Not Never (a short scene)

Just a little scene that I might use somewhere, sometime. Wytchcroft said I ought to post something, so this one's for you


NOT NEVER

“Can’t not never do it, nohow,” Mal said, thoroughly enjoying Simon’s perplexed expression.

Four. Mal kinda prided himself on his ability to pile on the negatives. It was always good for throwing Doc out of balance—poor boy couldn’t make out up from down when Mal tossed one of his better constructions at him. Didn’t generally work on the other Core-bred members of his crew. River, she’d just peep into his brainpan and figure out what he meant. And Inara was so good at reading facial expressions and body language, it almost didn’t matter what he said. But the Doc was always tryin’ to understand it literally, and he was so earnest about it, and it was just so gorram wickedly funny to see him follow the winding path of negatives and try and work out whether it came out meaning ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Mal just liked to yank Doc’s chain a bit. Of course he knew better. His momma was an English teacher, and she didn’t allow double negatives in her house. But double negatives came natural-like to anyone who’d grown up on a Rim world, and he’d known some true artists in his time. The master of them all, the Nabob of Negatives himself, was Sergeant Beauford Hammett, Mal’s drill instructor when he’d been a raw recruit. Mal had collected Sergeant Hammett’s best lines and used a few of them himself. He’d never forget the time the Sarge had burst in on one of those rare moments of down time at boot camp, bellowing, “I don’t wanna see nobody nowhere ’round here not doin’ nothin’ at no time, nohow! Get you a broom!” That was seven. Still made Mal whistle with admiration when he thought on it.

Mal war history tidbits = fun

Mal screwing with Simon = always priceless

Heeeee! 'No double negatives' got me rolling - and hell, Sergeant Beauford Hammett? That name is just class.

Simon's such a mark, poor love.

Also; Mal's fear of being known (e.g. fathomed out by River or Inara). That's truthsome.

His momma an English teacher, I guess I could see that, she could just have left the day to day running of the ranch to the overseer and the hands.

In my headcanon, Mal's ma was a teacher who came to Shadow to teach (mainly) high school English; she mostly abandoned teaching for ranching after meeting Mal's pa. After the death of Reynolds Sr., she ran the ranch full-time and never went back to teaching except to enrich her son's education. I'm thinking she thought of teaching as something of a vocation, and the urge to impart her knowledge of English literature in particular never left her.

ebfiddler987 wrote:In my headcanon, Mal's ma was a teacher who came to Shadow to teach (mainly) high school English; she mostly abandoned teaching for ranching after meeting Mal's pa. After the death of Reynolds Sr., she ran the ranch full-time and never went back to teaching except to enrich her son's education. I'm thinking she thought of teaching as something of a vocation, and the urge to impart her knowledge of English literature in particular never left her.

Oh hell this totally.

I really like your dialogue and description here. I'm comparing it with what you're doing on FFF at the moment, which is much more exposition oriented. Next time you post, I'll have to look at the dialogue/description to exposition ratio. I hope you don't mind me saying that sometimes the way your write exposition doesn't do justice to the depth and detail of your Firefly knowledge and ideas. It's difficult for you to put in all your headcanon when you're describing who did what, but your headcanon is fantastic.

But I think that this ficlet does the job most nicely.

Becky Mears wrote:I hope you don't mind me saying that sometimes the way your write exposition doesn't do justice ...

I don't mind at all, that's very useful feedback.
One thing I am very interested in getting is feedback and advice on the craft of writing, *how* to write fiction in particular. Plot, exposition, foreshadowing -- these are all things I struggle with. I am worried about how much to expose, when and whether to reveal elements that I have in my head, and I don't have the experience to judge if I'm doing it right. I handle foreshadowing mostly by putting it in on a re-write, after I've written the next story. Pretty clunky way to do it. I revealed too much in one of my early stories -- thought I was being so cleverly obscure, and everybody guessed exactly what I was up to instantly, ruining the suspense.
My currently posting story at FFF was one where I wrote a bunch of interesting scenes and then had to go back and figure out what the plot was supposed to be. The re-write took many, many months and was a big struggle. I think I finally figured out what the story was about. I'm sure this is a very bad way to construct a story, but that's how it was. Everything is a big experiment. That's why I really appreciate feedback that comments on writing technique, and why this forum is so valuable -- I need all the help I can get!

Shall we continue this over at the 'how' you do it thread. I like to keep things tidy!

Hmm, I don't remember a fic where people figured things out right away. EB.

But if I was the ringleader, I apologize. I have a bad habit for doing that kind of thing.

Well, it was Adventures in Sitting. And it was my sister, actually. She betas for me and that was the first story she beta'ed. (A Lion's Mouth was done all by my lonesome.) Anyway, she thought I should explain how the sabotage happened, instead of leaving it a complete mystery. Maybe it was a good suggestion, as it's only now (well, will be, when I post chapter 17 of What Begins with an Apple) that there's any real confirmation of what happened, and nobody except me will remember that 9 stories and a couple hundred thousand words ago there was this mysterious sabotage incident! Of course, the hints I inserted were really pretty blatant, and I hadn't written any red herrings into the story, so it was completely obvious who was doing what, and I lost whatever mystery might have been there. Rookie writer error.

ebfiddler987 wrote:Well, it was Adventures in Sitting. And it was my sister, actually. She betas for me and that was the first story she beta'ed. (A Lion's Mouth was done all by my lonesome.) Anyway, she thought I should explain how the sabotage happened, instead of leaving it a complete mystery. Maybe it was a good suggestion, as it's only now (well, will be, when I post chapter 17 of What Begins with an Apple) that there's any real confirmation of what happened, and nobody except me will remember that 9 stories and a couple hundred thousand words ago there was this mysterious sabotage incident! Of course, the hints I inserted were really pretty blatant, and I hadn't written any red herrings into the story, so it was completely obvious who was doing what, and I lost whatever mystery might have been there. Rookie writer error.

Aw, but you had dramatic action in the form of Simon nearly getting his pert hindside taken by some fake cops. That was good.

Though yeah, we figured out about Saffron, that's true.

Well, it *was* fun to let Simon have an action scene while Mal and Zoe and Jayne sat on their duffs in an office building.

Adventures 'n Sitting.

And Simon thought he would be bored.