Re: How to delay a moving van?

On 2008-01-06, Dan Goodman penned:
Monique Y. Mudama wrote:

On 2008-01-06, Dorothy J Heydt penned:

Oh, I like that. As a first step, anyway. Switched clipboards.
The driver gets into the cab, revs up the engine, looks again at
the clipboard, and says "Wait, they said 'Anchorage,' that can't
be right, this says 'Highland Park.'" And he was born and
brought up in Jacksonville, and he KNOWS there's a Highland Park
in Florida....

This would really bother me. It wold be awfully easy for him at
this point to just go back and ask someone to double-check. Even
if the information available is incomplete, there would be contact
information for the client. I suppose there are still five people
or so who don't have cell phones that could be used while
travelling across the country, but even so she could leave the
contact information of a friend or family member she trusts.

For me to buy this story line, the driver would have to either not
notice any problem or have something going on that would absolutely
prevent him from asking (and the only conditions I can think of
that would do that would be more along the lines of an
action/adventure story, which I don't think you want).

This kind of thing _does_ happen in real life.

All sorts of things happen in real life that would annoy me in a book.
Plots that center on "A won't tell B what's going on because A is sure
that B won't understand even though the audience can tell B would be
fine with it" are really painful to me.

I guess now I'm sounding like Tina =)

--
monique
.

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