Masterwork Experiment Episode 2

In this episode, I ace the “Beginning Hook, Middle Build, Ending Payoff” summary of Brokeback Mountain, though not without a few tears in my voice, because damn, that story is sad.

There’s a huge temptation, in working with someone as accomplished as Shawn Coyne, to play the Good Student and try to get an A in Story Grid. 

But part of my job is to ask questions, dare to look ignorant, and prompt Shawn’s discussion of some of his new ideas.

Meanwhile, I’ve got a tentative opening scene.

The run of bright, dry autumn days ended at dawn on a Sunday, with a pattering of rain against the window of the small room where Matthew Barber slept. He lay under his quilt, barely awake, enjoying the sound, until he remembered his cabbages. He sprang out of bed, pulled on breeches and boots, fumbled for his knife, and burst out into the garden. 

He was soaked to the skin by the time he had cut the two dozen heavy, bright green heads of cabbage and carried them, a basket load at a time, into the house. 

“Matthew!!” a friendly voice called out just as he was going in for the last time. It was the vicar in his gig, his wide-brimmed hat dripping with rain. Matty, his arms full, raised his chin in acknowledgment. “Working on a Sunday, I see,” the vicar said. “Well, cabbages wait for no man. Shall I see you in church this morning?”

Matty said yes. He didn’t know what else to say.

The vicar waved and drove on. 

There was still the henhouse to check, and [tk some subsistence farming things]. He was muddy from kneeling in the cabbage rows. He didn’t have a clean shirt, and his Sunday coat needed a good brushing. Maybe it was time to find himself a wife after all. A man couldn’t run a farm alone forever, and Josey was gone. Time to admit that Josey was never coming back.