menulis Writer's Group Session 5: September 7th/8th 2008

Cinders posted on Sep 08, 2008 at 03:20AM
This Writers Group opened at 9:00PM PDT on September 7th and will close at 9:00PM PDT on September 8th.

The Prompt

If you so choose, you may respond to any of the prompts posted link as no one did two weeks ago.

If not, here's your prompt: Take two opposing dichotomies or archetypes (IE, hero and villain, man and woman, adult and child, salt and pepper, angel and demon) and put them on a park bench together. One wants the other off of the bench. Means, motive and opportunity are all up to you.

Alternative Prompt

Begin your piece with: "Pirates don't do magic..."

Writer's Digest Prompt of the Week

After years of leading a normal life, you discover you have a special ability. Afraid to share this information with anyone, you confide only in your closest friend. To your surprise, your friend shares some information with you—he also has a super power.

You may post responses to these prompt in the next twenty-four hours. You may also post other work you're toying with, or create something completely new in the next twenty-four hours. If you worked on last week's prompt and wish to share, by all means do so. Write whatever you want. Remember the Three Fs, and get writing, writers!


The Three F's

#1) Follow: Read what's been posted.
#2) Feedback: Comment on at least one other person's work.
#3) Fairness: Be respectful of your fellow writers.
last edited on Sep 08, 2008 at 03:58AM

menulis 14 balasa

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lebih dari setahun yang lalu axlluver43 said…
hello everyone this is my first time doing this so if I do anything wrong, please bare with me. Here's a story I've been writing called My Fair Janice:

I wanted one thing in life I could never have. Happiness. That’s why I moved into a house with my brother Jacob. We’re twins and we always lived our lives together. There was one thing that brought us together, which I never bring up.

We live in a small country house in Nashville. It’s a nice house, I must say. It has only one floor and so many mirrors, it would make any guest feel paranoid. We have two cats and one dog. At one sight, it would look like we were married. But no, we were twins.

Jacob is friends with two boys named Michael and Nicholas. I’m friends with two girls named Sylvia and Elena. I personally think Sylvia and Jacob are a cute couple, but that’s coming from a woman who hasn’t had a serious boyfriend since high school.

“Hey, can you turn down the radio?” Jacob asked me, as he came into the kitchen. I wore a green bandana and a grey bathrobe. I popped what seemed to be a dozen pieces of toast in the toaster, and just for one person, me.

“Why should I? This is a good song!” I laughed. I always seemed to be the giddy Janice everyone knew, but that was in the morning. At night all I wanted to do was rest and anyone who talked to me I wanted them to get out of my sight. Getting on my bad side was not a good idea.

“Whatever Jannie.” He muttered. I laughed at the word Jannie. My family and friends have a ton of nicknames for me, like Jannie, Jan, and others I can’t name because there’s too many.


“Do you know what today is?” Jacob asked me. I searched through the calendar stored into my brain.

“Um, no I don’t.” I replied. I felt in my nerves that something was going on that day but I couldn’t think of was it was.

“It was the day our lives changed, for the worse.” He pointed out. The morning happiness went to an all time low.

____________________________

That's all for now folks! Sorry if it sucked XD
lebih dari setahun yang lalu Cinders said…
Never apologize for your work! :o) That's not a rule, but it was in a class I took. Maybe I should make it a rule. ;o)

You have given us a lot of questions. I'm wondering what happened in their past that was horrible. I'm also wondering if it was so horrible, why would Jacob bring it up? What does it have to do with what is going to happen in the future? Will we meet the friends you mentioned? How is the title going to tie into the piece? Is this a "Pygmalion" tale at all?

Make sure I'm asking the right questions and focusing on things you WANT me to be focusing on.

Another thing is character development. You have some in here, but I think Janice needs a clearly defined voice. So far, everything is very matter-of-fact. Add a little bit of flare to your descriptions and your actions. There are some redundancies which a quick proof can unearth. I don't want to get specific, else I might start writing it for you.

I'm curious to see where you go with this. Thanks for posting!

(I will post mine in a moment).
lebih dari setahun yang lalu Cinders said…
[Prompt from two weeks ago]

The sun was hot, the ocean was vast, and the sharks were beginning to circle. And Henry, damn him, had his wobbly arms tightly encircling that bloody skull while I clung to the shattered plank, kicking my feet hoping it would keep the fish away. I failed marine biology, and could not remember if not moving attracted a shark or discouraged it. I also didn't recall if it made any difference whatsoever. They weren't Tyrannosauruses after all, just a measly descendant.

"Henry!" I called to my stubborn colleague. "Drop that ruddy fossil or so help me God I will cannibalize you!"

"I can't do that, I'm afraid, Wally," said Henry, somehow maintaining his rigid formality even in the middle of the ocean. "It's the only specimen we have ever discovered. Can you imagine? A whole new species lost to the bottom of the ocean!"

"Technically," I said through clenched teeth, "it's a whole old species that's already extinct, and unless you want to join them I'd recommend dropping that sodding skull!"

He sighed, in a very jaded way, as if he was speaking to an obstinate eight-year-old. "There's plenty of room for you there, Wally, if you just wait, the rescue boat should be arriving momentarily. Just be patient."

"Right," I scoffed. "'Be patient,' says the tosser hogging the entire plank! How about you spend a little time in the water with the sharks for a while?"

One of them was coming exceptionally close and I was not asking anymore.

"Oh no, can't go in the water," said Henry with his nose in the air. "I'm sunburned, you see. The salt will aggravate the condition."

"Are you mad?!" I exclaimed. "I'm about to be eaten by sharks and all you can say is that you have a sunburn?"

Henry tightened his grip on the skull, his eyes gravitating upwards. "They will come. They'll come. I know they'll come. And they will name this species after me."

"After you? I found the sodding thing!"

"They'll be here soon, I know it."

He had been saying that for hours now, and I was beginning to believe that the sun really had gotten to him. We hadn't even been in the water a whole day yet. Then again, Henry always had been weak of will.

One of the sharks broke away from the other and swam purposefully at me. "Get off!" I yelled, leaping up onto the plank even though there was very little space. The head of the fish hit the plank and knocked it hard, causing Henry to lose grip on his skull and it tumbled into the deep and sank beneath the frothy green surface, fading out of sight.

He let out an agonizing cry, as if his wife was slipping beneath the merciless waves and reached after the skull, but I seized his shoulders and he yelped as I pulled him back onto the plank.

"Bloody hell, Henry, you're going to kill yourself!" I yelled. "Calm down, would you?"

"It's gone... my life's work is gone!"

"Can't be your life's work, can it?" I asked nervously. "I mean, you've unearthed dozens of palaeontological finds, you--"

"None of that matters now!" And then, he became eerily calm, the logical half of his brain kicking in. "We'll die out here, you know, Wally. Without that fossil, I am nothing. No one will remember me for anything. My name will be forgotten, lost between the moulding yellow pages of history! What do you have to show for your life, Wally, eh? Who will you leave behind but your stack of books and the teaching assistant you flirted with on your lunch break?"

He had no idea that I had done a lot more than flirting with Anna... and her roommate, Jillian... and their friend Natasha. But this was no time to bring up my conquests. The man was clearly breaking down. I needed some sympathetic words of comfort.

"Oh shut up, you whining wanker! We haven't been out here more than four hours and you're already mental. We sent out an SOS, and it was received. They will come I tell you! So just... shut up!"

And that's when his features began change. I probably shouldn't have called him a wanker. As I gripped both his shoulders--a failed attempt to ground him in reality--his eyes slowly faded into a demonic shade of red and that's when I knew that Henry was gone.

"I wish it was you plummeting to the ocean floor right now."

"I always knew I hated you," I whispered.

"You're nothing but a hack! A slacker who slides by on his brilliance and yet does no actual work. A professor who lectures and charms, but teaches his students absolutely nothing. You didn't dig up that fossil. You stubbed your toe in Tripoli and called it a 'Sodding rock!'"

"But I still found it!" I snapped.

"You are a failure, Wallace Kent, and you are going to die a failure!"

"Say another word, Henry, and rest assured that you will follow that bleeding skull of yours. I have had just about enough of you. Working with you is one thing, I could tolerate that, mostly because I could escape from you when needed, but you and that skull you love so fucking much are driving me ruddy insane."

The sharks were beginning to make waves, rocking the plank of wood we floated on. One of them looked ready to move towards us again. I knew that if it hit us, it would overturn our makeshift raft and we would both be shark food. And then, Henry gave me a reason to do the unthinkable.

"And by the way, I had a little chat with Anna and she says that your lamborghini is definitely compensating for something."

There was a splash and a scream and the next thing I knew, the sharks hit something that wasn't my raft. He wailed until he sank beneath the waves like his precious skull, ribbons of crimson mixing with the surf, and I watched it all.

And then, on the horizon, I heard a fog horn. A ship was indeed coming to our rescue.
lebih dari setahun yang lalu chel1395 said…
Based on the prompt: Take two opposing dichotomies or archetypes and put them on a park bench together.


The dog was very annoyed. It was a beautiful day out and he’d planned on enjoying these few precious moments off his leash sitting on his favorite park bench, watching the kiddies playing on the jungle gym. His owners were childless, having found they were too busy to have kids, so it was a rare treat for him to see youthful exuberance. The only thing that could ruin this lovely moment was the presence of a certain kind of species he just couldn’t stand. And now that particular breed of annoyance was sitting on his park bench. A low growl emanated from his snarled lips but he bit back the bark he wanted to aim at his unwelcome companion. He had been brought up in a household that prided itself on manners and decorum. So, instead, he tried to push his hatred and disgust through his eyes. The stupid cat didn’t appear to be getting the message.

The dog fumed quietly. It was more than he could bear to know that a perfect day had been completely ruined by that miscreant cat. Admittedly the feline wasn’t doing anything to disrupt him. She was sitting quite still, her eyes closed, her head tilted up towards the sky. The dog was still furious. It was the principle of the thing. After all, cats just weren’t supposed to go wherever they pleased. What would the world be like it cats were allowed to do whatever they wanted, live wherever they wanted, mate with whoever they wanted? There were rules! The dog had been raised to believe that cats were lesser creatures, a nuisance on society. They bred like mad, bringing kittens into the world and then leaving them for others to look after. The dog continued to glare at the cat, who had now lazily opened one eye to look over at her bench companion. She smiled sweetly, her tail lazily thumping against the park bench. The dog couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Rawf! Rawf, rawf, rawf!” The words leapt from his mouth before he even had time to consider the consequences. The cat jumped a good six inches off the bench, her slumber permanently disrupted by the dog’s angry barking. Everyone in the park, human and animal, was looking at him, but he didn’t care. The cat didn’t belong on his bench or in his park. “Rawf, rawf, rawf!” He panted heavily, watching his source of displeasure look back at him with hurt, confused eyes. How dare she be confused? How could she not realize that she wasn’t welcome here? No one wanted a---a cat in the park. All they did was make other people uncomfortable. He was only doing exactly what everyone else in the park wanted to do, but couldn’t because of social norms. His lips curled and he finally let out the growl that had been building up in his throat. The cat was now on all fours on the ground, her blue eyes filled with tears. She turned away from the dog and slowly slunk off towards the edge of the park. The dog let his growl fade and he settled back down on the bench. Everyone in the park was still staring at him. Instead of the relief and pride he expected to be written on their faces, most of them looked embarrassed, some even shocked. The dog ignored it. After all, he’d done nothing wrong. Cats just didn’t belong in his neighborhood. Slowly, everyone went back to their previous activities. The children resumed their play and the dog felt at peace. He closed his eyes and tilted his head up towards the sky. A soft rustling sound alerted the dog that someone had sat down next to him. He opened his eyes and turned his head to stare at his new companion. His eyes narrowed and a growl began to form in his belly. What did this duck think he was doing?
lebih dari setahun yang lalu harold said…
The sun was hot, the ocean was vast, and the sharks were beginning to circle. Faster and faster they swam, churning the waves in intricate patterns as their paths wove back and forth between each other. Soon the whales arrived, preceded by their hooting song. They rose in unison to the surface, spouting magnificent plumes into the air, then dove to slap their flukes on the surface. As they repeated this, the porpoises joined the dance, leaping from the water with chirping cries. This was the cue for the seabirds to be released, skuas and gulls rising up and wheeling in screeching gyres above the panoply. Enormous schools of brightly colored fish wheeled and pirouetted, painting the ocean waves with brilliant flashes of carmine, purple and gold. This continued for a few moments and then the octopi darkened the scene with clouds of ink for dramatic effect. All the creatures paused in expectation (though one gull, out of sync, cawed and then snapped its beak shut in embarassment), and then the surface started to bubble and froth. The coral throne rose from the depths at the very center of the rings of creatures. Lilitania, vivacious but sometimes vituperous vixen of the sea, had arrived!

Her subjects resumed their song and dance as Lilitania's voice, clear and pure as the bellow of an elephant seal, rose above all in her "Ode to the Sun". It was a thrilling performance, with pathos and charm in equal measure to the wildest dreams of Andrew Lloyd Webber. The aquatic life surged and sang in harmonious delight with the princess for scores of leagues in every direction. A thousand miles away, ships shrouded in the North Atlantic fog added to the obeisance when they, confusing her siren's call for the bleat of a foghorn, crashed into sharp reefs. Eventually, Lilitania's voice grew hoarse, and she finished with a fifth encore (Stuyvesant's aria from "Trials of a Man-o-war") before slipping gracefully beneath the waves once more.

Slowly the crowds dispersed, the whales wandering west, the seals swimming south, and the eels exiting east. Eventually just the sharks remained, cleaning up the refuse: discarded programs, empty shells, the odd bit of squid tentacle. "Aw, why do we always get the dirty jobs?" Murray the hammerhead grumbled as he worried the bit of car tire the sea monkeys had used for box seating. His friend, Leopold the tiger shark, swam up alongside him. "Wassamatter? Somebody's gotta clean up, and we're ideally suited for the task."

"I know, but sometimes I feel like such a wanker. When I started out..."

"You had dreams of making it big yourself, huh? Everybody wants to be center stage. But keep swimmin', kid: ya gotta start somewhere. You may be at the bottom now, but if you keep at it, you could be in there too someday! ... Or you could spend the rest of your life gagging on chum. But hey, that's show business!"
last edited lebih dari setahun yang lalu
lebih dari setahun yang lalu chel1395 said…
Okay, here are my reviews of the stories submitted so far...

axlluver43: I liked the concept of the story. It did however feel incomplete. I'm hoping this is maybe the first chapter of a longer story. I really would like to know what the "one thing that brought us together, which I never bring up" is. Like Cinders said, your story leaves a lot of questions. Why did Janice never find happiness? Why are there so many mirrors? Why hasn't Janice had a serious boyfriend since high school?

Also, I can't decide if some of the random details you put in (I wore a green bandana and a grey bathrobe) are important to the story or if they are really just random. I've always found that authors usually add tiny details like that because it's important. But as of right now, I can't figure out what.

I really like the start, I just feel like it's incomplete. I really hope you'll elaborate some more so my questions will finally be answered. :D

lebih dari setahun yang lalu chel1395 said…
Cinders: I loved the addition of British lingo to your story. I'm addicted to anything British, so for me, it added some real depth to the characters. However, on my first read through of the sentence "his wobbly arms tightly encircling that bloody skull", I thought that Henry was actually holding a skull that was bloody. It immediately set my mind to racing down a different path than you might have intended.

Also, I would really love to know how Henry and Wally got stranded in the middle of the ocean. I don't know if you were going for the mysterious approach, but it kind of bothered me through the whole piece.

Another problem I had was the trigger that caused Wally to push Henry off the plank. I just didn't get the feeling that insulting Wally's manhood would cause him to flip out like that. I would have thought he'd more angry about being told he was going to die a failure.

I did love how doleful Henry was, clinging on to his treasure like it was a person. I truly felt for him when it slipped under the sea. I could believe that losing that skull would cause him to lash out at Wally. I liked the ending too. It was so tragic and yet ironic in the same breath.
lebih dari setahun yang lalu chel1395 said…
Harold: Your story started out so beautifully. I was caught up in the way the words painted a picture of what was happening. And then, my focus was pulled away by the line "though one gull, out of sync, cawed and then snapped its beak shut in embarassment". I actually laughed, because I could see it happening in my head.

I liked the interaction between Murray and Leopold, though I was a bit taken aback during my first read. I guess I was so caught up with the first part of the story that I didn't expect that the animals would be capable of talking. Also, the story ended sort of abruptly. Murray was so funny, I would have loved to hear his thoughts on "gagging on chum". But other than those minor points, it was a great story.
lebih dari setahun yang lalu chel1395 said…
Okay, I would LOVE for someone to remark on my submission. I was trying to weave an underlying theme into the story and I don't know if I really illustrated that or not. Does anybody get what I was going for? Should I have been more clear? Should I have picked different archetypes? Okay, I'm going away now...
lebih dari setahun yang lalu harold said…
Yeah, I'll do feedback after the writing portion of the session is over. Ordinarily I'd respond sooner, but I had to respond to a prompt from this week, too. I just couldn't resist it.

*******************

The author considered. Then the author wrote:

Two opposites sat on a park bench

The author deleted eating their curds and whey as soon as it was typed, and replaced it with and one wanted the other to leave.

The critic noted "That's really not very specific, is it? Two 'opposites'? Come on, you're going to have to be more specific than that."

The author considered. Then the author wrote:

The Republican sat down next to the Democrat on the park bench

and nodded, satisfied. The critic clucked his tongue. "Welll...it's not exactly original, is it? And how different are they, really? Honestly, you couldn't have had a Peace and Freedomer in there instead? And what's this with focussing on US politics? Isn't that going to alienate most of your readers, who don't live in the US and wouldn't be able to tell why they're supposed to be 'opposites'?"

The author sighed and the two idealogues slunk away. The author considered, and finally wrote:

A man and a woman sat on a park bench

and looked at the critic. "Yeeeess...that is better," the critic admitted, "It could lead to a nice contrast, at that. But when it comes down to it, they're not really opposites, are they?" The author's eyebrows rose. "I mean, yeah, they're two different genders and all. But you haven't gone into any detail about who they are. Their upbringings could be very similar, and their life situations. For all we know, it could be Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks sitting there, and no one's suggesting that their life experiences have been all that different. Sure, go ahead, if you want to have a couple of well-to-do white urbanites sitting there, kvetching on and on about how different they are, and boo-hoo, how they're never gonna understand each other. We've seen it a million times - why not choose something a little more extreme?"

The would-be lovers fled as the author's teeth ground together, but, after some further consideration, the author wrote:

The sleek, tall African warlord stepped up onto the bench and surveyed the surrounding park before slinging his assault rifle and plopping down next to the plump, elderly Ukrainian nurse who was fussing over the crippled Asian baby in the isolette next to her. Their eyes locked and widened in surprise. "You!" they cried in their respective languages.

The author, arms crossed, looked a challenge at the critic. The critic merely snorted. "Feh...they're both human, right?"

The nurse returned her charge to the hospital, and the warlord returned on a subsonic jet to his homeland with a story his tribesmen would never believe. The author hammered at the keyboard, writing:

George W. Bush and Buzz Lightyear arrived at the bench simultaneously

"Now you're just being silly," the critic complained, "Besides, both of these guys mangle English and spout nonsense. Opposites? Ha!" "To infinity and beyond!" Buzz Lightyear declaimed, blasting off into the air. "My point exactly!" the critic smirked as Dubya was hustled back into the bulletproof sedan by an apologetic secret service agent.

The author fumed. Whack. Whack. Whack.

Salt sat next to pepper on the bench

The critic threw hands into the air in disgust. "THEY'RE BOTH SEASONINGS!"

The shakers exploded and the wind carried the granules to far-off lands.

Steam rose from the author's ears. BAM. BAM. BAM.

Aphrodite and Hades sat on a bench, the air brittle with the tension between them

"Oh, come ON! They're both from the Greek pantheon!"

Aphrodite was borne off by a husky chorus of scantily-clad bodybuilders. Hades sniffed in disdain, snapped his fingers and the bench slurped down into the depths of the earth.

The author's fingers, stiff with resentment, had to try three times before successfully typing:

Flames licked at the block of ice as the corner of the frozen bench caught flame

The critic fixed the author with a pitying stare. "Really? Fire and ice? Are you serious? Those are just different temperature states of matter. They're not necessarily a different material, and certainly not opposites at all."

The author wept, head in hands. After a while, the author, brow beaded with sweat, tentatively typed out:

Good sat primly next to Evil on a parkbench

and looked sideways at the critic, barely suppressing a whimper. The critic sighed heavily. "Look," the critic began, "I don't mean to be harsh, but is that really the best you can do? Good vs. Evil? Those are both rather subjective, aren't they? As such, they're both products of a given belief system. The best you could say is that Good is doing what you're supposed to do in a given system, and Evil is not doing good. So they're not opposites - one is just the absence of the other!"

The author brightened and nodded.

Something sat on a bench next to Nothing, and was satisfied.
lebih dari setahun yang lalu harold said…
axlluver43:

* I liked the tone of your piece: it was very conversational, like someone telling an anecdote in person.
* to me, too, it feels like part of a longer piece. Given that, I feel a little conflicted about the first few sentences: to me, they seem to be telling quite a bit, rather than letting the story show that Janice could never be happy. On the other hand, such statements often work if enough misdirection is used to distract the reader from constantly worrying the question "Why can't she ever be happy?" Some of the best writing does exactly that: states something baldly and plainly up front, then spends a good amount of time distracting the reader from the statement, and then hitting them with the consequences/follow-up to the statement later in the piece. The first section of Barbara Kingsolver's The Bean Trees is a wonderful example of this.
* I perceive a verb tense problem with "But no, we were twins". I've read the piece several times through, and it jars me every time. While it could be interesting to suggest that they somehow aren't twins anymore - how would that happen? - I suspect that's not what you intended. Maybe I'm mistaken?
* The fact that they've always lived their lives together makes the idea that she moved in with Jacob because she could never have happiness a little difficult to scan, for me. Does it mean that she can never be happy because she's living with Jacob, or does it imply that she's moved in with Jacob in an attempt to regain some happiness?
* like the others, I am vastly intrigued by the one thing that brought them together. That's a wonderful sentence, by the way: it establishes the unreliability of the narrator in a wonderfully playful way, as if "I've got a big fat secret, but I never say anything about it. Ignore the fact that I just did!" Cool!
* The "what seemed like a dozen pieces" is odd, as if Janice is doing prestidigitation to fool herself.
* I can't help but find the suggestion that it would look like they were married ominous in light of the combination of the unreliable narrator, that she hasn't had a boyfriend for so long and the spectre of the "one thing" that brought them together (but see below).
* Jacob enters the kitchen and we get a description of Janice, which is pretty weird whether it was intentional or not. That, with other things (like the abrupt mood swings), makes me entertain the possibility that Janice suffers a multiple personality disorder - in other words, that Janice and Jacob are actually the same person, and she's having a conversation with herself. I don't know if that's where you are going with this, but it's interesting to me how well it fits with the multiple names, the abundance of mirrors, and so forth. Given that MPD usually results from an extremely traumatic childhood event (or abuse), this idea casts a different light on my anticipation for the anniversary of "the day", as well as addressing most of my questions with the story.
* I'd like to see more of this, because most of reactions are based on different variations of "what if this is what's really happening?" So I add my encouragement to that of the others to post more.
lebih dari setahun yang lalu harold said…
Cinders:

* I, too, read the skull as literally bloody. Otherwise why would the sharks be circling them? I've been envisioning them stranded on the plank for some time, but I realize that the story doesn't support this - Wally claims they've only been floating for four hours - so perhaps I should be imagining the dismembered bodies of other people from their ship attracting the sharks.
* I'd expect a paleontologist to say Tyrannosauri, rather than Tyrannosauruses, but maybe Wally is a hack at that. Certainly there are plenty of clever clues in the story that indicate that he is one. The more I look at it, the more impressed I am with how carefully you planted clues to indicate how much of a fraud he is. Good work!
* For me, the British vocabulary came off as absurd, though I am impressed that you used the British spelling of paleontological (even if it seems unlikely that they'd need to include that adjective when talking to each other). But clearly I found the initial sentence somewhat absurd in its florid drama: when I wrote to the prompt, I couldn't think of any way to continue it that wouldn't work towards the Bulwer-Lytton contest. So I may be seeing absurdity where none exists. Assuming you didn't intend it to be absurd, the dialogue seemed a bit forced, to me.
* I'm a little confused as to where the fossil was found. Wally stubbed his toe on "the find" in Tripoli, yet the story suggests that evidence of the new species is on the ocean floor. Since the story only shows us the one fossil - the skull - I was a little perplexed by this. When they talk of Wally's find, do they mean an earlier, career-making accidental discovery that has nothing to do with the skull and the new species?
* I've been imagining that the skull is humanoid this whole time, but I realize that there's nothing in the story to support this. I wonder if everyone imagines something similar...
* Nice details:
- that Wally imagines Henry's wail to be like losing his wife, suggesting that Wally has some thoughts about Henry's wife.
- that Wally and Henry fit onto the plank perfectly well, just like Henry claims they can, yet Wally stayed in the water for four hours rather than be on the plank with his companion. That says some interesting stuff about the cad.
- that Wally saves Henry from the sea mere moments before killing him.
* I really enjoyed the contrast between "I needed some sympathetic words of comfort" and what actually comes out of his mouth.
* the eyes turning "a demonic shade of red" was really jarring. I half-expected Henry to reveal his lycanthropy at that point. Instead, they exploded at each other, out of proportion to what had been spoken before. It may be that this is Wally's way of changing what really happened to make his actions feel more justified in his own mind, but that implies that he's telling the story from some point in the future, looking back. If there was a feeding shiver next to the plank, Wally would have been dumped into the waves, too. This further implies that he's making up the sharks to explain why Henry wasn't rescued with him. That, of course, calls into question his whole story. Maybe there wasn't even a skull, just a rock in Tripoli and an idea in Wally's mind to get rid of his hated coworker (perhaps to free up the wife)...
lebih dari setahun yang lalu harold said…
chel1395:

* first of all, would you share your secrets of time-travel and/or cloning with me? Seriously: how do you manage to be everywhere on the site at once and still write fiction? It's unbelievable. I'm in awe.
* As to your writing specifically: I loved that you chose cats and dogs for the opposites prompt, even before I read all of it and saw the racial prejudice analogy.
* For whatever reason, I envision a bulldog sitting there, and have from my first reading of the piece. I'm curious what others have imagined.
* "Cats weren't supposed to go wherever they pleased" was so incongruous, it's a dead giveaway that this is a metaphor for something other than feline-canine relations. Nice. I like how the use of different animal species viewing each other as inferior obscures which human breeds might be involved: each reader can insert whichever "race" he chooses, depending on his own prejudices and/or experiences of prejudice. It does make one wonder, though, what the duck is supposed to represent. Boy, that dog is a bigot!
* I was probably reading into it a bit much (perhaps that's a pattern for this week), but I felt like the dog and cat may have known each other somehow, outside of the park. The cat's reaction of stunned hurt and shame really is what does that, for me: it's like she expected not just to be tolerated but to be welcomed by the dog. Perhaps they had some intimacy outside of the public eye, and he's unwilling to be seen in the company of such a sub-canine?
* Overall, I enjoyed the piece, but the metaphor doesn't feel that well supported by the details provided at the beginning: the talk of childless owners and the like diminishes the analogy, unless it be analogous to a bigoted butler taking a break from his duties at the park.
lebih dari setahun yang lalu chel1395 said…
Thanks for your critique, Harold! I'll admit I wasn't quite sure where I was going with the story when I first started writing it, which is why the details at the beginning don't really fit with the rest of the story. :D

Secondly, I have absolutely nothing bad to say about your second piece of writing. That story was sooooo good!! You must post that as a soapbox so others outside the writing group can read it. I was in stitches reading the whole thing. I absolutely loved how you took the idea of having two opposing forces sitting on a bench together and then you wrote a story about someone trying to write that story. And the fact that the person writing the story was sitting next to his own opposing force was brilliant. I felt so bad for the author I wouldn't have been surprised if he had ended the story by beating the critic repeatedly over the head with his laptop. As it was, the story ended perfectly. Something sat on a bench next to Nothing, and was satisfied.

I especially liked how each of the characters the author created were able to leave the story of their own accord. By putting The would-be lovers fled and the warlord returned on a subsonic jet to his homeland, it gave the story a splash of the fantastical that I loved.

*gives Harold a standing ovation*