Writing Techniques in Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned

Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned Techniques

In Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, Mosley confronts the difficult task of sustaining reader interest in an episodic format and a central character who is scarcely the typical hero. Socrates, aging rapist and murderer, presides in fourteen interrelated stories, each a chapter with its own title and readable as a separate entity.

These short stories are assembled to constitute a progressive series of encounters between characters or between Socrates and his inner self. The reader accustomed to action may find the stories short on plot, long on dialogue that is potentially didactic, "preachy."

Mosley surmounts the difficulties by presenting in Socrates a character who is provocative, innovative, devised with remarkable ingenuity and depth. Socrates is strongly compelling precisely because he is an ex-convict in Watts, yet cloaked in the wisdom of the ages. The duality of the role is conveyed by the noble name Socrates which is...
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