Copyright © 2002 by W. E. Lopez
By
W. E. Lopez
Normally
I always follow the advice of my agent and heed her requests. Today started out no different than any
other as I sat down at my word processor to knock out 6,000 words she had
requested for the Colorado State University School of Journalism. Her request was very simple; “You are a
reporter in search of a story when you find a suitcase belonging to a famous
fictional character.”
I’d
given some thought to the material she wanted, and when my PC was booted I
opened a file and began to write.
My name is William Thomas Franklin. I had grown up in Philadelphia and some in my family claim that we are descendants of another famous newspaperman, Ben Franklin. I wondered what my famous great-great-great-great-whatever would have said if he had known how happy I was to be living in Metropolis, being paid less than minimum wage while I struggled to earn my living as a reporter for the Daily Globe.
In search of a story today, I was spending the
afternoon in the park, perhaps thinking I would stumble onto something in the
way of a human-interest piece and not the usual mugging or body tagged “foul
play suspected.”
Instead I found an apparently abandoned suitcase
sitting in the middle of a grassy fairway where children frequently played
dodge ball or flew kites. Not to pass
up a possible story, I walked over and picked up the suitcase made of cheap
cardboard. When I examined it, just
below the carrying handle in black, stenciled letters I saw a name, C. Kent.
“Hold
it, stop what you’re doing! CUT!”
I
stared in amazement as a small figure crawled from beneath the edge of the
digital sheet of paper displayed on my monitor.
“You
can’t do that,” the diminutive character said as he strode into the middle of
the page and stood there shaking his finger at me.
Of
course I recognized him immediately.
Who wouldn’t know him in his civilian garb, a baggy blue suit, white
shirt with black tie, blue-black hair and wire rimmed zero-prescription
spectacles?
“Hello,
Clark. What are you doing here in my
story?”
“Your
story!” he asked vehemently. “Look,
buddy, there is only one Metropolis in this country and I’m the main man in
that burg. Anyone else in the story is
just a supporting character. Don’t you
understand that? No, of course
not.
“Now
I have to call the Scrivener’s Guild and complain to the shop steward in
Central Casting that you are writing a story about Metropolis and using
first-person point of view for a smuck cub-reporter! You can’t do that! It’s
against union rules!”
He
was breathing heavily now and I was afraid he might step into a nearby phone
booth to change into that familiar red and blue costume and emerge to kick my
butt. Looking around my den I didn’t
see a chunk of kryptonite and I knew the Man of Steel would have no
trouble polishing me off, even if he were only two inches tall and only a
figment of my imagination.
“But, Mr. Kent,” I said. “You have to admit there are other people
who populate the pages of your stories.
Why can’t I tell a story from their point of view?”
“Because,
you great bumbling, ignorant hack, I’ve got seniority. And if you’ll look over the bylaws of the
Scrivener’s Guild, you’ll see that if I’m not satisfied with what you write
about me, I’m perfectly within my rights to have my Character Benefits Rep call
the Literary Agent’s Guild and make sure that you never sell another piece of
copy for the rest of your life!”
Just then my phone rang and Rose Diamond screamed
in my ear, “Christ, Bill, what the heck are you up to? I just got a call from the president of my
guild suggesting that you could be blackballed if you don’t learn to play by
the rules.”
“No shit, Rose, and I
thought I was the crazy one! I’m
sitting here in front of my PC having a conversation with the one and only Superman
who wants to blue pencil the piece you asked for!”
“You mean the one about The
Suitcase?” she asked. “Forget
it. My friend at the School of
Journalism was only going to pay you $150 for it, and for my 10%, I don’t need
this hassle. You know, I can be
blackballed too? Besides, you’re much
too good a writer to be putting out dreck like that.”
“What then, do you want me
to do, Rose?”
“Just drop it. Kill it.
Forget it. How about writing
something about a fictional President of the United States who has an affair
with a young and pretty White House intern?
He’s a crude man who likes too many cigars and too many women, and he
plays the saxophone. Maybe he’s got a
lesbian for a wife and… oh, yeah, this would top it off. Even though she’s from Arkansas, she buys a
home in New York and gets herself elected to the Senate. Now there’s a piece of fiction I know I can
sell. It’s far too wild for anyone to
ever believe a word of it.”
“You sure that’s what you
want me to do, Rose?”
“You write it, Bill, and
I’ll sell it. Something like that could
easily run into seven figures, maybe even a movie of the week or a possible
network series.”
“If you say so, Rose. I’ll begin immediately. Bye.”
Improbable! Not plausible! The first rule of a writer is to create a “willing suspension of
disbelief in the reader.” Who would
ever believe a sitting President of the United States could be a
skirt-chaser? And that part about
electing the First Lady to the Senate?
Preposterous!