Dialogue, you and me!

[joshuachrisstoff]

Gidday one and all.
I don't want to stir up racial hatred but if it already exists let's use it and take the piss out of it even if just a little

I need an American writing partner.
I write US based spec ops. At the beginning of this new work, I am the MC who generally lives around North Carolina. I have him randomly in New York. This is all very fluid and purely negotiable with everything else. Any and all of what has happened so far could be swapped about or even not exist in the final draft.
MC is window shopping, this may stay or go, it is a set up device. He sees an advert in a realtor's window in Manhattan for a derelict building in W127th St in Harlem. No alarm bells yet.
Grabs a cab, goes to Harlem, gets out of the cab, gets no change as the driver flees in terror.
MC has bulk cash, the results of knocking over a coupla drug cartels in previous official ops. It doesn't matter how or where he invests his cash, there is simply too much to ever lose any significant amount of it.

For no good reason something about the look of this derelict building appealed to him and with that sole consideration he looks like he is going to buy this one, maybe one or two others attached to it. Then he will renovate it and turn it into accommodation, shopping, education or whatever else might benefit the community.

WHERE DO YOU FIT IN??

Okay, MC is out of the cab, the cab is gone, now he is crossing the road to get a better view of the whole of the building in case that will help him decide to buy it or not.
To my limited knowledge, Harlem was a borough that was essentially a Black People only neighborhood. No white people or others allowed. Is that still valid?
Assuming that Harlem is still a bit rough around the edges then some casual conflict here between black and white should be 'normal' maybe?.
If this is no longer valid, as in Harlem is no longer the ghetto it used to be, is there another NY or Manhattan suburb that is all one race and they basically rule the streets and scare away anyone not of their own kind?

I am not making a morale judgment here, not at all, just want to have some fun, some action that is valid and as close to daily life as is possible to get.
YOU
Will need to be 100% the black character, saying the words he says, dishing up some abusive comments trying to stir up the ire of the MC. That happens to be impossible because of how I have set up this MC but then the aggressor won’t know that. Water off a ducks back so to say.
Now another half of your job is to give me the words that the MC will use, maybe placating, or maybe even stirring them up. YOU will have to keep my slang in keeping with what locals or Now Yorker's use.
Ultimately the encounter will end up in a fistfight. The MC is a perfect fighter in H2H combat so much like Jet Li, Bruce Lee, Jean Claude Van Damme, or Chuck Norris on their very best days. So there will be no question that he will win the fight no matter how long it goes on for, just five minutes max, and I am just thinking that he will connect with these guys and they will sit down and have a soda with each other afterwards.

I am not trying to ‘create’ a racial rift where one doesn’t exist but since their used to be one, if it is still there, I want to use it for a semi noble purpose.

Can you be my 1.5 local Harlem characters so I can get it as close to reality as it is possible to achieve?
Yes, the fight doesn’t need to happen, let’s just say that it is the boys letting off some steam, after five minutes of throwing punches one sides runs out of steam and they eventually sit down together and smile a lot. Maybe then the MC tells them that he is army and this is exactly what they do in training, daily, more or less. In spire them a little bit. Also, it doesn’t need to be white vs black, it could be Latino or any other ethnic group that is handy down there. You might want to be careful, or even use this, the MC now speaks basic Russian, German, French, Hindi, Hokkien, Mandarin, Cantonese, now that is not extensively but he can earwig on anyone else having a casual conversation, so just watch that when you find groups to conflict with.

Now I just picked Black and Harlem since from about the fifties they have owned the Harlem streets and community simply with numbers. I don’t want to perpetuate a myth that is no longer valid or to cause trouble where it has been resolved, so it will be up to you to keep me on the straight and narrow. I am thinking there may not be a lot of dialog when two or more people are scrapping in the street. What do you say? Can you give me a few days so we can hammer out some real conflict in words and bloody noses to get my new action and adventure story underway?

Your call, in or out?

Heemail Joshua Christoff AT mail. DOT com

[avery]

Sounds interesting. Quite a novel idea.

[marcel]

Good one. Great idea.

[joshuachrisstoff]

So, are either one of you in or out?

It seems your lack of questions indicates you get the basic idea of what I mean here. Like I have seen news or docos that show tall Negroes 'stepping out' in gaudy coloured three piece suits and similarly coloured top hats. I have an idea it used to be rudely regarded as 'chicken walking', or something along those lines. Very much a strut rather than a common garden walking style.

So far I have got the MC down to Harlem in a cab, picked a main street, W127 th Street, I have no idea if that street has any derelict five story brick buildings but the journalistic license kicks in here.
I did some a lot like this in another book where I had the MC, the POTUS [President Of The United States] and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I didn't pussyfoot around with any of the three of them. Clearly there is a lot of journalistic license used there since the Pres possibly wouldn't say anything like that at all.
But I did try to keep it fairly even handed. Yes, the MC does come out on top but that is not an ego bit, he fights on principles and keeps the personalities out of it.
And, NO!!!! I did not put the Pres into a fist fight with the MC.
Oh yeah, just to cover it, the MC is supremely fit. Like he runs 10 miles every morning with 100 lbs pack and then the same at night b4 dinner. He spends at least one hour on the rifle range and two hours in the gym/ring with the three senior H2H instructors. He is not allowed to take on others since he hurts too many of them, too often.
Sparring can only be used as an excuse for so much of the beatings he dishes out.

So, what I need you guys to do is indicate if you would like to have a go at helping me write these few pages in this new work. Ultimately I could avoid it, or move it to a random beating on the subway, I hear that is a very dangerous place to be late at night these days. Or similarly remove this as the staring point of the book. It is only about 10 pages in so I could simply delete it and innocently commence on page 11, if you see what I mean.

If we are going to do something like I have in mind then let's do it properly, treat the locals as that is what they are, local colour in their society. I could claim journalistic license and write it all from 10,000 miles away and publish any old trash but I figured since the resource is sitting right in front of me, why not test the waters. I have my shoe and sock off and my big toe dipped into the East or Hudson rivers and it doesn't feel too shabby at all.

Some 20 or 30 years ago there was a news report or doco that said the Hudson River was 100% dead. There was not a live fish anywhere in the river along a stretch, a few miles of the Hudson River. I felt bad for the place!

BTW have you heard about Chesley Burnett "Sully" Sullenberger, III? The airline captain with the double bird strike on the two engine commercial passenger jet. When the emergency happened they have them on the cockpit voice recorder.

Co Pilot: "Sully, where can we put it down, a highway a football field, anywhere?" A little bit of panic evident in his voice.

Pilot: "Don't worry son, somewhere obvious will show itself shortly." Old Sully slapped him down b4 he lost it.

Co Pilot: "There has got to be somewhere, anywhere. But the roads, the highways are all full, there will be masses of deaths, icluding you and me!" He was getting his priorities right now.

Pilot: "There ya go, right there, a big, wide unused paved area!
Sully was pointing down at the light grey of the Hudson River below them that just had one passenger ferry in the middle of it.

Co Pilot: "Are you kidding me, that is a river!"

Pilot: "Not really, I was just down there a few weeks back, having a BBQ with the grandkids. We had a lovely dsy. It is far from being water, it is a lot more viscus than water, it will support this little plane, for a while at least." Sully had a rye smile on his lips which fully extended to his eyes and everywhere else too.


Aircraft: With only some two and a half thousand feet to play with, not a lot when you are still climbing and not anywhere near maximum speed, the big bird began its sweep aeound to line up on finals.

Pilot: "See, no worries, it will be perfect." Sully reassured his co pilot who was rapidly falling apart.
"They were a bit sloppy when they were floating off the concrete, never mind, so long as the engines don't fall off, we will be just fine."


OUTSIDE THE AIRCRAFT with all the psssengers and staff safely standing on the wings this was overheard.

Passenger1: 'We were lucky it was the Hudson River here, any other one anywhere in the world would simply have opened up and swallowed us. Thank god for the anti greenies who keep the Hudson River as polluted as possible or we would never have had a half decent smooth landing strip.

Passenger2: 'Amen, brother, amen!'

[joshuachrisstoff]

I will have to reign myself in over the vital sticking point of VERBOSITY! Now I have to go and look that up! DAMN!!!

[dervish]

This is interesting and I'd like to help. However, I just don't have the time at the moment. Sorry. I should free up somewhat by Christmas.

[susieq]

Nov 28, 2013 16:12:46 GMT -5 dervish said:

This is interesting and I'd like to help. However, I just don't have the time at the moment. Sorry. I should free up somewhat by Christmas.

Ditto for me. Sorry.

[joshuachrisstoff]

Both fine explanations!
This is a project and as such is something that you wanna do right, therefore getting it right is far more important than getting it done quickly. I also have to thinbk of what it is that I want both characters to say, and what they need to achieve. Like is the Harlem local my friend or enemy, or even one who becomes the other? Does he start as a friend, become a true enemy but then save me, hide me, while my wouns recover.
THAT is the dangerous bit from my point of view. Give me two minutes and i can change the story or plot to something completely different. Nothing is set in concrete! <GRIN>