"How To Deal With An 'Unruly Passenger' On A Cross Country Flight."

"An independent film producer on a flight from New York to L.A. shares his conversation with a man who was so unstable that the plane had to land early in Denver."

I want to write this all down before I forget it even though its 3.45am. I just got home.

Some one please tell me -- WTF did he write all of this down 'after the fact' and use multiple Twitter posts to do so?

The Twitter approach gave it a feeling of immediacy, even if it was fictional. Like the old "epistolary" novels.



Or like a novel written in the present tense:

Like any other literary effect, the present tense is an expressive device; but expression works by contrast.... [T]his example from Jane Eyre...  works beautifully because it emerges from the context of a narrative told in the past tense. Jane's sudden use of the present conveys as nothing else could the pressure of her feelings as she recalls the high intensity of that summer evening, of her return to the house of the man she hasn't yet admitted to herself that she loves: "I see the narrow stile with stone steps; and I see – Mr Rochester sitting there, a book and a pencil in his hand; he is writing."...

But if every sound you emit is a scream, a scream has no expressive value. What I dislike about the present-tense narrative is its limited range of expressiveness. I feel claustrophobic, always pressed up against the immediate....

"If I just relate now what's happening now," the writer seems to say, "I can't be held to account for it. It's the way things are. I'm just standing close to the action as it happens. I'm not editing or anything. It's really real."

I emit a sudden scream. I am blogging.