It’s a restaurant, one of those cheap chains like a Harvester only you’re not allowed to have real things like that, especially if you call them cheap, because you can get sued when your book becomes a bestseller and someone gets jealous and wants a piece of you. It’s the early evening because they have their ridiculously cheap deals then and it always attracts the crazies. Everyone’s just doing normal restaurant things until a lady walks out of the ladies’ room carrying a plate with mashed potato on it. I know what you’re thinking, it was definitely mashed potato, I know mashed potato when I see it. It’s unmistakeable.
She was quite a fat scratch that, you can’t use that word now, it’s discriminatory. Ok so she was a large no round no bubbly – that’s what they say now, isn’t it? In all the dating ads, you just know, when they say bubbly it really means hefty. Anyway, I changed my mind. She’s not any of those things, because that’s a cliché, really, fat woman carrying food. You have to be careful writing, because almost everything is a cliché nowadays. It’s like stepping through a minefield but instead of landmines it’s ‘bitter cynic with dark past and trust issues and what’s that a mysterious scar’ CLICHE ... ‘fat woman who really just wants to eat her mashed potato in peace where nobody can judge her for mixing cheese into it’ CLICHE, basically instead of losing an arm or dying or what have you, you just get judged by all the other writers out there and they might say nice things about your work but the moment your back’s turned they go ‘pfft what an uncultured pleb I bet he’s never read Kafka’ which is almost worse, in a way.
So no, let’s make her thin. But not too thin, because then the potatoes become the enemy and I don’t want a sob story, just a mystery. A romance, even. A romance about mashed potatoes is so un-cliché you end up flying over the minefield in a helicopter. That’s a metaphor I’m using, by the way. A metaphor is when you say something is something that it isn’t, because the thing you’re saying is like the thing you’re describing but you have to hope the reader is smart enough to figure out what you really mean. Do you see?
So anyway, this completely average-sized woman walks out of the ladies’ room. She’s embarrassed, as embarrassed as a writer using a bad cliché. People are looking and thinking ‘why is she carrying mashed potatoes out of there that’s so like unhygienic I wonder if Ben likes me’ because people don’t think about the same thing for very long. You have to decide if you want everyone’s thoughts all up in your story. That’s called having an omnipotentpresent narrator, like god. That means you’re in everyone’s head and you can be all like ‘The lady with the mashed potatoes felt embarrassed, her date felt disgusted and regretted asking her out’ kind of thing. It can get crowded and you have to pick out all the mundane crap so you can get to the interesting stuff relating to the story. It always makes me think how annoying it would be to read everyone’s thoughts, because it would be like a million TVs all set to different channels (that’s a simile by the way, a simile is a metaphor for dummies).
Maybe first person would be better, from the lady’s point of view. I sure hope nobody notices the mashed potatoes I’m holding, this is the worst date ever. Maybe this person writing about me should try second person instead. Second person is like you’re talking to the reader directly. Yelling at them. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THAT PLATE WITH MASHED POTATOES ON IT THIS IS RESTAURANT POLICY NO FOOD IN THE BATHROOM FACILITIES” Which is exactly what the manager is saying to the lady right now in the story.
But she’s not stupid, this lady. Oh no. Because if you make a lady stupid in a story you risk being sexist. You need a strong, independent female character, so girls will read it and go, ‘Wow! She solved her problems on her own, without using her looks or her body, I want to be just like her!’ and then the book becomes inspirational and they’ll write articles about it in The Guardian and you might even get one of those interviews where they ask about what fancy dress costume you’d most like to wear ... I’ve always wanted to answer one of those interviews. So she’s a smart, switched-on, bald bold woman. Not that there’s anything wrong with her being bald, I’d just prefer for her to have hair in this story. Anyway she says to the manager ... and wait for it ... she says ‘Oh sorry, I thought this was the door to the kitchen, I was going to return these potatoes because they are cold.’ Speech marks, quotation marks, I always forget which I’ve started using and switch back and forth. Who even cares?
Anyway, you see what she did there? She deflected it right back, and made the manager look bad instead of her. Because a manager of a restaurant, even a very cheap affordable one like Harvester, should be ashamed if his food goes out cold. And he comes over and he looks and touches the potatoes with his finger, which means he’ll have to replace them now anyway for hygiene reasons. And sure enough they are a bit cold, maybe because of the air conditioning in the ladies’ room. So he apologises profusely and takes the potatoes from the lady and she sits back down.
This is when I’ll introduce her date properly. His name is Toby and they just recently met at a party. He works in a bakery decorating cakes for special occasions. What? He’s very good at what he does, I’ll have you know. Besides, it’s a good earner because he owns the bakery and is very well known so he can charge a lot for his cakes. That’s how he met the lady – quick, she needs a name too. Crystal. There. Crystal came in to order a cake and their eyes met over the counter, and at first Toby was thinking ‘Oh God please don’t ask for a wedding cake’ – and she did. And Toby’s face visibly fell, so much so that she saw it and laughed and said ‘Don’t worry, it’s for my sister.’ And they both laughed and laughed because of how awkward it was, and before Crystal left the shop she had a phone number and a date for the following evening.
But now I have come to a plot hole. A plot hole is like a pothole, except even more dangerous. If Toby is such a big shot at what he does, then why on Earth would he take his date to a Harvester? It makes no sense. Ok ok ok ok I’ve got it. He calls Crystal up later that evening because he wants to ask where she’d like to go. He starts suggesting all these fancy places and she goes ‘Oh no I couldn’t, a first date should be something cheap and cheerful and casual, how can we get to know each other if we’re sitting all quiet and being judged by everyone?’ See, I told you she’s clever.
Anyway, Crystal is sitting down now at the table with Toby. And he says, “You should have got our server to take it back for you.” And Crystal stops and thinks for a second, because she really likes Toby a lot and she doesn’t want to start lying to him before they’re even on the second date. She leans in close and whispers that the potatoes were actually fine, she was just so nervous about trying to impress him that she forgot she had the plate in her hand when she went to the ladies’ room. And Toby smirks a little, and then he chuckles, then laughs and laughs and laughs, and Crystal starts laughing too. Because it is best to laugh at yourself when you do something embarrassing, because then instead of thinking ‘what a twat' people will respect your ability to not take yourself too seriously. And this is what Toby does, because he had had many dates (you get lots of dates if you’re attractive and work in a bakery) and mostly they ended up awkward because they were both trying too hard to impress each other. And because Crystal confessed to Toby, Toby confesses to Crystal and says that he admires her honesty and thinks she’s really great and funny and he’d like to see her again.
So then the plot cuts forward a few years, because although the bit in the middle would be quite interesting, it’s not really necessary and this is only a short story. Toby and Crystal are married, and they have never stopped being completely open with each other. They strut around the house naked and eat spaghetti hoops out of the tin and sometimes they both fart at the same time and it’s like a magical moment and they high five. They are the happiest couple in the entire universe because they are not in the least bit pretentious, and this all started from a silly mistake that Crystal made in the Harvester on their first date.
Then you have to try and wrap up the story in some way, maybe with a moral. So the moral of this one is of course, don’t pretend to be something you’re not. Tell the truth. Be yourself. That’s the kind of thing.
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