EXCELLENT TOOL, EXCELLENT POST

Fellow Americanuck John Rogers has a terrific column in Kung Fu Monkey on rewriting scenes from a secondary character's point of view.

The basic idea is: now and then when things get dull, imagine that a huge star has signed to play the secondary role, subject to it being interesting. Make it interesting.

Or, to put it another way, change the viewpoint of the scene from the hero's to the person who's making the hero sweat. It's not about Bogart in the bookstore trying to find out about the fake book dealer across the street. It's about the hot bookseller babe who wants to get Bogie to notice how hot she is, when he's all about staking out A. J. Geiger's.

Useful tool to have in the toolbox.