So, I’ve made my changes to the JACK OF DIAMONDS excerpt I put up yesterday. Have you? (I’ll put it up tomorrow.) It’s not as if it’s an exercise, or a school assignment, but more a question of what you’d do, or how you’d do it, if you were writing the story. When I usually edit a story, I like to add layers. I like to create a feeling, or a sense, of atmosphere. I want the reader to feel that he/she is in the room, or in the field, where the action is taking place. I don’t want you to feel the heat from the stove, but I want you to know it’s there. Just as I want you to see the sunlight breaking in through the windows, the small prisms on the walls from the jars of herbs and spices on the shelves. They’re memories of the nuts and bolts my father had in jars screwed to the walls of his work-shed when I was a kid. They’re not big things, but they add atmosphere. You can picture the kitchen in your mind’s eye if you’ve ever been to an old European home—or you can picture the kitchen in …
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