Michael Silver -- I just don't get it...

Playthrough -- that is an immaculate detail. Hell yes that belongs...because it has a sense of time and place. Not Edge drinking a fuckin tequila

 

Edge is in a Phoenix nightclub, in the wee hours, surrounded by babes, drinking a Patron's and lime. How is that not a sense of time and place?

 

Because it's not after a tough loss at a place where he usually orders the same thing, and then, this one time, he switches it up.

This detail is simply to prove: I'M Michael Silver, I get to hang out with Edge James, and you don't! Nah nah nah

 

It also doesn't read "I was with Peyton at the bar and he ordered a martini...."

The writer is giving a sense of time and place without inserting himself.

 

The objection to Silver putting himself in the scene is valid. The objection to descriptive detail is not. If Silver had written "Edge was at the bar with a drink," any good editor would have asked what kind of drink? A bottled water? A ginger ale? A Budweiser? A Corona? And what kind of bar? An out of the way neighborhood joint? A crowded nightclub? All those details form a picture. No, it's not as perfect as the Peyton Manning example, but few scenes are. I don't like some of Silver's excesses, either, but this seems more a criticism of the writer than the writing.

 

A good editor would've said, "Why is this necessary?"

 

Yeah, you're right. Why is any of it necessary? Why not just print a transcript of the interview and be done with it?

 

: : : : :

 

Snuka, I think you're half-right here, which means, if I've done my math correctly, you're half-wrong, too.

I think the detail about the drink is good. It's not especially important, but if it had just said "drink," I'd wonder, What kind of drink? Now we know. Patron says, Money. Lime juice says, Pussy who can't drink even good tequila straight. There we have it.

If someone's drinking a beer, I usually name the beer. A guy who drinks Schlitz is different from a guy who drinks Sapparo, say. Can or bottle or glass says something, too.

That all being said, the "told me" shit is hateful stuff. Who the fuck else would he be telling it to? The potted plant in the corner?

The reader is smart enough to know you're there. So, if you do get great access -- if you find yourself in Peyton Manning's truck on the way to the game -- and you want to flaunt it, just write that scene, and write it well and with intimacy, and everybody will know you were in the truck on the way to the game. People can make that connection.

Anything more than that is hacky, juvenile bullshit.

 

Precisely. That's exactly what I was trying to say. There's only one thing wrong with this passage from Silver:

"All those years without a fullback, I didn't realize what I was missing," James said early Sunday as we stood near the bar at a bustling Phoenix nightclub. He was sipping a small glass of Patron and Rosie's Lime Juice while surrounded by the usual assemblage of lovely ladies.

Change the "we" stood near the bar to "he" stood near the bar, and it's fine.

 

How bout this: What if he added just one or two more bits of detail. Something about the fans, if they were clamoring over him, or if he wasn't getting noticed. What about if any of his teammates were there. What about if it was his first glass or his sixth.

Is that a compromise?