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Post by Robin on Mar 23, 2006 20:04:27 GMT -8
I had a pretty awesome/scary dream last night, and I wanted to write something based off of it, but I was a little iffy because whenever I've tried to write based off of dreams before the plots turn out poorly paced and it's just a disaster. But I'm going to run the dream by you guys to see if you think it would make a good story.
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The city council is remodeling a local shopping mall. It's a big shopping mall, and so they still let people go to the other parts of the mall while they remodel a certain wing of it. Then there are these crazy activists; they don't like the remodeling, and they're protesting it along with a whole ton of freaks who walk around performing rituals and drinking goat blood out of champagne glasses (in one ritual, they said "now that the hermit, the slave, and the queen are all aligned, our powers are strengthened, and three other people were licking at the blood in the glasses). They all just lounge around just outside the closed off area, and the two main activists, who are boyfriend and girlfriend, managed to get themselves inside the construction area.
Now, the construction workers had a lot of trouble keeping the vampire people and the activists out of the way, so eventually they put up more barriers and the people let off.
When the construction was over, a few friends (which was me and two people I don't know in the dream) come over to see what all happened, and the vampire people are pretty much drooling and sneaking around like burglars. The two activists are yelling at them, and then one of the "vampire" chicks asks her what she thinks they are, and when the activist lady answers humans, the vampire chick laughs and asks her how she thought they kept them out, and then they see an overturned basin of holy water and some broken cloves of garlic. The activist lady starts wigging out and sweating and whimpering and starts banging barriers (like those orange striped mules that they use in traffic) and the activist dude runs off. The three friends run off because all the vampire people pretty much start leaping after everybody.
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The last thing in the dream was me running like a gazelle (I was springing up into the air but then I freaked out and fell because I was jumping in slow motion but the vampires were running in regular motion), but that wouldn't be in the story. That's just dream shiz.
It was pretty damn freaky in the dream. When the vampire chick asked how the activist thought they kept them out, she went into this monologue about how she sunk her teeth into all of their necks, and the activist lady's break down was pretty dramatic. I woke up all sweaty at two in the morning and couldn't get back to sleep.
The summary sounds corny, but I think if I took my time I could pull it off.
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Post by Robin on Apr 11, 2006 18:18:41 GMT -8
Louisiana, maybe? But somehow, I can't see them having a taxidermy museum. I don't really care if there really is a taxidermy museum - Stephan King made up a fictional hotel, why not a museum? - but the vision I had in my head was a dusty, middle-of-nowhere kind of place, and most of the "black person" states I could think of are too cozy.
Bah. I probably sound extraordinarily racist right now. I'm sorry, guys, but I don't want to present information that's any falser than it has to be. I don't think falser is even a word. I suck today.
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Post by Robin on Apr 11, 2006 7:40:43 GMT -8
I don't know if they have one there...I just put in Oklahoma because I was thinking about musicals and I couldn't remember the "black person" state. Not to be racist or anything, that's just what the story calls for to accomodate these characters.
I'm glad it's hooking...that's about the only thing it has going for it right now.
I did some research on taxidermy, but all I got was how to prepare your kill in the field before taking it to a taxidermist. It was making me angry.
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Post by Robin on Mar 17, 2006 9:13:43 GMT -8
I'm not sure where this is going, only that I think it may have bought a one-way ticket towards corny horror book town, but I sort of like how it's written. So here goes.
Note: I know that Oklahoma isn't the "black person state." I just have it in there until I can remember what state is supposedly home to all the black people. I'm not really trying to be racist, but these people kind of are, so...yeah. -----
Lane Emerson, who was, at the time, seven years old, sat in the back of his parents’ van, slurping on an orange crème popsicle. He was ill at ease traveling in such a strange, different, barren land as Oklahoma, and his face showed the marks of such agitation: in his boredom and attempts to comfort himself, he had smeared the orange Popsicle all over his face. His lips and chin were sticky, and for some odd reason, the tip of his nose was shiny with the sugar in the Popsicle. His mother, Anita Emerson, caught sight of him in the vanity mirror that she had brought down to check her teeth in, and frowned. “Lane,” she said, half-cooingly, half-scoldingly. “What did you do to your face?” With the almost proud brazenness of the very young, Lane replied “I smeared my ice cream on it. I was bored.” “Lane,” she clucked. “Let me clean you up. You want to look nice for our trip to the museum, don’t you?” As she fished in her purse for a napkin with which to clean her son, Lane stuck out his chin impudently. “I don’t want to go to a dumb terxidermy museum anyways,” he replied. “Who wants to look at dead animals all day? Boring!” He drawled the last word and looked at his mother with a smile on his face. Anita smiled back, and tousled his sandy blonde hair before licking the napkin and dabbing at the stickiness on his cherubic face. “It’s taxidermy, honey, and it’ll be fun,” she said as she cleaned off his face. “You’ll get to see tigers and lions and zebras!” “I got to see them at the zoo,” Lane said. “And they were moving. The zebras made sounds like on ‘The Lion King.’” He attempted to imitate the whooping sound that zebras make, and his mother’s face crumbled into a crinkle, adoring expression. “Yes, but these ones won’t stink, and you get to be in an exciting new place! The zoo was just in New York, Lane. This museum is in Oklahoma. You’ll get to eat exciting foods from Oklahoma.” “Exciting foods like what?” Lane asked. “Fried chicken and chitins?” “Honey!” Anita exclaimed. Her pretty blue eyes were wide with shock. “Where did you learn that?” “Daddy says it all the time,” Lane replied. Anita cast her shocked gaze to her husband, Tyson, who was laughing silently. “You know it’s funny, ‘Nita,” Tyson replied. “Oklahoma is the heartland of hicks and black people.” Despite herself, Anita began to laugh a little, herself. “Alright, alright,” she grumbled after a spell. “It is funny. You just better not go around saying it in front of all the ni-“ Tyson burst into full-out laughter, taking his hands off the wheel to clap his wife on the back. The car swerved a little, and Anita, with one hand clapped over her mouth, reached for the wheel with her free hand. “Watch the road!” she told Tyson. “You were going to say… the n-word!” he laughed. “You were going to say it!” “I was,” Anita said indignantly, “But I, unlike you, have the self-restraint to not say things like that in front of our baby boy!” Her words served more to cement their family ties together than they did to preserve them. Tyson and Anita had never really fought. Their relationship had begun as every healthy adolescent’s should: because they had a sexual interest in each other. Anita had been pretty enough - was still pretty enough - with her pretty blue eyes and strawberry blonde hair, and her skin with not even one spot of acne. Tyson hadn’t been such a bad looking man either: he had had sandy blonde hair like Lane’s and dark brown eyes. His hair, of course, was graying at the temples, but it was hard to see, since his hair was blonde, and also because, on sunny days, the sun shone right through the gray hairs and rendered them invisible. In High School, he hadn’t had those gray hairs, and Anita hadn’t had stretch marks on her stomach along with a long scar from her Cesarean section on her belly button. She had had a flat, white stomach, and long, coltish legs, as well as a firm ass and tits. Their relationship, started sexually, had no unstable emotional pillars that could crash down. They had learned a while back that “true love” did not exist: only desire did. Something grounded in a human instinct so basic that even animals have it cannot die, at least not for a very long time. Anita and Tyson had learned this long before their friends and siblings had begun to divorce each other because of emotional conflict and issues with interests. They had started their relationship because they both wanted the same thing, and so they spent their relationship wanting the same thing: a good life for their son. Working together for this, they couldn’t screw up.
Oh, they loved each other; there was no doubt about that. Their relationship simply went deeper than emotional roots: deep down into the most basic codes of instinct, if you will.
Lane was still clutching the stick of his Popsicle, and he looked with consternation at his parents. As young as he was, he didn’t understand the subtle wordplay that his parents were undergoing. To alleviate his confusion by stopping their conversation altogether, he interrupted with a child’s age-old irritation tactic. “Are we there yet?”
Anita and Tyson shut up almost immediately. Tyson cleared his throat, and Anita peered at herself in the vanity, grabbing her hair up with one hand and putting it up into a bun. Irritated now, Lane spoke up again. “Are we there yet?” Distractedly, embarrassedly, irritably, Anita spoke to Lane without looking back at him. “No, honey. We’ll tell you when we get there.” “Oh,” Lane replied. “Okay, then.”
Throughout the rest of the trip to the museum, Lane kept up his serenade of “Are we there yet”’s.
When they finally made it to the Taxidermy Museum, all of them were very relieved. Tyson and Anita were relieved because they wouldn’t have to listen to Lane asking them if they were there yet, and Lane was relieved because his throat was getting sore from so much complaining.
They got out of the van as quickly as possible, wiping the creases from their travel-wrinkled clothing and shaking all over to rid themselves of the slight, but annoying, stiffness and numbness that prolonged car rides bring.
They were surprised to find that there were two other cars in the parking lot, and a throng of people were gathering at the ticket box in front of the museum. It was manned by a tiny, wizened old woman with sagging skin and shriveled breasts that hung down to below her ribs.
Anita gave Lane’s face a quick once-over with a napkin that she had dampened with saliva, and then shoved the wad back in her purse. It was a scuffed brown leather thing, floppy and easy to carry. She slung it over her should, looked down herself to make sure she had nothing on her robin’s egg blue blouse, and then straightened her shorts.
Tyson sighed impatiently. “Done primping, my queen?” he asked, holding out a hand and bending his knees mockingly. “Why yes, Lancelot,” she said in a breathy, airy, faux British accent. “You can escort me back to the castle, now. I am tired of adventuring.” “As you wish, my lady Guinevere,” he replied in a voice nearly as breathy.
“As long as we’re granting wishes,” Lane said impudently. “Can I have some ice cream when we get in?” “You just had ice cream, Lane,” Tyson told his son. “Yeah,” Lane agreed. “But that was a Popsicle. Popsicles are different than ice cream.” “He has you there,” Anita laughed. “Come on, let’s go and get our tickets.”
Tyson and Anita each grabbed one of Lane’s hands, and, swinging him along, they went up to the ticket window, where one family was ahead of them. It was made up of a father, three young women, and a little boy. They were all red-headed. The girl who looked the oldest had enormous bosoms that must have stuck out from her chest twelve inches. It was apparent that she was not wearing a brassiere. Nobody in the Emerson family could help but notice the huge Lynyrd Skynyrd decal on her shirt. Lane, too young to notice the sexual connotations of what he was seeing, only to understand that a girl old enough to be his babysitter was walking around almost as scantily clad as he did when he was two years old, snickered. The other girls in that family were no less voluptuous looking. The one who appeared to be second-oldest was wearing a form-fitting, black Led Zeppelin shirt and very ripped jeans. The youngest girl was wearing another shirt bearing a band’s name, but none of them could read it, because she was nearly hidden behind her two older sisters. The youngest, the boy, appeared to be a little older than Lane, and he was walking around in a small circle behind his family.
They waited for perhaps ten minutes, and by then Anita was tapping her sandaled foot impatiently. Tyson, taking her hint, spoke up. “Uh…excuse me, sir,” he said. “But is there any chance you could hurry things up a bit?” The father turned around, and he had a weary expression on his face. “No, I’m sorry. They won’t take my credit card,” he said. “And I don’t have any cash.” “Oh, I can loan you some,” Tyson said immediately, reaching into his wallet. “How much do you need?” The man started to protest, but sighed. “Forty dollars,” he said. Tyson took two twenty dollar bills out of his wallet and handed them to the man. The man hesitated for a moment, and then took the money, giving it to the woman in the ticket stand and receiving five tickets in return.
Tyson moved up and bought three tickets, and then they walked into the museum. They could only see the back of the red-haired man’s eldest daughter’s white shirt in the nearly total dark of the dim, cool museum as their eyes adjusted to the dark.
******
Lane, having the youngest eyes there, adjusted to the darkness quickest. At the sight of a bear with snarling teeth in front of him, he made a whimpering noise and reached for his mother’s leg. Confused, Anita reached down to pat his head comfortingly, and looked around for a light switch. Just as she had begun to think that the museum was simply dimly lit, the whole room was illuminated. It reminded Anita of God’s light: if you looked upon him without him having any disguises to mask him, you would be maddened by the glory of him.
She squinted as her pupils contracted to pinpoints to protect themselves from the new, bright light; a vague shape was starting to take shape in front of the three families.
“Welcome to the Oklahoma Museum of Taxidermy!” the figure boomed, and they all clapped and laughed as they realized what was going on.
“What a great entrance!” the red-haired man who Tyson had loaned money to laughed. “It was like something out of a carnival, not out of a Taxidermy Museum!”
The man, for it was then very easy to see that the figure was indeed a man, smiled as he waited for the applause to die down. “Once again, welcome to the Oklahoma Museum of Taxidermy,” he said. His voice was quite pleasant to listen to: mellow and smooth as butter, and the Emersons found themselves lulling into a very convincing, pleasing sense of security. “My name is Dennis Perkins, and I will be your tour guide today. I hope you enjoy your stay.”
In the inquisitive nature of a child, Lane found himself examining tour guide, Dennis. He was a tall man, taller than Lane’s father, and with a face holding a wide, guileless smile and friendly brown eyes. He was absolutely plastered in promotions for the museum: his hair was obscured by a red cap sporting the decal “Friends of OMOT;” he was wearing a white shirt that had a picture of a snarling lion on it and said “Oklahoma: Home of Taxidermy;” he had on long khaki shorts with a fanny-pack that matched his hat. He looked like the host on Fear Factor, not a person that one would expect to see as a tour guide in a museum. Lane’s mind dimly registered the possibility that perhaps the museum was like Fear Factor: the memory of the fear from the snarling bear was not far from his mind, but he brushed it away. His mom and dad wouldn’t take him to a place where he would be scared out of his wits. Other parents would. His best friend, Tommy, had parents who would do that to him. But Lane knew that his parents were too kind for that: they loved him too much to do something like that to him willingly.
Lane wasn’t allowed to observe Dennis long, however, because the little red-headed boy, the one who seemed to be about Lane’s age, had raised his hand, as though he was in school. When Lane thought about it, they almost were in school. They were in a place full of educational things, and there was a vaguely threatening man who was going to teach them about all of it. In any case, Dennis pointed to the little red-headed boy, and asked him what his name was. “My name’s Casey B. McLaughlin,” he said with the pompous confidence of the young. “And I have a question.” “Well, what’s your question?” Dennis asked. His voice was like a waterfall: it went up and down and was full of something kind, like laughter. Despite his fears about this man, Lane was comforted by it. “Are we going to see anybody making these things?” he gestured around to the scant amounts of preserved animals around them. Anita and Lane Emerson shivered in unison at the little boy’s air of casualness around all these vaguely disturbing creations. They didn’t feel like there was anything to fear about the place, but it seemed as though these creatures should be given more…respect. This feeling was shared in part by Tyson Emerson, although he was less disturbed by it than they were. He had his masculinity to protect, after all, and talking about giving respect to dead animals would be like a kick in the ‘nads.
Dennis laughed. “Of course we are!” he said. “Nobody wants to come to a museum just to see a bunch of dead animals. People want to see how they’re made, don’t you all?” The small sea of heads in front of the Emerson family moved up and down, like a lull in the tide. “And,” Dennis added. “You probably want to get down to business, huh?” The heads nodded more quickly. “So let’s go!” Dennis said. “What’s the use in waiting?” With that, he waved his arm in the air, gesturing them to follow. The three families followed after him eagerly. Dennis had a talent for making crowds excited about things people usually aren’t excited about, like a high school cheerleader. The school’s football team may have lost every game of the season, but if you get a talented enough cheerleader out there, she can get them excited about anything, even a game that the team is more than likely to lose.
******
Dennis led the group through a doorway that led into the first section of the tour. “Now, this first section we’re looking at is just small animals. Some people find this the most boring part of the tour, but that’s just not true.” He smiled. “The smaller the animal, the harder it is to preserve. It takes fewer materials, but it’s easier. It takes less time, and it’s easier to handle. A hand-sized animal like a chipmunk would be a lot easier to preserve than oh, say, a human.” A murmur of unease rippled through the crowd. A woman from the first family, one that was made up of simply two women and a man, raised her hand. “Well, what’s your name, young lady? Heck, while you’re at it, tell us who your friends are. There’s no use going through here not knowing each other.” Dennis said. He had a wide grin on his face. The woman, who was short and stocky with a head full of short brown hair pulled back in a ponytail and a face like a cauliflower, replied: “I’m Sadie Garrison.” Pointing to her blonde woman friend, she said “She’s Penny Weber, and the man over there is Michael Griffin.” Penny waved, and Michael gave a nod of recognition. Penny was a rather pretty girl, with honey blonde hair that she had pulled back in hair clip, and with eyes so blue that even the people farther back in the crowd could tell they were blue. Michael was average looking, with reddish-brown hair and copper brown eyes. “So what’s your question, Sadie?” he asked. “Well,” Sadie said, and she spoke with the smacking pride of many African American women, “I was wondering if you actually did taxidermy on humans?”
Many people in the group laughed, Tyson and Anita included. But the children, Lane, Casey, and the others, even the eldest daughter of McLaughlin, shivered involuntarily. With the survival instinct of the very young, they felt chilled and violated at the thought of being killed and stuff with preserving chemicals. They knew, of course, that the very idea of performing taxidermy on humans was absurd, and they understood that that was why the adults were laughing. It simply occurred to them more than it did to the adults that such an act was incredibly wrong, in the same way that they understood that the idea of a monster living in their closet was asinine and yet still feared the possibility of a demon lurking in there.
After Dennis wiped tears of laughter from the corners of his eyes, he gave one last guffaw before answering Sadie.
-----
And that's all I have for now.
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Post by Robin on Mar 10, 2006 19:43:33 GMT -8
That sentence is a bit awkward. If I decide to use this bit as an introduction, I'll be sure to go through and change it around. But as of now, it's just a synopsis, so I'm not to concerned with the semantics, just the story.
But thanks for pointing it out. I very may well use this as the introduction and if I do it needs to be perfect.
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Post by Robin on Mar 3, 2006 15:26:55 GMT -8
Sort of a synopsis, sort of an introduction.
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We were just kids then. We had no concept of consequences, none of morality. We were bulletproof. We drank, we smoked, we did drugs, and we even got into fights occasionally. Our parents didn’t care. It was the age of experimentation, and they were too drunk or stoned most of the time to care even if they would if they were sober. When we first discovered that our parents kept us on no leash, or at least an extraordinarily long one, these experimentations were the highlight of our lives. But after the initial thrill, we began to search for better ways to occupy our time.
That was when Chris, Sam, Robert, and I made the band.
We called it Crucification of the Cow. Why, I don’t know. It was, perhaps, a phrase derived when we were all stoned or drunk or both. That was the most likely possibility. Even after starting the band, we never stopped doing drugs or drinking. We weren’t addicted, but it was still a pastime to all of us. Even Carolyn, after she came to us, smoked pot and cigarettes. She never touched alcohol, though, even though the rest of us did and we were always trying to get her to have some. I think she told me once that she had seen too many people hurt by alcohol, but I have no way of knowing if that was just as dream or hallucination that I had had. I dreamed a lot about Carolyn that year.
I think maybe I was lucky that I dreamed about her so much. Eventually, my dreams about her became near reality to me, or at least solid enough that they provided a sense of security after she died. I almost didn’t believe it when Dr. Reid came out into the waiting room and told me that they had lost her. I almost didn’t believe that it had been my fault that she was dead. I had been the one who convinced her to let us drive her home. I had been the one who had let Robert drive high and drunk.
I guess that, if you want to look on the bright side of all that happened, it made me stop drinking. Carolyn had said that she had seen too many people hurt by alcohol. I wasn’t about to let myself get hurt again.
Call me selfish, but I think that her death hurt me more than it hurt her. I think that most people feel mostly bad for themselves when a loved one dies. They usually say something to the effect of “Billy was so young and so brave. In the end, the doctors couldn’t save him. Our hearts go out to his parents” because that’s who’s really hurt by it. Little Billy’s dead. His leukemia killed him. Save your pity for his parents, they’re the poor fuckers who had to bury their own son. Every time somebody says that they feel so bad for a young life snuffed out before its time, I want to puke. You don’t feel bad for them! I want to scream. You feel bad for yourselves! Just cut the bullshit and admit it!
I guess I feel so strongly about feeling bad for oneself because that’s all we did that year. We moped around and smoked pot and strummed our guitars and whined about how terrible our lives were. I just wish I could go back and tell myself to enjoy that year with Carolyn. There was not going to be a time when we “left this crappy town.” Our band was never going to go platinum. Hell, it wasn’t even going to go public. All our dreaming would end with Carolyn’s death. And for some of us, the events leading up to it would end the last dregs of our innocent years, as well.
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This will be written in first person past tense, from the point of view of Wyatt Dreier, the narrator of this intro/synopsis thingy.
The style will be sort of how I write my poetry, except not as...uh...poetic. I'm hoping to make it sort of like this introduction, but probably end up sounding like bad pulp. Like baby Stephen King.
I'm thinking to make it at least thirty chapters, and with my chapters averaging around eight pages, the book should clock in around 240 pages. So at that point it would really be a novella, but if I write like I'm supposed to, it should be a full-fledged book when I'm through.
That's about it.
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Post by Robin on Feb 26, 2006 21:01:52 GMT -8
Lately I've been trying to write something Toni Morrison-y - kind of like a story that gives different backgrounds and point of views on one big event. Like...in The Bluest Eye, the main point of the story is Pecola wanting to have blue eyes so she'll be beautiful and ending up getting pregnant by her own father, but the story isn't all about Pecola. We hear about Frieda and Claudia, and Soaphead Church, and Maureen Peal, and Pauline Breedlove, and Cholly Breedlove, and others as well as Pecola Breedlove. I really liked that, and I was trying to model this story I'm working on after that. I don't really know what the main plot will be, but I suppose what I'm asking is does this sound even a little like Toni Morrison. So...here goes.
I'd probably slow it down a bit...but this was just a sample, basically, to see if I could do it.
------------ Small town girls inevitably grow up to live in the big city. Imaginations run wild at any age and any place, and for the small town girl, the logical place for her imagination to run is to the city. For most of her childhood, the small town girl will wallow in her dreams of the city: she will revel in it and use it to nurture the shallow roots that she digs into the soil of her homeland. Like a flower, she will grow from it. As the eighteenth birthday draws nearer, the thoughts of cities grow bolder and clearer in her mind. She will feed them; she will polish them until they shine brighter than the actual cities. Her chores will go undone; her bed unmade. Her clothing she will pick more carefully than she ever thought to before, and she will demand powders and paints for all holidays at which the giving of gifts is tradition. Her old dresses she will scorn, and instead she will buy new clothes from outlets outside of their town: tee shirts and ripped jeans and lacy, frothy undergarments that she will buy with no shame, thinking that city girls do not blush when they buy their underwear and bras, no, city girls brazenly slap the merchandise on the counter. The thought of money does not occur to her, nor does the idea of shoplifting. Despite her best efforts to modernize and glamorize herself, she will remain, at heart, a small town girl. But she will not see that. She won’t see it until she sees the corruption of some city girls. Ripped jeans and fitted tee shirts cost more money than she would like to admit, than anyone would like to admit, and petty theft is the friend of many a fashionable metropolitan.
Eventually, the small town girl, Pamela, will turn eighteen, kiss her mother and father goodbye, and take a flight to New York City, never expecting that she will want to see Minnesota again, never expecting that she will miss cows. And she doesn’t. When she arrives in New York City, she feels at home, which she should. She has spent the last seven years of her life conditioning herself to think, eat, and breathe metropolitan, and she has been successful. Her hair, once always a long braid, she has chopped off to her shoulders, and she has taken great pains to get rid of the freckles that the sun cursed her with. Her lips she has painted red; her eyes she has made seem to leap out of her face, courtesy of eyeliner and eye shadow. All eyes will be drawn to her when she steps off the plane, hair and makeup immaculate, and she will swell with pride at the attention, but it is not the right kind of attention. Despite all her dreaming about the city, she has little understanding of a city at night. While walking to check into the hotel room she had booked, she will be dragged into an alleyway, and raped. It is not so shameful to her that she was raped than that she did not foresee it. City girls, she will reason, are always on their toes. City girls, she will say, never let their guard down. And so she doesn’t. She stays in New York, rents an apartment, and hardens herself to the truth about her new world.
And hardening is something that she must do. Because eventually her parents stop sending her money to pay her bills with, and Pamela has to find a job. The only available work is as a stripper, and even that barely pays the bills.
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Post by Robin on Feb 12, 2006 19:19:00 GMT -8
That's why I thought maybe nephew or cousin...cousin makes it sound like they need a small age difference, but I think that sometimes the age differences can be startling. My cousin is thirteen years younger than me.
I think that you would need to think up a lot more stuff to have James be a mentor to Jack. It would need a blood tie, or something very close to it. I don't think it's common for older people to just take others under their wings. But it's your story. If you can explain how James came to be Jack's mentor, you can give it a lot of realism.
I've never read any of Oates' work. Maybe if I did I could help you more on this. I can go read up on her, I suppose.
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Post by Robin on Feb 12, 2006 11:40:43 GMT -8
It's not something I would want to read, but it sounds interesting. A little soap opera-ish, though, but I suppose throwing in people who are older makes it more Stephen King-esque than As The World Turns-esque.
I guess Ida and Manda can be connected voa blood relations, or relations from schooling. Jack could be a nephew or cousin or old high school buddy of James, because from what I've read James is a ladies' man, and Jack doesn't seem to mind that he and Ida aren't entirely compatible for each other.
Doing something with Jack would seem the most logical, because then you'd have Ida and Manda connected with the rest of the story by default.
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Post by Robin on Feb 2, 2006 15:06:14 GMT -8
I liked the idea of opening it by personifying the animals and the storm with the Greek Gods, but the way you presented it was very choppy and awkward.
"The clouds swirl in the black sky as Zeus, lord of all the gods, threatens to storm. Artemis, the Goddess of the Hunt and the Moon, sprints down from her perch among the stars to yell a warning: "The sky god is angry. It will rain hard." All the plants in the forest curl up their leaves and close their buds in preparation for the coming storm. All the animals take shelter, hiding in a unanimous wariness of the storm.
The drops pelt down like bullets.
Even something like that could be better. Some transition words, some better grammar, and some consistant tensing could help you alot. It's just structural stuff I see that's wrong here. And some detail is never bad, but don't go overboard.
The description of the girl seems very, very shoved in there. I could think of a million better ways to describe her. You don't want to put all the description in an once. Stephen King has a wonderful way of introducing description: if I were you, I'd read IT by King. The way he introduces the characters is very easy and simple. You don't describe them all at once. You add in little details all at once. We don't know from the beginning just how scrawny Bill is: we discover that when he breaks down in the junkyard and Beverly can wrap her arms all the way around him. We don't really know from the beginning what color his eyes are: we hear it from Richie that his blue eyes are foggy as he stares across the Barrens. It's not only easier on the reader to do this, but it's just more professional. It's classier.
I don't think the part about the story should go in there, at least not right in the beginning. If it's going to play a big part in the main part (which I assume is about Red over here), by all means, put it in there. But don't jam it in at the beginning. It confuses the reader. I, like Ramona, was confused and thought that the Gods, the Girl, and the Colors were all going to be in there together. If I had bought this book to read, I would have stopped right there and put it down.
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Post by Robin on Jan 17, 2006 16:10:41 GMT -8
I don't know about this bit. These feel pretty generic. You'd have to have a lot of really original imagery surrounding them to make them cool.
And I don't really think 'dear' and 'fears' rhyme. Just a thought.
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Post by Robin on Jan 16, 2006 19:35:38 GMT -8
I've been working on this for awhile now. It's a fantasy-type story, and it focuses on the man, Phelu. I don't know where it's going, but I like how it's unfolding. Tell me what you think.
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The midwife, Risa’s sister, had been right. The delivery was a difficult one. Risa’s water had broken sometime around midday, and she had been in labor for ten hours, but there was still no sign of the babe. It was not even crowning. Risa’s face was bathed in sweat, and her hair hung in lank strings around her contorted, grimacing, sweaty face. Even the midwife, who had been optimistic during the first five hours, saying that she had seen longer deliveries, was worried looking. She kept biting her bottom lip, and her pretty blue eyes were gray with concern. Phelu sat with his hands twisted up, unsure of how he could help. The midwife, Doesi, had warned him not to try and alleviate her pain until the babe was delivered, simply because they had never tried to heal somebody while they were pregnant before, and both Phelu and Doesi were unsure of the consequences of such an act. “Ye’ll be okay, Reese,” Doesi said soothingly, stroking her sister’s leg with one cool hand. “Nay, I willna be,” Risa said, panting. “If the bairn’s not coming out now, it’s never coming out. It’s probably tangled in the umbilical cord and dying.” There was a tinge of bitterness to her voice, exhausted and weak though it was. She was just beginning to catch her breath when another contraction seized her and her back arched, her feet digging into the mattress on the bed and making it creak. She groaned and let out a huge gasp of air, relaxing and digging her fingers into the bed at the same time. “Ye’ll be okay,” Doesi repeated, although Phelu could hear the doubt in her voice. He hoped that Risa didn’t hear the doubt. He supposed that she didn’t: she was too far gone in her pain to hear much of anything.
“I wish I could do something to help the lass,” Phelu murmured. “But I dinna want to do anything that might harm the bairn.” “Aye,” Doesi said, glancing wearily at the ceiling. “If this goes on much longer, though, I suppose ye’ll be forced to do something. I don’t know if she can take much more of this.” Indeed, Phelu could see that Risa was exhausted. Her chest was heaving, her collarbone and cheekbones startlingly prominent in her round face and plump features from her exhaustion. Her breath alternated between high and whistling and guttural and animal-like. As another contraction shook her, to no avail, Doesi cast a soulful glance at Phelu. “Could ye?” she asked of him. “I dinna want to mar the bairn, but…” she looked hopelessly at the suffering Risa. “I dinna want to either, Doesi,” Phelu said sadly. “But I canna see another way.” Sighing resignedly, he reached out a hand and, not knowing where else to put it, set it on her convulsing, bare stomach. Please work, please work, his thoughts whispered in his mind. And please, don’t let it harm the babe. Just concentrate on getting it out of Risa, concentrate on stopping her pain. He felt his arm alternating between tingling and numbness, and knew that the powers were working. Risa’s white stomach and Doesi’s pale, anxious face glowed in the dimness of the room, and he closed his eyes. He heard Risa’s breathing slow, begin to normalize, and then a terrible pain gripped his stomach. It felt like a monstrous leg cramp, except it was in his lower abdomen and besides feeling as though if he moved it would be agony, there was a horrible wrenching sensation, as though something was clawing its way out of him. He nearly doubled over from the intensity of it, his own breath whistling in and out painfully from between his clenched teeth. Vaguely, far-away, he heard Doesi call his name, but he paid her no mind. He had to concentrate, or else it wouldn’t work.
After what seemed like an eternity of that tearing, cramping pain in his stomach, he heard the squalls of a baby and took his hand off of Risa’s stomach, opening his eyes slowly. He noticed without much interest that the tips of his fingers were blue, and his arm was tingling madly as circulation was restored to it. The familiar pain at the base of his skull throbbed dully, but he noticed that when he moved his head, the pain strengthened. He smiled wryly to himself and looked up at Doesi and Risa - looked up! He realized that he was on his knees on the ground, bent over like an old man, clutching his stomach with his free right arm. “Look, Risa,” Doesi was saying, wrapping the newborn in a blanket. “It’s a little boy. And he’s going to have pretty eyes just like Bakar and Phelu have.” Risa stretched out trembling arms to cradle the baby as Phelu got to his feet, surprised to feel his head erupt into new waves of pain at the movement. “What will ye name it?” Doesi asked Risa kindly, looking at her sister with tenderness in her eyes, throwing a grateful look at Phelu. “Aziz,” Risa said fondly, drawing the infant to her in a grip that was both tight and tender. “To be cherished.” “It’s a fine name,” Doesi said. “Do ye want me to get ye some clean clothes? Yers are dirty.” “That would be lovely, Doesi,” she said. “I’ll get them to ye, but first I have to excuse our guest.”
As Doesi took Phelu out of the room, Risa told them to wait. “Thank ye,” she said. “I’d be in terrible pain if it weren’t for ye,” she said. “It didn’t hurt ye, did it?” she asked. “No,” Phelu lied, forcing a smile. “It didn’t hurt me at all. Just get ye some rest, alright?” “Goodbye, Phelu,” she said, smiling down on her son. “Goodbye, Risa.”
“I have to talk to ye about Risa,” Doesi said. “Why? What happened?” “Ye ken her husband, Bakar?” “Yes…why?” “He’s dead, Phelu.” Phelu was silent for a moment. “How?” he said, after awhile. “How what?” “How did he die?” “He died in battle. He was off fighting the wild centaur women of the north, and one of them shot a javelin at him. It hit him in the stomach, and they dragged him off. Even if he’s not dead, he’s as good as. As soon as they can’t use him to…mate anymore, they’ll eat him.” She wiped hurriedly at the tears that were beading in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said, unsure of what to say. “It’s alrigh’, nothing anybody could do at all.” Doesi sniffed and tucked a strand of her curly, sandy hair behind her ears, and then placed her pudgy hands on Phelu’s shoulders. “Now, did ye get hurt at all when ye helped Risa? Ye looked awfully uncomfortable, and ye don’t look so great right now. Ye’re awful pale.” “I’m fine,” Phelu said quickly, and Doesi frowned, touched his forehead with the back of her hand. “Now,” she said. “I don’t ken the ways of ye healers much, but I don’t think that’s supposed to happen. Are ye sure ye’re alright?” “I’m sure,” Phelu said agitatedly. “And if it bothers ye so much, I’ll go see Bronya. She kens these kinds of things, though she isn’t a healer herself.” “Alright,” Doesi said. “Ye be careful though, alright? I dinna want ye to injure yerself from helping my sister. Risa doesna want that, either.”
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That's all for now.
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Post by Robin on Jan 11, 2006 15:49:40 GMT -8
It would be better if you kept it as simply a romance. This tinge of horror in it makes it seem really wacked up.
I mean, it's not bad to be a touch macabre in romance novels, but you shouldn't base the whole thing around something so gruesome.
I'd suggest a more soap-opera-ish twist, such as Rhode getting jealous of Nicole's superior love for Thomas and eventually "killing" the slave, forcing Nicole to marry him, though Thomas comes back to life and..uh...takes revenge. But that's just what I'd do.
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Post by Robin on Jan 5, 2006 5:02:37 GMT -8
It doesn't have a name yet. I'm terrible with names.
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Post by Robin on Jan 3, 2006 17:02:10 GMT -8
Yeah. You're right.
Maybe I should go with what's grammatically correct and just write in that he was speaking slowly and carefully? Because I'd rather not put in too much stuff that's grammatically incorrect, even if it does illustrate the point.
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