[February 3, 2007, reporting from Left Coast Crime, Seattle.]
The panel was called “Like Watching the Grass Grow,” and we panelists were supposed to brainstorm a whole book right before your very eyes.
I was the moderator and I had a kitchen timer and I knew how to use it. I gave the audience five minutes to suggest settings, and, oh my, did they ever–the Space Needle, a safari, an ER, an ice fishing shack, a navy destroyer, a cooking school, the Taj Mahal, Taco Bell, a roller coaster ride, a book club, Sea World, a cruise ship, the Arizona border, southern Louisiana (I think that one has been done), a liquor store, a Florida election booth, a beauty salon and an amusement park, and those were just the ones I managed to scribble down.
Ding went the timer, and then for ten minutes the authors went to work. First we selected the setting: An amusement park with a Space Needle and a roller coaster. Who was there, as in characters? A stripper named Peaches Davenport, who was taking a day off with her 7-year old daughter. Who else? The victim, one Victoria Secrete (thank you, Larry Karp, or was that John Daniel), another stripper who covets Peaches’ headliner status. Also, I think in order, Peaches’ ex-husband, a lounge singer who plays the piano at Peaches’ strip club and the piano lounge on top of the Space Needle, the plastic surgeon who gave both Peaches and Victoria their breast implants, and an engineer who is a rides designer who sees Peaches from afar and falls instantly and violently in love.
Ding went the timer, and then for fifteeen minutes we brainstormed a plot. Peaches is the intended victim, but Victoria dies. Turns out the surgeon has a right wing religious fanatic nurse who not only is in love with the surgeon but disapproves of the girls’ lifestyle, and she has some geek design an exploding breast implant that is set to go off when the doctor’s pager rings (a gift from an audience member, and thank you for that). You guessed it, the wrong implant got into the wrong boob and the wrong stripper dies.
Or something like that. The title of this magnum opus? Breastless in Seattle.
If you weren’t there, you don’t get to know our ending. You snooze, you lose.
Dana sez–I’ve said elsewhere on #thiswritinglife and will continue to say everywhere no writer should ever turn down an opportunity to try something new. This definitely qualified, as writing novels is usually a pretty solitary business. Go ahead anyway, jump!