You know what it means to miss New Orleans. I lived there for a few years and your scene brought back vivid and pleasant memories. A scene well done, too. You, as usual, were able to incorporate all the goals of the exercise: setting, characterization, conflict, and a plot with a beginning, middle, and end. Other than a comment or two, I thought I’d wax and wane a little about storytelling and writer opportunities using your story as a launch pad. You’re one of the few students I would present these ideas to. (You really have a lot of potential.)

In general, I believe contemporary fiction writers, particularly the literary ones, have lost reasons to present their stories. They don’t seem to write with the purpose, and the innate capacity probably for most, that comes from the writer’s skills in characterization with attention to motivation and credible enlightening reactions.

So as we’re creating and in revision, it can be useful to look for opportunities in the characterization to enhance reader understanding of the character through the character’s enlightenment, or at least change in thinking. And sometimes these opportunities can get across points that stimulate thinking about issues, life, morality, etc. that add to the characterization and reader enjoyment.

You’ve actually partially done what I’m going to point out when Betty chides Edgar about not reporting the threatening scam artist to the police. But I’ll go through the process as an emphasis as to what might be valuable in even furthering a morality issue by being sure Edgar knows of his failure. This will be clear below.

I’ll use your scene (actually acting as a complete story) for the example. It’s not that it should be changed; I’m just using it as an example of how this concept works.

Three characters, all well defined and presented: Edgar and Betty Sheehan, and a street vendor. Is there an opportunity for further characterization? Of course there is, for all. But what might be the most meaningful? The vendor is a bully, and any credible change in him would take a lot of space. Betty is worried about finances and value, and that seems to be a reasonable approach to giving money to a scam artist. She’s also a forceful presence and not subject to easy change or enlightenment. And Edgar wants to get the interaction over. (I love what you’ve done with the conflicts and the reactions.) Other than Edgar’s wanting to get the interaction over without provoking the bully, who is threatening them, is there something else that might be working? How about Edgar having a responsibility not to satisfy the bully’s unjust and really immoral demands of being forced to buy inferior T-shirts for inflated prices? I mean, no one should give in to such a character. And to resist when the scam artist is large, threatening, and obnoxious would almost be heroic. So what if, in Edgar’s wimpy failure to stand up against evil, he somehow is confronted with his “cowardly” deed? There might be an opportunity to explore this in a paragraph or two of conflict where Betty berates Edgar for giving in to evil and not reporting it to the police when he (Edgar) had the opportunity to fight for right in the face of physical and mental threats. Edgar would probably disagree with any responsibility on pragmatic grounds, but the reader would see a deeper reflection of who and what Edgar is. And the reader also takes away, subconsciously at least, a moral from the scene.

Of course you could use the same approach for each of the characters, with different meanings. And you might never use the technique if your pacing doesn’t allow it, or if dealing with issues tangential to the story is inappropriate. It’s just a way to add significance to characterization and deepen impact and interpretation of actions and emotions.

The opportunities are not always present and are difficult to find. But when things work out, it adds that little bit extra to story effect on the reader, and to character development, and it elevates the quality of the writing and the storytelling.