The exercise is at first vaguely diverting, but one is soon depressed by the tawdriness of the subject, bored by the slipshod methods of the medium that explores it and exasperated by the insubstantial nature of the whole experience.
Maybe more so in cause-driven work, but I suspect this would be the case most places, even when the bulk of office experiences seem rote and insubstantial.
Anyone who has seen a significant number of short plays will know that for every pithy one-act that makes smart, exacting use of the form to provide a concentrated theatrical experience, dozens more are diet drama -- insubstantial narrative morsels that leave little aftertaste.
These stories warn that if the real becomes mutable or untrustworthy, our experience of ourselves (not to mention each other) may become insubstantial, that what makes life meaningful is a certain intractability, a resistance to our desires.
Amy is sharply drawn as a girl who will grow worldly if given the experience; Meg, bound for matrimony, and Beth, doomed to a sanctified death in part two, felt insubstantial, even if they were – as I discovered later – based on Alcott's sisters.
However, in our opinion, based on experience as scientists and microbiologists, we deem the possible consequences described by Cox et al. as insubstantial compared to the clear and present danger to human health of continuing fluoroquinolone use in poultry.
Others were totally insubstantial.
This difference, however, is insubstantial.
Money is insubstantial now.
So far, so insubstantial.
The accusations are not insubstantial.
