Contractually obligated

I'm a fan of contactions. I am a fan of contrations.

Those sentences read very differntly in my head. The beats sound so at odds. The first sentence seems sleek, and lean. The second feels meandering.

When I write business e-mails, commercial and video scripts, I try to be lean. Economy of word is extremly important. Say what you need to say quickly. In, out. Done. Fini.

And I believe in the power of contractions. I wince when I get ultra-dense scripts with "We are the best blah blah in blah blah." "We are." "We're." A whole thirty seconds of that takes much more time than it should. Way more.

With this random typing I'm doing now, I try to be somewhat aware of word economy, but I see it more as an informal exercise in refining "voice." I know how my internal monolouge works, but it needs to be exercised. And it's all contractions. Non-contractions I save for emphasis or style. And I kinda (kind of) wish everybody else would do the same.

It's like using swear words sparingly. Today was a good day at work, and by the end of it I was laughing and recounting stories with four-letter flourishes. "Ass," "dick," "jerkweed," and the almighty "s-word" and "f-word" help bring the funny/emphasis when they're (they are) not part of my daily speech.

And I especially like subbing in "f word" for the "f-word." Christopher Priest used this wonderfully in a comic (sorry Susan). Priest, a black writer and music producer, often touches on issue of race, and this "mainstream" title was no exception. The first couple of issues the "n-word" was used pretty liberally to make a point. Contextually, for the story, the "n-word" was very appropriate. Some vocal readers and eventually the publisher(s) thought otherwise. Priest was ordered to strike words like the "s-word" and "n-word" from the comic. Instead, he subbed in "s-word" for "shit," "f-word" for "fuck" and for the "n-word:" "noogie." And it was hilarous. "What up, my noogie?"

Contextually before, Priest was using "n-word" in a vile way in a sequence of flashbacks of white kids trying to be superior to one of the main characters, a black man. We already liked the main character, and seeing his childhood prooved important to his backstory and future plotlines. And then somebody didn't like that they were printing "shit."

The whole deal was absurd, but, thanks to his constraints, Priest upped the ante a notch. Before the words had a lot of weight. Afterwards they did too, but with a nice double meaning.

Eh, word guys can write about this much better than I. I've been struggling with a script and reading too much technique tonight. And I realized how much I dislike people not using contractions.

And I still don't know how to sell this consignment store. F-word.