Shock and Awe Writing Lessons

Omitting crucial information makes personal stories incomplete.

I teach creative writing classes to seniors. An 85-year old man named Gene submitted a story about his life. After the Korean War, he returned home to Kansas and worked as a carpenter and handyman. He struggled, barely able to afford meals, living out of his truck, showering at the YMCA. Then he received a letter from an old military buddy who’d moved west. “California is a gold mine,” the friend wrote. “Get out here and we can invest in property together.” Gene heeded the advice, moved to Ventura and invested $10,000 in a commercial warehouse. He rented the warehouse to an electronics distributor and soon his transition from struggling carpenter to thriving property owner was complete.

As I critiqued Gene’s story, I realized he’d left out an important detail. Where did he get the money? He couldn’t afford food yet he had $10,000 to invest in property? This was a recurrent problem in my writing classes. Fledgling writers omit crucial information leaving their stories incomplete. I wanted to take a novel approach to impart this lesson. I decided to include added narrative to fill in the blanks of Gene’s story.

Here is my addition:

I knew I had to get to California. But how? I went for drinks at the Rusty Spigot Tavern. I noticed a fat cat at the end of the bar. He was an out-of-towner, a balding salesman type with a fancy suit and a big old…