As a result of a suggestion from my mystery writing-group buddy, Nancy McQueen, I just read the "Victory Lap," the opening story in George Saunders in Tenth of December: Stories.
Here's a sample. A teenage character has decided to go to the aid of the girl next door who is being abducted by a bad guy (whom the teenager will thump with a geode).
Then he was running. Across the lawn. Oh God! What was he doing, what he doing? Jesus, shit, the directives he was violating! Running in the yard (bad for the sod); transporting a geode without its protective wrapping; hopping the fence, which stressed the fence, which had cost a pretty penny; leaving the yard barefoot; entering the Secondary Area without permission; entering the creek barefoot (broken glass, dangerous microorganisms), and not only that, oh God, suddenly he saw what this giddy part of himself intended, which was to violate a directive so Major and absolute that it wasn't even a directive, since you didn't need a directive to know how totally verboten it was--
He burst out the creek ... and let the geode fly into his [the other guy's] head ... the skull visibly indented and the guy sat right on his ass.
Yes! Score! It was fun! Fun dominating a grown-up! Fun using the most dazzling gazelle-like speed ever seen in the history of mankind to dash soundlessly across space and master this huge galoot, who otherwise, right now, would be --
Chekhov's advice--Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on the broken glass--describes what Saunders does with the boy. He doesn't tell us the boy is feeling constrained or guilty because he is breaking the rules set for him by his parents; he lets us look inside the boys head to see and feel for ourselves. The result is vivid writing--not hard to spot, but difficult to replicate.
