[poconopundit]

Pictures of your characters: "her eyes were green", "father's hair was turning gray".

* * * *

You can't deny the commercial success of a woman who published many books.  And I like the research she did in rooting out inconsistencies in her works.

Now I am not a reader of popular fiction.  But the greatest fiction short story I've ever experienced is from an audio collection of Mark Twain's work published maybe 40 years ago by Harper Collins .

The audio CD is widely available from numerous sources with the voices of several professional actors, one being Water Brennan.

The short story I refer to is The £1,000,000 Bank Note whose text is available in its entirety on the Project Gutenberg collection.

I must have heard the audio of this story 50 times -- it's that good.

Now one of the remarkable things about the story is Twain breaks the rules about creating a physical picture of the characters:

For instance, the main character -- who is also the story narrator -- is described in the initial two sentences of the story.

When I was twenty-seven years old, I was a mining-broker’s clerk in San Francisco, and an expert in all the details of stock traffic.  I was alone in the world, and had nothing to depend upon but my wits and a clean reputation; but these were setting my feet in the road to eventual fortune, and I was content with the prospect.

That's it.  Later on in the story, we eventually learn his name and other details about his past.  But Twain is super efficient in getting the story started with worrying about details he can supply later.

Later on in the story we meet a female the hero meets at a party in London.  How does Twain describe her?  "an English girl of twenty-two, named Portia Langham, whom I fell in love with in two minutes".

What's this?  He falls in love with the girl but gives zero details about her physical appearance!

Ah, but a few paragraphs later we DO learn the color of her hair...

"And I told her — I did indeed — told her I loved her; and she — well, she blushed till her hair turned red, but she liked it; she said she did."

LOL!  Twain doesn't tell us the color of Portia's hair, only that it turned red from her blushing!

So this is a master at work.  By not giving us the physical details, Twain has allowed the reader's imagination to supply them so his story fits that of every man and woman who fall in love.

[GOPJ]

So this is a master at work. By not giving us the physical details, Twain has allowed the reader's imagination to supply them so his story fits that of every man and woman who fall in love.

Perfect surprise ending, Pundit - didn't see it coming but felt it was obvious by the time I read the last word. Very nice.