Supporting Cast (Flat):
Ahhhh, the much maligned flat character. You need them! Your point of view in your novel means you're not going to spend time fully developing the funny boy at the coffee shop, the gay cowboys' boss, the surprisingly pretty girl on the subway. Take a moment to imagine and share some of the people in your protagonist's life who might be necessary, but won't play a leading role.
Iron Man
He stood at the feet of the giant metal man and ...
Elitist
So I hear you're an author, and that makes you better than the next guy, right? What makes you an elitist? What makes you common? Are you losing your hair?
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Elitist by Wolfgang Glinka
"No thanks, I don't drink instant coffee," he said to the embarrassed hostess.
She smiled, blushed and little bit of her shrivelled up inside as she walked across the party floor with her coffee pot.
He sighed petulantly: "well really! What kind of man does she take me for?"
Sitting on the train, a young man offered him a newspaper.
"Thanks all the same but I don't read the tabloids."
The young man clenched his fists and sat on his hands.
"Why does he think I would want to read about dumb film stars and sensationalised murder stories?"
He had always been like this. As a small child he had cried if his parents misread his careful birthday present signals and bought him the wrong brand of toy. His parents were more hurt by his scornful tone of voice than their apparently catastrophic failure.
Of course, he was very stylish. You had to admire his taste in clothes, tailor-made for his elegant, straight-backed frame. His ties were always silk and perfectly co-ordinated with his shirts. Not too dull and certainly not flashy.
Of course, he was a member of an exclusive gentleman's club where the perpetual tension caused by his unfashionably particular attitude to everything to do with good taste was met with approval and understanding even if his fellow members were never quite as extreme in their views.
It is an endless struggle, he thought. Life in the city in the modern world. People either didn't care about what they looked like or they were quite simply too ignorant to know any better.
It was a personal crusade. No he would not ignore examples of bad taste. On the contrary he would make it a matter of principle to draw attention to all the aesthetic and sartorial faux pas that he came across every day regardless of the consequences.
And thus he lived his life, not very popular, as you can imagine, he largely kept himself to himself except when inspired to draw attention to essential points of etiquette.
You simply never wear spotted ties with pin stripe suits, he would tell a snappily dressed man who had stopped to ask for directions to the train station.
It is such bad form to wear your jacket unbuttoned whilst standing, just as it is wrong to wear it buttoned when sitting down. This was addressed to his bank manager when he was making an unsuccessful application for a considerable bank loan.
So he did not care whom he offended, hurt or humiliated, it was essential to live one's life knowing what was what.
On that day, he had been particularly upset by the new rule at his club which stated that women would be allowed in as members for the first time in its two hundred year history.
Standards are falling everywhere, he was thinking when a terrible jolt sending him crashing to the ground.
As the blood poured from his mouth and his limbs began their unsightly dance of death, he looked up from the puddle of his life's fluids as he lay in the middle of the road.
He smiled, as his eyes rolled up into their sockets, it was a 1957 Bentley, his favourite car, its black paint in mint condition and its chrome mudguards now covered in his blood, polished to an immaculate shine.
Wolfgang Glinka
Elitist
[Ab6] A little bit taller and a little bit faster and a little less hair on his really cute butt.
[Gb6] A little better job and a little more money and a whole crazy bunch more books.
[Fb6] Looks and smells like a Hollywood actor; everyone wants to be best buds.
[Eb6] But when you look under the hood, you smell a smoking credit card.
[Db6] [mute]
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