Peter McMurran shares the story behind his story, One Rule.
“One Rule” opens with real specificity — the fluorescent hum, the minute hand, Mr. Smooth’s leather jacket. What pulled you into this story first: the classroom betrayal, the pizzeria, or Riley’s voice itself?
This story is all about Riley’s voice. A voice coming of age in a very different environment which is accelerating his emotional growth/learning.
The mime is such a vivid, strange interlude — dropping into an “invisible box” scene right between the classroom and the pizzeria. What made you want a wordless stranger to carry that moment, rather than staying inside Riley’s head?
The mime allowed me to represent Rileys departure from his own prison — hometown — in a manner that would show his vulnerability/self questioning via a visual street scene.
Ray and Angie know Riley almost entirely through fragments — they’ve pieced together his story from what he’s dropped over months. Why give him a place where he’s known incompletely, rather than a friend who has the full picture?
Riley is incomplete. He is growing, slowly evolving from “provincial dork” to a young man. As such, there is no full picture of Riley, yet.
Angie is the one who names the story’s title line — “One Rule. Don’t give nothing away for nothing.” Did that line arrive early as the seed of the whole piece, or did you find it later, once you knew what the story was actually about?
Good question. I wouldn’t say it was the seed of the piece more a fruit from the seed.
Riley never confronts Mr. Smooth — not in the classroom, not on the way out. You keep pulling him right up to the edge of a reckoning that doesn’t come. Was that restraint always the plan, or did you have to talk yourself out of a more dramatic confrontation?
The unresolved conflict with Mr. Smooth is purposeful in that Riley learns by getting “burned.” Riley at this point isn’t confident enough to go to the next level — confrontation. Embarrassment consumed him.
Riley corrects almost no one — not Ray calling him “Riles,” not the mispronunciation of “Oregon.” He lets small inaccuracies stand. What does that tell you about him, and was it something you noticed in the writing or planned from the start?
Planned from the start emphasizing his insecurity yet recognizing where he wants to be emotionally. He wants to banter with Ray but doesn’t have “it” yet. (Riley likes being called Riles).
The story ends on Ray’s “Fuhgeddaboudit” and Angie’s wave — warmth, but no resolution with Mr. Smooth, no closing of that loop. What did you want the reader to sit with, walking back out into the city with Riley?
That Riley is a work in progress, as we all are at some point, but he is “pushing back into the city” and at some point the Mr. Smooth’s of the world will not see Riley as a “ mark.” Nor will Riley give something away for nothing. HE LEARNED.
Author: Peter has written festival winning screenplays, published numerous essays/letters to the editor and written a half dozen short stories. “One Rule” his first short story submission.