Blurb
At the Saturday farmers market in a small town, Granny Smith sells apple pies displayed on a crocheted tablecloth. The pies are perfect, the story is simple, and none of it is true.Granny didn’t bake the pies. She didn’t make the tablecloth. She isn’t as old as she looks. But the routine works. Week after week, the pies sell out—at least the ones meant to—and no one asks too many questions.
Then her ten-year-old grandson Lee shows up on her porch with no warning and a talent for reading people. On the next market day, he’s at her side, charming customers, pushing for tips, and spotting angles she’s spent decades ignoring.
When a friendly stranger returns with the last slice of a pie he swears his old sweetheart must have baked, Granny shuts him down. Lee sees an opportunity. Granny sees a risk. As the man lingers, the morning turns into a standoff over what information is worth—and who gets to decide.
Original (First 500)
The soft cushions of her rocking chair enfolded her and she set it moving, waiting for the rhythm to catch up to the beat of her heart. The table was ready, blue-and-white checks spread out under neat stacks of pies. Not a hint of last week’s bubblegum or dirt stains visible on the hand-crocheted tablecloth. The hum of the other families setting up their booths was a song against the anticipated bombardment of noise the afternoon would bring.
This was the moment that Granny savored every week. Before the market opened, when everything was clean and quiet. Before the obnoxious customers with their screaming kids and inappropriately personal comments and idiotic questions and -- money -- her gaze ran over the table again. The orderliness of it made a straight line for her gaze to follow until it bumped into a slender shadow leaning against the edge of the table. The kid with eyes older than hers, watching her.
He’d shown up a week ago, waiting on her porch when she’d gotten home from the market. She’d forgotten about him for a few minutes, lost in the ritual of opening. She searched for something to say, an apology or some phrase to persuade him he’d been a constant part of her consciousness. He shook his head slightly, impassive as always.
“You make three dollars per pie, right?”
It was unnerving to see such a calculating look on the face of a young boy. She almost lied but couldn’t figure out what she could say that would take that look away. “Yep.” The chair rocked her, soothing her with its smooth movement.
“Last week you had pies left over.”
“There are usually a few left at the end of the day. I donate them to the church.” His lip curled slightly but so quickly that she questioned whether she’d seen or imagined the disdain. His smile was sudden and charming and the almost definite falseness of it was alarming.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” he said. “If I sell all of your pies, I get to keep whatever the mar-- the customer leaves over the three dollars.”
The idea of customers leaving more than the absolute minimum shook a laugh out of her. “I can cut you in on the profit if you’ll help me…” Compassion made the chair rock faster. She slowed it, deliberately. “Don’t count on any tips.”
The smile curled at the sides of his mouth but his eyes knew more than he was sharing. He cocked his head back, arrogance and magnanimousness in the sweep of his gaze. “Just whatever they pay over the three dollars will do.” He turned, leaving her with the impression that he’d shown his back in order to shield her from his contempt.
She breathed a sigh. So much like his mother…
Through tight and shiny eyes, she looked toward the market entrance. Twenty-or-so early-birds were clustered around the corn and zucchini booths. Some had broken away from the pack and were investigating the Lincoln’s peaches.
My Edit
Granny sank into the soft cushions of her rocking chair. She tuned out the hum of the other families setting up their booths for the farmer's market as she inspected the setup of her own booth. The six-foot long folding table was covered with a hand-knit, blue-and-white gingham table cloth. Lace shawls swagged their way around the table like frosting on a cake. Exactly twenty pies in pristine white bakery boxes were spaced out evenly on the table.
Granny's chair was set up at the northeast corner of the table. It was real wood that creaked as it moved, and its cushions were patterned with red apples on a sky blue background that matched the darkest color blue in the gingham tablecloth. Next to the table, in front of her chair, was a large wicker picnic basket, with a partially finished afghan pouring out of the open flap. A ball of yarn with two knitting needles poking out of it was set on the closed flap of the basket.
Inside the basket was her money box. Under the table was 80 more pies. She hadn't baked any of them, including the twenty on the table. She hadn't knitted the tablecloth or the afghan. She hadn't crocheted the shawls swagging the table. She knew how to knit, barely -- just enough to seem like she was working on really impressive projects. The truth was that her neighbor Sally would allow Granny to borrow her knitting project for the farmer's market, Granny would fumble her way through a few rows throughout the day, and she'd return it to Sally to frog and fix.
Nothing about Granny was what it seemed. She was Lee's grandmother, but she was only forty-one, and she used make-up and hair dye to make herself look twenty years older. She'd lied to her neighbors and friends about Lee, saying that he was her great-nephew instead of her grandson.
Lee had been waiting on her porch, last week, when she’d gotten home from the market. No luggage, just a spotless white t-shirt, perfectly worn jeans, and some beat-up Converse sneakers, a size too small. He'd looked her up and down, noting the make-up, the fake hunch, the forced slowness of her movements. "Pretty good," he'd said, judiciously. "But the wig...." He shook his head.
Granny couldn't help but laugh, involuntarily straightening for a moment. She hadn't seen the kid since he was a newborn but he had his mother's DNA written all over him. Raising the kid together would have been ideal -- well, not ideal, but what's ideal? But it was too dangerous. So, ten years later, Jacquie wouldn't have sent Lee to live with his grandmother unless she was in even worse trouble.
“It's five dollars per pie, right?”
The question pulled Granny back to the present. Lee was watching her with his unnervingly adult gaze. She eyed him back, which made him grin. She hated market day, and never felt particularly chatty in public, so she kept her answer to a short, "Yep.""What's the markup?"
"Two bucks."“Last week you had pies left over.”
He knew that because he'd helped her drop the leftover pies off at the church. What he didn't know was that she generally held a dozen or so pies back, just for that purpose. "Mmmhmm..." she murmured noncommittally.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” he said. “If I sell all of your pies, I get to keep whatever the mark -- the customer leaves over the five dollars.”
She halted the rocking chair. She didn't want to sell the pies for over five dollars. With the markup, she was already pushing it. The fact that she was a little old lady, widowed and nearly penniless, as far as the community knew, was the main reason she was able to get away with her exorbitant pricing.
However, she hated the front-facing side of her little business. The customers with their grubby little kids and the same small talk every week. She ended her markets feeling exhausted and every bit the sixty-plus years she pretended to be.
"No," she said. She saw his shoulders slump. She started the chair rocking again. "But I'll pay you fifty cents for every pie that you sell." That would leave her with a dollar and fifty cents profit per pie, times 80-ish pies, that would be forty dollars less than usual, but if he took on the brunt of the human interaction, it would be worth it. Plus, it would keep him busy.
Lee brightened. "Plus tips?" he asked.
"Sure," she said. She stopped the chair again, leaning toward him without breaking eye contact and said quietly, "But if you pick any pockets, I will make you give it all back."
He tried to look offended, but ended up just grinning sheepishly. "Deal."
"And then," she added, knowing that this wasn't enough of a threat, "I'll take you around to every single house on our block and make you confess to everything you took and who you took it from."
His expression darkened at this. He could con his way into forgiveness from any mark in person, but strangers hearing about what he did would be much harder to charm. In a town with just over four thousand inhabitants, most of whom were related by blood or marriage, it would be foolish to alienate a single one of them.
She watched him absorb this information, digest it, and then she saw the darkness lift from his expression. Alright. He'd have to behave himself honorably, for now. But as soon as he'd saved enough to run away, he could make a real score before skipping town. She had no illusions that he planned to stick around any longer than he absolutely had to before running of to rescue his mother from whatever trouble she'd gotten herself into.
He nodded, accepting her challenge with a determined smile. Then her turned toward the entrance, where a few early birds were wandering from the parking lot toward the half-set-up booths closest to the entrance.(Original word count: ~505 → Edited: ~1013)
Critique
Full disclosure: I had Chat GPT write me that blurb this morning. I had no idea what this story was supposed to be about. Which is fun because in 2009, I wrote 10 drafts of this, with the longest draft being almost 5000 words. And it's supposed to be a short story. I knew that I was never happy with it, but looking over the writing, the writing wasn't bad, it was just direction-less.
Lee is a love interest in a one-act play I wrote in 2008, called Meda's Lark. In the play, Meda tricks Lee (named Liam in the play) into marrying her by saying she's dying. Then, she feels bad for tricking him, so she poisons herself so that she can recover and their relationship won't be built on a lie. It turns out, Liam already knew she was lying, but he loved her and wanted to marry her. Spoiler alert: she dies. Now, in the play, Liam is a salesman who goes out of town a lot. That was all I knew about him when I wrote the play, and in trying to figure out who he was, what kind of man falls in love with a pathological liar and is very nonjudgmental about it -- a con man with a con family.
So, this story was born. Liam's origin story. His mother and grandmother are con artists. In this story, Liam's mom drops him off in a tiny town, for an unknown reason (literally, I don't know), and he has to live with his grandmother. When I initially wrote this, I didn't know why Granny was trying so hard to look older, I really just thought it would make the story more interesting.
I think there was an abusive relationship she was running from, but I don't really want to write about that, so I'm thinking she witnessed a murder or something. She was already a con artist and she had to retire. Granny moved to this town when her daughter left at age sixteen to make her fortune. She showed up a year later, pregnant, had the baby, and went off to find her fortune, baby in tow. And that was the last Granny saw of baby William until last week, when she came home to find him on her porch. She doesn't know where her daughter is or what kind of trouble she's in that would have caused her to abandon her kid.
Anyway, the story is told from Granny's POV because writing boys is boring. Actually, I think it's Lee telling his grandmother's story by assuming her perspective, but we don't need to get into that. All that to say, the original excerpt here was Draft 10 in 2009. The draft is almost 3500 words, but this is the first 500 of it.
Okay, considering the total lack of direction wrote this with, let's see if I hit the three criteria for a good opening to a story.
Lee is a love interest in a one-act play I wrote in 2008, called Meda's Lark. In the play, Meda tricks Lee (named Liam in the play) into marrying her by saying she's dying. Then, she feels bad for tricking him, so she poisons herself so that she can recover and their relationship won't be built on a lie. It turns out, Liam already knew she was lying, but he loved her and wanted to marry her. Spoiler alert: she dies. Now, in the play, Liam is a salesman who goes out of town a lot. That was all I knew about him when I wrote the play, and in trying to figure out who he was, what kind of man falls in love with a pathological liar and is very nonjudgmental about it -- a con man with a con family.
So, this story was born. Liam's origin story. His mother and grandmother are con artists. In this story, Liam's mom drops him off in a tiny town, for an unknown reason (literally, I don't know), and he has to live with his grandmother. When I initially wrote this, I didn't know why Granny was trying so hard to look older, I really just thought it would make the story more interesting.
I think there was an abusive relationship she was running from, but I don't really want to write about that, so I'm thinking she witnessed a murder or something. She was already a con artist and she had to retire. Granny moved to this town when her daughter left at age sixteen to make her fortune. She showed up a year later, pregnant, had the baby, and went off to find her fortune, baby in tow. And that was the last Granny saw of baby William until last week, when she came home to find him on her porch. She doesn't know where her daughter is or what kind of trouble she's in that would have caused her to abandon her kid.
Anyway, the story is told from Granny's POV because writing boys is boring. Actually, I think it's Lee telling his grandmother's story by assuming her perspective, but we don't need to get into that. All that to say, the original excerpt here was Draft 10 in 2009. The draft is almost 3500 words, but this is the first 500 of it.
Okay, considering the total lack of direction wrote this with, let's see if I hit the three criteria for a good opening to a story.
Setting
A farmer's market, specifically the POV character's booth. The original description was serviceable, and I'm not sure if I've overdone it with the re-write, but I do like all of the details, especially the in-progress blanket. The point is that nothing is what it seems, so each detail actually makes a difference to the scene.
I also thought that the overview of the entire market was fine in the original. I took out the details of the zucchini and peach booths, mostly because I felt like it disrupted the flow. I think that I will describe the market a bit better as the scene goes on, but for this moment, it's more important to stay with Granny and Lee.
A farmer's market, specifically the POV character's booth. The original description was serviceable, and I'm not sure if I've overdone it with the re-write, but I do like all of the details, especially the in-progress blanket. The point is that nothing is what it seems, so each detail actually makes a difference to the scene.
I also thought that the overview of the entire market was fine in the original. I took out the details of the zucchini and peach booths, mostly because I felt like it disrupted the flow. I think that I will describe the market a bit better as the scene goes on, but for this moment, it's more important to stay with Granny and Lee.
Characterization
What is the purpose of this scene? It's not an action scene; literally nothing happens. The booth is already set up, the characters are like actors in a play, in their places, waiting for the action to start. I don't think that this is bad, actually. Because that's exactly what this is. Granny is in her rocking chair, pretending to be twenty years older than she is, and Lee is ready to charm every person he meets because he wants their money.
The original excerpt suffers from general over-writing -- I was trying so hard to reinvent the wheel. Like, this:
The main problem with writing like this is that it's so hard to maintain that it makes me loathe to edit, add, experiment, delete, play with other ideas -- because it took so long to get each sentence perfect that I don't want to touch them. But there's so much missing from the original. Let's just compare what we learn about each character from the original version versus the updated one.
For Granny, in the original, we learn that she's a bit misanthropic, which is a fun characterization for a person who runs a booth at a farmer's market. As to how she feels about Lee, it's hard to say. Is she creeped out? By the end, we mention compassion, but I'm not sure why? I think it's his hope that he'll make a lot of money from tips that she doesn't see happening, but why not? He's a little con artist, that's the most natural thing to expect from him.
In the edit, Granny is still misanthropic, but we also get the truth behind her age, the fact that she didn't create the crocheted items decorating her booth, or even bake the pies she's selling. These are all things that I knew when I wrote the original, I just wanted to save them for later, for some reason. What else? We know that, if the other booths are half-set-up and Granny's booth is fully set, that she might be a bit of a control freak, a perfectionist. I think the truth is that she cons her booth neighbors into setting up her booth before they set up theirs, but I think that might be too much to acknowledge right now, as we're setting up all her other lies. It would be fun to reveal it when it's time to take the booth down for the day.
What else? We find out that Granny told her neighbors that Lee is her great-nephew instead of her grandson. Also, if her neighbor Sally is the artist behind Granny's works-in-progress, that means that Granny trusts somebody in this town.
We don't KNOW that she loves her daughter, but Granny's reaction to Lee being on her porch suggests it, with how ready she is to laugh when he judges her wig, by the DNA written all over him, the danger of raising the kid together. Also, I don't mention this in the excerpt, but I'm sure they exchange mail and phone calls (very carefully).
We also learn a lot about Granny by the way that she interacts with Lee. In the original, she seems scared of him and even pities him. There's no sense that she likes him or understands him. I think that I was going for her being afraid of being rejected of him because that's how I am around kids, especially the cynical ones, but Granny is not me, so let's let her love her grandkid.
In the edit, I basically make her psychic. She understands Lee's motivations, what he's not saying, and his ultimate goal. This is not because she can actually read his mind, it's because she understands people, especially con artists. Also, she's spent a week with him, so she's gotten a chance to see how quick he is to look for an angle in every situation. This ability to read people tells us that she has a certain amount of empathy, probably not an amount she'd admit to. And, to me, it says that she's also always looking for an angle.
Let's talk about Lee's mom. It's clearly stated in the text that she would not have left Lee behind if she hadn't been in danger, and especially wouldn't have left her with her mom. Is there anything that backs this up? Sure. We have Granny's observation that Lee is itching to get up enough money to go and save his mom, but, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, she is projecting. She could be wrong. Anything else back this up?
Yes, a couple of things. First, the description of Lee on her porch. No belongings, but he's wearing a pristine white t-shirt, worn jeans, and a pair of beat-up shoes. Now. I think that Lee has a backpack that he's stashed somewhere that Granny finds out about later, but that's my speculation, let's stick to the writing. The pristine shirt indicates some level of care. Worn jeans might sound like neglect, but worn jeans are the most comfortable. And dirty, too-small shoes should indicate neglect, except that a) kids grow so damn fast at that age, b) the too-small shoes could be part of a con or a way to make him look younger, and the most important thing is c) which is his confidence.
Seconds after meeting her for the first time, he gives his grandmother the once-over, approves of her disguise, and clocks her bad wig. In present day, he's immediately scheming to sell all of her pies, and collect tips. Also, his reaction to her telling him not to pick any pockets says a lot. He feigns innocence and then laughs. So, if his mother was someone who habitually abandoned him, he wouldn't have these skills or this confidence.
Now, I'm not saying that teaching your child how to steal and pull scams is good parenting, but it does mean that she's around. So, I believe, based on the evidence, that she probably is in danger and the kid probably is gearing up to rescue her, if he can.
What is the purpose of this scene? It's not an action scene; literally nothing happens. The booth is already set up, the characters are like actors in a play, in their places, waiting for the action to start. I don't think that this is bad, actually. Because that's exactly what this is. Granny is in her rocking chair, pretending to be twenty years older than she is, and Lee is ready to charm every person he meets because he wants their money.
The original excerpt suffers from general over-writing -- I was trying so hard to reinvent the wheel. Like, this:
The soft cushions of her rocking chair enfolded her and she set it moving, waiting for the rhythm to catch up to the beat of her heart.This is fine, in isolation. But I tried to make every sentence poetry, which was exhausting to write, and, to be frank, exhausting to read. Nobody is going to write a book about the genius opening line: "Granny sank into the soft cushions of her rocking chair," but nobody needs to. I may have over-corrected but I don't care because I was so irritated by the time I was done reading what I wrote in 2009 that I didn't want any hint of poetry in the updated version.
The main problem with writing like this is that it's so hard to maintain that it makes me loathe to edit, add, experiment, delete, play with other ideas -- because it took so long to get each sentence perfect that I don't want to touch them. But there's so much missing from the original. Let's just compare what we learn about each character from the original version versus the updated one.
For Granny, in the original, we learn that she's a bit misanthropic, which is a fun characterization for a person who runs a booth at a farmer's market. As to how she feels about Lee, it's hard to say. Is she creeped out? By the end, we mention compassion, but I'm not sure why? I think it's his hope that he'll make a lot of money from tips that she doesn't see happening, but why not? He's a little con artist, that's the most natural thing to expect from him.
In the edit, Granny is still misanthropic, but we also get the truth behind her age, the fact that she didn't create the crocheted items decorating her booth, or even bake the pies she's selling. These are all things that I knew when I wrote the original, I just wanted to save them for later, for some reason. What else? We know that, if the other booths are half-set-up and Granny's booth is fully set, that she might be a bit of a control freak, a perfectionist. I think the truth is that she cons her booth neighbors into setting up her booth before they set up theirs, but I think that might be too much to acknowledge right now, as we're setting up all her other lies. It would be fun to reveal it when it's time to take the booth down for the day.
What else? We find out that Granny told her neighbors that Lee is her great-nephew instead of her grandson. Also, if her neighbor Sally is the artist behind Granny's works-in-progress, that means that Granny trusts somebody in this town.
We don't KNOW that she loves her daughter, but Granny's reaction to Lee being on her porch suggests it, with how ready she is to laugh when he judges her wig, by the DNA written all over him, the danger of raising the kid together. Also, I don't mention this in the excerpt, but I'm sure they exchange mail and phone calls (very carefully).
We also learn a lot about Granny by the way that she interacts with Lee. In the original, she seems scared of him and even pities him. There's no sense that she likes him or understands him. I think that I was going for her being afraid of being rejected of him because that's how I am around kids, especially the cynical ones, but Granny is not me, so let's let her love her grandkid.
In the edit, I basically make her psychic. She understands Lee's motivations, what he's not saying, and his ultimate goal. This is not because she can actually read his mind, it's because she understands people, especially con artists. Also, she's spent a week with him, so she's gotten a chance to see how quick he is to look for an angle in every situation. This ability to read people tells us that she has a certain amount of empathy, probably not an amount she'd admit to. And, to me, it says that she's also always looking for an angle.
Let's talk about Lee's mom. It's clearly stated in the text that she would not have left Lee behind if she hadn't been in danger, and especially wouldn't have left her with her mom. Is there anything that backs this up? Sure. We have Granny's observation that Lee is itching to get up enough money to go and save his mom, but, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, she is projecting. She could be wrong. Anything else back this up?
Yes, a couple of things. First, the description of Lee on her porch. No belongings, but he's wearing a pristine white t-shirt, worn jeans, and a pair of beat-up shoes. Now. I think that Lee has a backpack that he's stashed somewhere that Granny finds out about later, but that's my speculation, let's stick to the writing. The pristine shirt indicates some level of care. Worn jeans might sound like neglect, but worn jeans are the most comfortable. And dirty, too-small shoes should indicate neglect, except that a) kids grow so damn fast at that age, b) the too-small shoes could be part of a con or a way to make him look younger, and the most important thing is c) which is his confidence.
Seconds after meeting her for the first time, he gives his grandmother the once-over, approves of her disguise, and clocks her bad wig. In present day, he's immediately scheming to sell all of her pies, and collect tips. Also, his reaction to her telling him not to pick any pockets says a lot. He feigns innocence and then laughs. So, if his mother was someone who habitually abandoned him, he wouldn't have these skills or this confidence.
Now, I'm not saying that teaching your child how to steal and pull scams is good parenting, but it does mean that she's around. So, I believe, based on the evidence, that she probably is in danger and the kid probably is gearing up to rescue her, if he can.
Conflict/Tension
In the original excerpt, there is some conflict. We have Granny's social anxiety, her tearing up when she thinks about her daughter, and her terror of her grandkid. That's a good start. I think it was a good idea, in the edit, to have her threaten him with exposure if he picked pockets. That's some conflict. I think it's fun that his reaction to that is to just do some mental adjustments.
Also, I'm glad that I revealed her true age in the edit. In the original, she goes home and washes off the make-up and the reader gets the reveal that way. I think that's very cinematic, but this scene needs it more. It needs for the reader to know that she doesn't bake the pies, and doesn't do the crocheting and knitting. The mystery that needs to be revealed is -- WHY? I think revealing the question and the answer like I planned to kind of kills the tension, so it works better this way.
In the original excerpt, there is some conflict. We have Granny's social anxiety, her tearing up when she thinks about her daughter, and her terror of her grandkid. That's a good start. I think it was a good idea, in the edit, to have her threaten him with exposure if he picked pockets. That's some conflict. I think it's fun that his reaction to that is to just do some mental adjustments.
Also, I'm glad that I revealed her true age in the edit. In the original, she goes home and washes off the make-up and the reader gets the reveal that way. I think that's very cinematic, but this scene needs it more. It needs for the reader to know that she doesn't bake the pies, and doesn't do the crocheting and knitting. The mystery that needs to be revealed is -- WHY? I think revealing the question and the answer like I planned to kind of kills the tension, so it works better this way.
Final Thoughts
The original excerpt is overwritten to the point where you can't follow the action, so my re-write was about stating things plainly. "She sat down in her rocking chair." "The kid who showed up was her grandson." Etcetera. The overwriting comes from a lack of confidence that the story will be interesting enough, so I tried to make every sentence as beautiful and interesting as possible. As a writer, I guess that's a decent approach, but as a storyteller, not so much.
It actually helped, so much, this morning, to sit down with Chat GPT and come up with a plot. Now, I know if there's a point in sharing Granny's secrets in the first five hundred words -- yes, there is. Because when the man shows up with his pie slice, saying he knows Granny didn't bake it, the reader is prepared to jump into the story, rather than wonder if the guy is crazy. I mean, he still might be, but he's right about the pie.
So, the rest of the story will be watching Lee (and the reader) get to know the townspeople, and trying to figure out if the man is up to no good, and if so, how to get rid of him (maybe with the help of some of the townspeople). If Liam is 35-ish in his story, which takes place in present day and he's ten in this story, it means that this story takes place in the early 2000s (assuming I actually write this story within the next five years).
This means that cellphones were still coming into fashion, cameras were only on the really expensive phones, and people relied heavily on landlines. If the man's old high school sweetheart is much older than Granny, then she probably won't have a cellphone, which means, Granny will have to sneak away to find a pay phone or borrow someone's phone in order to ask the woman if she'd like to be tracked down by an old flame.
I think that I want to avoid making this too much of a period piece. In fact, by the time I write Meda's Lark as a novel, probably it'll be another ten years from now, in which case, Liam's ten-year old self would be growing up with cellphones from 2016 or later. Those phones would all be equipped with decent cameras and a lot of older people would have them. Someone like Granny definitely would probably have a couple.
I'm not sure. The restraints of technology can be a crutch, but there are other ways to delay the final answer from the woman, so it might be fun to explore this story as a period piece. Crazy to think of my twenties as a period, but it's a time that I can write about with confidence, so it might work. Stuff to consider! Anyway, as usual when I'm done reviewing my old writing, I'm feeling a mixture of horror, relief, and hope.
It actually helped, so much, this morning, to sit down with Chat GPT and come up with a plot. Now, I know if there's a point in sharing Granny's secrets in the first five hundred words -- yes, there is. Because when the man shows up with his pie slice, saying he knows Granny didn't bake it, the reader is prepared to jump into the story, rather than wonder if the guy is crazy. I mean, he still might be, but he's right about the pie.
So, the rest of the story will be watching Lee (and the reader) get to know the townspeople, and trying to figure out if the man is up to no good, and if so, how to get rid of him (maybe with the help of some of the townspeople). If Liam is 35-ish in his story, which takes place in present day and he's ten in this story, it means that this story takes place in the early 2000s (assuming I actually write this story within the next five years).
This means that cellphones were still coming into fashion, cameras were only on the really expensive phones, and people relied heavily on landlines. If the man's old high school sweetheart is much older than Granny, then she probably won't have a cellphone, which means, Granny will have to sneak away to find a pay phone or borrow someone's phone in order to ask the woman if she'd like to be tracked down by an old flame.
I think that I want to avoid making this too much of a period piece. In fact, by the time I write Meda's Lark as a novel, probably it'll be another ten years from now, in which case, Liam's ten-year old self would be growing up with cellphones from 2016 or later. Those phones would all be equipped with decent cameras and a lot of older people would have them. Someone like Granny definitely would probably have a couple.
I'm not sure. The restraints of technology can be a crutch, but there are other ways to delay the final answer from the woman, so it might be fun to explore this story as a period piece. Crazy to think of my twenties as a period, but it's a time that I can write about with confidence, so it might work. Stuff to consider! Anyway, as usual when I'm done reviewing my old writing, I'm feeling a mixture of horror, relief, and hope.
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