Murder, Mayhem, and Small Towns

Taking my own advice from last time, I jumped right in to the meat of the story and immediately killed someone. You know how I like doing that.

But by finally getting my first taste of murder, I opened the floodgates to the rest of all that nonsense I had brewing. By killing one guy, I've introduced the Hitchhiker (even though we won't find out who she is until she returns later), the Sheriff (who, despite all initial appearances, is not here to help), and a small town that's going to be a confluence of weirdness and dimension hopping. And it has the best introduction to a town I've ever written (as though I've ever managed to describe a town before),

Check it:

It was the very definition of a farming town. Obscenely small, where everyone no doubt knew everyone else because they all showed up to the same family reunion. And no one knew who had invited them. Aunt Judy brought a Jell-O mold with vegetables in it, for some damn reason. Who the hell invited Aunt Judy?

I like it because it describes the place, without actually describing what it looks like, at all. Sure, maybe I could talk about how many square miles it is, how the streets are laid out, what its population is, and what its ratio of bars to churches is.

But why? I know what a small town looks like. You know what a small town looks like. This isn't 1890, when you had to describe everything because there was no way (aside from time travels shenanigans) that someone might have seen a place they didn’t live on TV, or the internet. By now we all know what everything looks like.

But you're the readers, so let me ask, is a physical description of something as benign as a small town necessary? Without it, are you left wondering, completely in the dark, and unable to continue? How important is this kind of thing to you, really?

So it's another short post today, I just don't have the brain power at the moment.

I'll see you Tuesday.