going to show-up, here are a few tips that along
with your inbred charisma can help turn you into the next John Wayne
Bobbitt.

One word: literally.

Use this word as often as possible. The
viewing public can’t get enough of the word literally; they’re
literally crawling all over each other to hear it. Some busybodies
will try and tell you that you can’t have a literal unless you can
have a figurative. Pay no attention to them. What do they know? Have
they ever been on national television? I think not. The word
literally has no meaning. Its only real purpose is to emphasize the
word it precedes–literally. How about an example?

 

“He stood there, looked me in the eye
just like I’m looking at you and lied to me; he literally lied to
me.”

–Dallas Morning News

 

See how use of the word, literally,
makes the word, lied, just jump off the page? Take a look at this
quote without the word, literally.

“He stood there, looked me in the eye
just like I’m looking at you and lied to me; he to me.”

See how weak it is now? I have no idea
what she is talking about.

Now this quote came from a rank
amateur. A real pro would have used at least two more literallys.
Re-write this quote and stick in as many literallys as you can—the
more the better. You can never sound too intelligent.

Stay away from the dictionary.

Dictionaries are only good for
spelling-bee champs; you don’t wanna be a spelling-bee champ—if you
did you would have finished school instead of moving in with your
second cousin and starting a family. Besides, dictionaries will only
confuse you by defining big words, like polyglot, using other big
words, like nomenclatures. You don’t have time for that. Education
can wait until you’re famous.

Repetition, repitition, repetition.

Television audiences love repetition.
Repitition will help get your message across and make you look like
the Carson Daly of natural disaters. Repitition helps audiences
remember you and what you are saying. Repitition helps audiences
understand, why do you think Seinfeld is still in re-runs. It takes
some people a few years to get a Seinfeld punchline.

Umm, like, you know. You my dog.

Use slang—lots of it. The average
television viewer likes to think that he could be on television too.
He will identify with you more if you come off as a regular guy. So
keep your ears open to the popular slang of today and get in the
habit of using it as much as possible. A rule of thumb for how much
slang to use: if the reporter understands you, the viewers won’t.

So keep it real biotch. Casper out!

People keep asking me: Casper,
your dialogue is like being poked in the eye with a sharp stick, how do you do
it? Shut up I say–shut up and talk. 

 

Normally they just walk away, I used to think it was my
looks, but then I realized what a stupid idea that was I am devilishly
handsome. If those poor saps had stuck
around I would have given them the dope–no charge. They would have learned that those four
words, shut-up-and-talk, are the secret to dialogue–not just good dialogue,
but great dialogue. There are a couple
of doo-dads that you can stick on here and there to gussy it up a bit, but if
writers would just shut up, their dialogue would be a hundred times better.

 

Look it, if you and I were sitting across the table from
each other, aside from the fact that you’d find yourself making moon-eyes at me
so enthralled you’d be at my rakish physique, you would also be doing a hell of
a lot of listening. You would make a lot
of gestures with your head—mostly you’d bob your head in agreement—you would
smile, you would bat your eyes, but you sure as hell wouldn’t sit there waiting
for your next line. Most of you are
living under the false assumption that dialogue is a give and take; truth is,
it’s more take than give, but then that is true for most things.

 

Time we take a looky at an example. First I’ll try and show you some poorly
written dialogue, could be rough going ‘cause I’m not used to writing bad
dialogue. Most of you already know that
I’ve spent most of my life as a blisterfoot; first in the U.S. Army, and later
as a member of New Yorks finest, so
I’ll use an example from real life. Here
is how a conversation between a uniform and a con would not go.

 

 

 “I say, my good man,
could I trouble you for a moment of your time?” said the officer.

“Most assuredly my dear sir.” said the evildoer.

“Well,” said the officer, “I hesitate to hinder you only you
seem to have spat, and we do have ordinances against such things.”

“I see, shall we engage in fisticuffs?” said the evildoer.

“I am no pugilist, I rather think that I shall have my
associate clout you and see you down town.” said the officer.

 

 

Bad! Nothing happens,
just a lot of talking back and forth, and to top it off they both seem to be
the same person, the cop might just as well be talking to himself in the mirror—believe
me I know a few who do just that. 

 

This is a primo example of talking head syndrome, and it’s
easy to fix if you keep in mind those four little words: shut-up-and-talk.  

 

 

“Hey!” said the cop as he pounded down the skids after the
rat-turd who spat on his wing tips. As
they rounded the corner, the cop sprang on the punk’s shoulders, and slammed
him to the sidewalk. They rolled into
the gutter, the little bastard spinning like a dreidel. The cop hopped up and put his knee against
the kid’s neck. “You made me scuff my
shoes! I ought to Jap slap you and haul
you in.”

 

 

There, that’s much better. Why? Something happens and the
cop does all the talking, but the kid does some talking of his own—he speaks
volumes through his actions.

 

I hope this helps.

I had just finished the Carlton
case and I needed a drink bad—beautiful women with a death wish tend to do that
to me. I stopped by Sam Klute’s bar and
picked up a bottle of courage and something for lunch–another bottle. Sam’s a good guy, but his bar is a little too
far out of the way for me. I really only
stop by like I do because his daughter and his wife both have the hots for me,
but I would never do anything; like I said, Sam’s a good guy.

 

Today was especially hard because I had just had to turn my
back on the single most beautiful woman I had ever clapped eyes on while John
Law carted her of in the wagon. I had my
heart dead set on wrapping my arms around those downy shoulders and planting
one of a million kisses on her, but again I was about as unlucky in love as any
guy can be. When I walked into Sam’s I
had a feeling I should just turn around and leave, I figured it was guilt
talking because I had made a promise to myself just that morning that I was going
to give up the sauce and here I was not five hours later knee deep in failure,
I of course ignored my intuition as usual. The bar was empty and silent, except for Nina Simone pouring out of the
juke. 

 

I stumbled along toward the office in the back where I
figured I’d find Sam doing inventory. I
had trouble keeping myself from window shopping the hooch at the back of the
bar, but I had finished off my last bottle that morning so I wasn’t that far
gone—yet.

 

The shiny bar looked like polished ebony in the dim light
leaking through the high narrow stained glass windows that Lee Anne had made
Sam buy for her. As I rounded the end of
the bar I propped my dog on the brass rail and whistled.

 

“Hey, Sam!” I said. There was no reply and being this close to all that liquor was making me
awful thirsty—the impatient kind of thirsty. I whistled again and pounded on the bar, but I got nothing. Either Sam had gone into the ice cream business
and wasn’t interested in selling to the likes of me anymore or he was out back
dumping the trash. I leaned around the
bar and peered through the darkness into the long hall that leads from the bar
to the back room where Sam kept his safe. The door was ajar, and I couldn’t be too sure but I thought I saw the
longest, loveliest pair of legs on earth; and I recognized them, I ought to I
had watched them carry Lee Anne away from me enough times. 

 

“Hey!” I said once more. “Lee Anne!” She wasn’t asleep
because I could see her legs moving. Now,
I was in dire need of a drink but I wasn’t in bad enough shape that I was going
to do something stupid like walk back there and barge in, but at the same time
I was starting to get another little twinge of intuition. I followed my nose down the hall, making sure
not to kick a can over or otherwise startle her. The closer I got to Sam’s office the easier
it was to see those gams. I was just
about a foot away from the door when I heard a sort of muffled moan, and then I
spotted thick rope knotted around her ankles. I slid my back against the wall and reached for my gun–I knew it
wouldn’t be there, I remember dropping it and thinking that I was going to have
to get a new one and bill my next client for it–but old habits die hard. I searched the mottled darkness for
something, anything, to use as a shank. I put my hand on something sticky it turned out to be a baseball
bat. I clamped my hand around the bat
hard and in a few steps I was throwing my shoulder into the door and diving in
the narrow room.

 

The room was a shambles; it looked like somebody had turned
it upside down. Everything on every
shelf was lying topsy-turvy scattered across the floor in piles. The safe door was hanging from one hinge, and
the safe was empty. I slammed the door
back just to make sure that there was no trigger planted there looking to cap
anyone who stepped wrong, and then I took a gander at Lee Anne. 

 

Her eye was a little dark in one corner, I could tell it
would be a real shiner by morning, and there was a little blood at the corner
of her lip. My throat tightened I had to
fight myself to keep from dashing out right then looking for whatever cad had
done this. I fished my German Eye knife
out of my pocket and set to work on the ropes. She was walleyed; she kept talking crazy. It took me a few minutes to slice through the
ropes at her ankles and those that held her wrists to the arm of Sam’s office
chair. When she was free I grabbed her
up and carried her into the bar. 

 

“Come on doll.” I said as I shook her. I tossed some ice into a glass and showered
it with something warm and brown. I
lingered a little over the amber liquid; after all, this it what I had come
for, but she moaned and the sound yanked my out of my stupor. “Here doll,” I said as I lifted her head and
pour the drink down her shapely throat. She coughed and sputtered like a new recruit on his first night of
furlough, and then she sat straight up. She saw me and dove into my arms and started to bawl. 

 

“Oh Burt!” she cried. “They took him…they came and took him.”

 

Today was no day to stop drinking.