Last week we talked about MRUs. Time to see them in action. I’m going to color code them as follows:

• Motivation (Setting, Action, and/or Dialogue)
• Reaction
  • Feeling (Reflex, Visceral Sensations)
  • Thought
  • Action
  • Dialogue
• (Commentary/Voice/Deep POV/Depth)

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Storm Front by Jim Butcher

I heard the mailman approach my office door, half an hour earlier than usual. He didn’t sound right. His footsteps fell more heavily, jauntily, and he whistled. A new guy. He whistled his way to my office door, then fell silent for a moment. Then laughed.

Then he knocked.

I winced. My mail comes through the mail slot unless it’s registered. I get a really limited selected of registered mail, and it’s never good news. I got up out of my office chair and opened the door.

The new mailman, who looked like a basketball with arms and legs and a sunburned, balding head, was chuckling at the sign on the door glass. He glanced at me and hooked a thumb toward the sign. “You’re kidding, right?”

I read the sign (people change it occasionally), and shook my head. “No, I’m serious. Can I have my mail please?”

“So, uh. Like parties, shows, stuff like that?” He looked past me, as though he expected to see a white tiger, or possibly some skimpily clad assistants prancing around my one-room office.

I sighed, not in the mood to get mocked again, and reached for the mail he held in his hand. “No, not like that. I don’t do parties.”

First Page

Ghost Story by Jim Butcher

Life is hard.

Dying’s easy.

So many things must align in order to create life. It has to happen in a place that supports life, something approximately as rare as hen’s teeth from the perspective of the universe. . . .

Ending a life, by comparison, is simple. Easy even. . . .

I died in the water.

I don’t know if I bled to death from the gunshot wound or drowned. . .

Granted, I never heard of anyone rushing toward the light and suddenly hearing the howling blare of a train’s horn.

I became dimly aware that I could feel my feet beneath me, standing on what seemed to be a set of tracks. I knew because I could feel the approaching train making them shake and buzz against the bottoms of my feet. My heart sped up, too.

For crying out loud, did I just say that death isn’t scary anymore? Tell that to my glands.

I put my hands on my hips and just glared at the oncoming train in disgust. I’d had a long, long day, battling the forces of evil, utterly destroying the Red Court, rescuing my daughter, and murdering her mother—oh, and getting shot to death. That kind of thing.

I was supposed to be at peace, or merging with the holy light, or in line for my next turn on the roller coaster, or maybe burning in an oven equipped with a stereo that played nothing but Manilow. That’s what happens when you die, right? You meet your reward. You get to find out the answer to the Big Quesetions of life.

“You do not get run over by trains,” I said crossly. [<–Looks like dialogue, but he’s not speaking to anyone but himself, so this is just thought voiced out loud.] I folded my arms, planted my feet, and thrust out my jaw belligerently as the train came thundering my way.

“What’s wrong with you?” bellowed a man’s voice, and then a heavy, strong hand wrapped around my right biceps and hauled me off the track by main force. “Don’t you see the damned train?“

Said train roared by like a living thing, a furious beast that howled and wailed in disappointment as I was taken from its path. The wind of its passage raked at me with sharp, hot fingers, actually pulling my body a couple of inches toward the edge of the platform.

After a subjective eternity, it passed, and I lay on flat ground for a moment, panting, my heart beating along lickety-split. When it finally began to slow down, I took stock of my surroundings.

I was sprawled on a platform of clean but worn concrete and suddenly found myself under fluourescent lights, as at many train stations in the Chicago area. I looked around the platform, but though it felt familiar, I couldn’t exactly place it. There were no other commuters. No flyers or other advertisements. Just an empty, clean, featureless building.

And a pair of polished win tip shoes.

I looked up . . .

Page 1-3

Where They Wait by Scott Carson

A reporter with a question is a happy human. It was a small question for a minor-league story, but it was still a hell of a good feeling.

[Motivation: in a previous scene, he was invited to a meeting.]

I walked across the new footbridge, the falls pounding down to my left, the flower beds fragrant to my right, and made my way to the main entrance. Pulled on one of the giant glass doors.

Locked.

Ah, yes, the security procedures. I’d forgotten my instructions. I dutifully pressed the buzzer on the outdoor intercom box, and a bright-voiced woman answered.

“Delivery?”

I gave my name and the purpose of my visit.

“Oh, sure. I see Renee in the hallway now. I’ll send her down.”

I stood and waited and enjoyed the morning. The harbor—where once a young Patrick Ryan had lost a sailboat to the high seas while it sat at anchor—was straight down the steep hill that followed the river on its way to the bay. There, on a clear day, you’d be able to make out the islands and see all the way across to where the coastal towns of Rockland, Camden, and Belfast were scattered along Route 1 on the northbound route to Bar Harbor and Mount Desert Island and Acadia.

Behind me, the glass door of the revitalized mill opened and a smiling young woman with dark red hair and green eyes extended her hand.

“Mr. Bishop, I’m Renee.”

“Good to meet…,” I began, and then, “Hang on! Renee!”

Her smile widened, and for a moment I thought the handshake was going to turn into a hug, but it didn’t. Instead we just stood there grinning at each other. Renee Holland had been my first real friend in Hammel . . .

“Didn’t recognize me!” she said now, teasing. “I can’t believe it.”

“You’re disguised. What’s with the red hair?”

page 24-25

Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay

Moon. Glorious moon. Full, fat, reddish moon, the night as light as day, the moonlight flooding down across the land and bringing joy, joy, joy. Bringing too the full-throated call of the tropical night, the soft and wild voice of the wind roaring through the hairs on your arm, the hollow wail of starlight, the teeth-grinding bellow of the moonlight off the water.

All calling to the Need. Oh, the symphonic shriek of the thousand hiding voices, the cry of the Need inside, the entity, the silent watcher, the cold quiet thing, the one that laughs, the Moondancer. The me that was not-me, the thing that mocked and laughed and came calling with its hunger. With the Need. And the Need was very strong now, very careful cold coiled creeping crackly cocked and ready, very strong, very much ready now—and still it waited and watched, and it made me wait and watch.

First page

Storm Front by Jim Butcher

Have you ever been approached by a grim-looking man, carrying a naked sword with a blade about ten miles long in his hand, in the middle of the night, beneath the stars on the shores of Lake Michigan? If you have, seek professional help. If you have not, then believe me, it can scare the beejeezus out of you.

I took in a quick breath, and had to work not to put it into a quasi-Latin phrase on the exhale, one that would set the man’s body on fire and reduce him to a mound of ashes. I react badly to fear. I don’t usually have the good sense to run, or hide—I just try to smash whatever it is that is making me afraid. It’s a primitive sort of thing, and one I don’t question too much.

But reflex-based murder seemed a tad extreme, so rather than setting him on fire, I nodded instead. “Evening, Morgan. You know as well as I do that those laws apply to mortals. Not faeries. Especially for something as trivial as I just did. And i didn’t break the Fourth Law. He had the choice whether to take my deal or not.”

Morgan’s sour, leathery face turned a bit more sour, the lines at the corners of his mouth stretching and becoming deeper. “That’s a technicality, Dresden. A pair of them.” His hands, broad and strong, resettled their grip upon the sword he held. His unevenly greying hair was tied into a ponytail in the back, like Sean Connery’s in some of his movies, except that Morgan’s face was too pinched and thin to pull of the look.

“You’re point being?” I did my best to keep from looking nervous or impressed. Truth be told, I was both. Morgan was my Warden, assigned to me by the White Council to make sure I didn’t bend or break any of the Laws of Magic. He hung about and spied on me, mostly, and usually came sniffing around after I’d cast a spell of some kind. [<–Backstory that gives Reader context but that could be left out without affecting the scene.] I would be damned if I was going to let the White Council’s guard dog see any fear out of me. Besides, he would take it as a sign of guilt, in the true spirit of paranoid fanatics everywhere. So, all I had to do was keep a straight face and get out before my weariness made me slip up and do or say something he could use against me.

Morgan was one of the deadliest evocators in the world. He wasn’t bright enough to question his loyalties to the council, and he could do quick-and-dirty magic like few others could. [More backstory, but some of it is directly relevant to the front story, so I labeled it as thoughts.]

Quick and dirty enough to rip the hearts out of Tommy Tomm and Jennifer Stanton’s chests, in fact, if he wanted to.

“My point,” he said, scowling, “is that it is my assigned duty to monitor your use of your power, and to see to it that you do not abuse it.”

“I’m on a missing-persons case,” I said. “All I did was call up a dewdrop faery to get some information. . . .”

Beginning of Chapter 7

And that’s it for me!

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