Minion Critique: Satire
By F.G. Baker

Spoken by Rod Sterling:
In a book-publishing world controlled by one last corporation, it was necessary to create an elite cadre of editorial minions to prevent anyone from writing anything remotely original. It began in colleges, teacher’s trade schools and all classrooms, even and especially at writer’s retreats where the indoctrination could be applied 24 hours a day. The programing called ‘creative writing’ quickly generated a legion of editors, writers and agents that could group-think the mantra to the letter. All creativity was driven out of fiction until homogenous drivel was all that remained.

We look in on a typical ‘critique session’ in which, by chance, the ultimate drivel was produced.

Story in the Here and Now:

The chief minion reviewed their discussion without summarizing or telling anything. “I’m not sure, but I think it meets all the limitations of the checklist: no prologue, no flashbacks, no dream sequences, where, when, single point of view, drama, emotion, simple language, no words beyond a seventh grade level…We have to check that. Next year they want to reduce it to a fifth grade level and we want to anticipate…Yes, I think we have perfect drivel. I am excited but not exclamatory.”

The group of four minions sat around a table at a Starbucks here, now. They were critiquing the beleaguered work by one minion, number 5,324,492, in their midst who had been revising his novel for thirty-seven years to finally get it just right. (Finally, oops, -ly word, delete.) 5,324,492, called 92 for short, was relieved and excited too, but not to the point of exclamation. He had produced a masterpiece.

The chief said, “Let’s look at it again in case we may have missed something.” He lay out the single page of text for them all to see, showing:

Help!
A Novel by 5,324,492

Here and now.
Help! I am confused, therefore I am afraid.

The End.

The minion sometimes called Mary said, “Isn’t ‘therefore’ a forbidden word now, implying too much. I think it is not on the fifth grade list.”

“Good catch, Mary. Maybe we should try ‘then,’ but that would simply indicate sequence in now and not causation. And I’m concerned that ‘confused’ implies that there may be a back story and is therefore may be a ‘data dump.’. Why am I confused? That isn’t ‘showing’ and also implies backstory.”

92 said, “But I liked therefore and confused. It is the raison d’etre for afraid.”

The chief glowered at 92. “92, I’m surprised at you. We use no foreign terms or italics here in this group. It is rule 4,239. It causes the reader to stop to think what it means and we can’t have that. Many readers aren’t able to come back to the story again. They just sort of drift out there. Watch it mister, no exclamation.”

Another minion said. “Shouldn’t there be contractions. It sounds formal now, ‘I am afraid.’ Nobody talks like that. It sounds expository.”

Mary said “And it’s too short for a novel. We could repeat the words but that would be redundant, wouldn’t it. It would repeat the story, tell the reader something he already knows.”

The chief said. “You’re right Mary. We have to call it a novella, but it is even too short for that. Maybe a nov, or just n. And as for the story, there’s no story but that’s OK since it’s character driven.”

92 moaned. “Then ‘the end’ is unnecessary since it’s telling the reader something he already knows once he runs out of words.” He pulled out a huge bottle of white-out and doctored the document.

Help!
An n by 5,324,492

Help! I’ m afraid.

92 smiled. The chief said, “I love committee-work.” They all bought more coffee.

***
The new n was accepted by the publisher immediately and sold in vast numbers. It was translated into 472 languages, some of which had become extinct and some of which did not exist yet. Of the six billion people on the planet, everyone bought a copy, except a few skeptics whose names and addresses have been recorded. The corporation celebrated reaching its ultimate goal of producing such perfect drivel that all other publishers were driven completely off the planet.

The world waited for 92 to produce his promised, in-the-works, romantic novel ‘Fuck!’, and his mystery ‘What the Fuck!’ The later title is simply a working title since it may violate the new titling rules by having too many syllables. More later.

Rod Sterling was imprisoned for using big words and exclamatory rhetoric.

The End.