larkin

Forgive that statement I was not thinking of your post. The thought about affectations just popped up. Please accept my apologies.

So Owned by Larkin I answered the phone. "Hello." The voice on the other end said, "Who's this?" I said, "It's Jimi, who's this?" Then the voice said, "Don't you know who this is? I know who you are." The voice sounded sort of sly and sneaky but I just couldn't tell. Maybe it was some fake pretending that he knew me. The voice continued. "So what are you doing?" I didn't like being fooled and confused at the same time. I said, "Um, where do I know you from?" The unidentified voice said, "Oh, around." I said. "Are you sure you mean me?" He answered. "Yeah, I know who you are." An image came into my mind. "Wait a minute, are you that kid with the two dogs?" When he laughed, and said no. That gave him away. I never heard anyone laugh like that before except him. It was the kid I met on the North End on the boardwalk. I met him and went to his house and we....... "Oh, I know who you are. You're Ricky. How did you find my phone number?" He instantly became familiar. Ricky answered my question. "It wasn't hard. How many Littlewoods live in Oakhurst? Your Mom or someone answered a few times so I kept trying until you answered." I was really glad that he called me. When I left his house, I was sure that he written me off as a useless little scrub. I asked him: "So why'd you call me?" On the other end there was a pause and then he said, "Oh, I don't know, just bored I guess. I was looking around for you and I was wondering why you didn't show up again. I thought you were a cool little dude." Well he knew just what to say to make me feel good all over. I didn't think anyone liked me and then, I meet this older kid and he says all these nice things about me. Unfortunately, his complements got me all tongue tied, making me sound so stupid on the phone. He asked again: "So how come you didn't come back?" I stumbled on my words, "I, I don't know." He continued, "Why don't you come over and we could hang out? I said, "I don't know?" He wasn't satisfied with my answer. "Oh, I know, you think I'm an asshole and you didn't have the balls to tell me to my face, right?" I hadn't given him any reason for him to think that. "No, no way, I thought you the coolest. I just figured that you thought I was a wimp. Honest, Ricky!" "Would I be calling you if I thought you were a wimp, which you are anyway. I called you because I liked you." He laughed again. "Oh, I know, you got all scared of me because I got all physical with you. That doesn't mean that I'm gay, ya know." I know it sounds stupid but I had pushed that incident to the back of my mind until he brought it up. "I didn't think that you were gay, it was just a surprise, I mean, it didn't bother me or anything." Just talking to him and talking about what we did began to fill me with the strange impulsive excitement that I had felt when I was there. He was holding me and was all over me and I was sure something intense was going to happen and maybe I wanted it to. The tone of his voice was serious. "So, are you sayin that because of that, you don't want to come over and hang with me?" He put me on the defensive. "No, Ricky, I want to come over. Honest." He said, "Oh, ok, so if I let you come over, I have to be all polite and not do anything dirty like you're a girl, which you look like anyway, well just forget it!" I was still on the defensive. "Ricky, I don't care, honest. If you let me come over, you can do anything you want and it's not going to bother me, I promise." He was still testy. "Well, considering it's my room, I will, thank you very much! Shit, I'm all nice to you and make you my best bud and then you act all snotty like you're a little bitch. I got other friends, ya know." All I could say was "I'm sorry", but for what, I didn't know. He quickly said, "Hey Jimi, I just get pissed off for no reason sometimes. Listen, I really want you to come over. You and me could have a good time just playing around." I said, "When can I come over?" Ricky answered "How about now?"

There is no requirement to be cheery and uplifting and the vodka belongs in the freezer. It's a good piece and I am a big fan of crafted, 2 to 8 pagers, but it does cry out for a sense of how it arrived at this point. This should be a seed for 20k words. Bravo and keep writing.

I have had a very hard time trying to tow the line on this principal so you can imagine how I felt in finding this article. http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/why-show-dont-tell-is-the-great-lie-of-writing-workshops

Actually the idea of many tiny cold feet running across my spine sounds good. If you are influenced by a film, reduce the story to its most basic. The first Alien and the Thing. Humans caught in a closed environment with an alien creature. The less you see the more frightening it is. I wouldn't touch the word zombie or vampire or wooden stakes because you are then beholding to the legacy of stories that had come before. You can still do a story about a vampire but you must make it over and make it yours.

The Forest Gump factor? Probably, but perhaps they should be peripheral. .

Failing is very important because it calls for self examination that will promote real growth.

I have to say that the word processor is a miracle. I can rattle stuff off like spelling things out on a WeeGee board. Then go back and reconstruct and craft individual sentences and paragraphs. Very often I will write important things out of order but you can then move them around and keep what's best.

There is another kind of cliche. "He had the body of a Greek god, the bluest eyes perfect six pack and the blondest hair." To make your character human and believable they need a few flaws. One of may favorites is a chipped front tooth. Things that may present them with conflict or hardship. In physical descriptions, leave some things out for the reader to plug in for their own preferences.

Do I ever love this piece. He is my avatar's namesake. I just happen to post this very piece on another site the the censor application replaced all the words. "Fuck" with the word "Love" which ruined Mr. Larkin's poem...

My quick guess is to start completely over using either the same characters, or their descendants in the same or changed set and setting and treat it as a completely new story. It should be "Stand Alone" as much as possible. Refer to the past rarely.

The writer's workshop or journalism school can be the first step in acquiring the concept of broad appeal for the purpose of being made acceptable to a money generating audience. Here is where you will find the formulaic writer, the topical and the political writers that serve the system. This should be an anathema to the creative writer. But if it money you want, you will serve the corporate monolith. FH is right. The other issue is telling your story and earning your readers one at a time. You can do this by presenting an idea or point of view that resonates with specific individuals. The corporate machine has no time for crazy artists and writers with less than a popular point of view, but there are readers in the wilderness that will want to read your work and maybe be reassured through understanding and kinship. The other problem not mentioned above is that there so few readers out there in the first place. This is what compels us to push the envelope. this contributes the flood of dedicated wank-media. We have a struggle on all sides... There is nothing wrong with education, formal or otherwise but being a writer is one of the few professions that does not require any credentials. All you need are readers.

I agree entirely.. Vonnegut's primary concern is the reader. Just like Alfred Hitchcock, his most important concern was not the story or the producers, it was the audience.

How many ways can you eat a BigMac? People often say that about writing explicit sex scenes. I think that this assessment is exactly wrong. They are overlooking one very important thing. It usually involves 2 different people. Even auto-erotic masturbation can be much more than the act itself. Sexual fantasy is the genesis of creative thought. That is why we write in the first place. I place a great amount of value on internal emotions during a planned or spontaneous coupling. A character can come out of a sexual encounter totally changed. A person/character's sexual temperament is an abstract representation of the whole person and you can't really know them without seeing how they behave sexually. How they behave sexually with one person can be entirely different from how they behave with someone else and it can have different results. This presents a wealth of story material. So it is not as simple as eating a BigMac.

Those names have the feel of a very trendy, contemporary setting and they are also pretty middle-class white. It sounds like the author was looking for the coolest names that appealed to him/her. Names are pretty important in a story, especially how one character's name bump's up against the other names. How it rolls off the tongue can count. Is it a hero or a villian (figuratively) I am guilty of stooping to using the Baby-Name-Book online.

We are not talking about two queens hurling fem pronouns at each other. We are discussing a character who is on a gender borderline. The switch could be fleeting, gradual or abrupt. I think that you have to make up a set of rules that apply to that character and they should be decipherable to the reader.

Can you imagine a work without any of those moments? Those elements are crucial in making a story worth reading. Without them, zzzzzz...

Agreed especially concerning a omniscient narrator. It can also be like turning up the volume. If you do it too much, it is no longer effective. The rule should always be authenticity.

I posted a story under transgendered on Nifty. Keep in mind that I don't know anything about dresses, make-up or breast implants and I did not intend to go in that direction. In short the story is about femininity emerging naturally in a boy, living with his mother. The story isn't so much about the central character as much as it is about the reactions of the people around him over a period of time, which were mixed to say the least. When the main character got to the crossroads of life in deciding about a transformation, that is where I ended it. I got letters wanting me to continue it but I couldn't because I didn't understand enough to be sure that I was authentic. I wrote about what I did know anything more would be fraud. I offered the story up to whoever wanted to carry it on. I hope this helps

Yes! No, because it is those times that you must go through it or lose it. You can't get it back. I use a word processor. Hold on, you will not die.. It is your muse so thank god you got one, most people don't. what you have cannot be summoned, it just happens! It's the creative process, it is what you signed on for. You have nothing to complane about and a lot to be grateful for.

Explitives, in a manner, describes the character through their dialog. Explitives can also be a descriptive modifier. I think they are important.

The word, "Suddenly"

I heard that the New Yorker magazine has an editor just for commas.. I have a bad habit of misspelling tons of words and then let the spell checker drop in a wrong word without me noticing. I also omit crucial words and when re-reading, I don't see the missing word and keep reading as if it is there. This is a good reason for an editor. All of these things can be fixed almost mechanically, but perfect punctuation and perfect spelling doesn't make it a good story. What most of us need is a good reader. Someone who likes you and likes and understands your work. Someone who can tell you that they like where the story is going or says, this character is weak. They might tell you where to trim it down or to fill it out.. they tell you how your readers will feel when they read your story.. This is what is really important... Everything else is secondary..

Avoid all cliches like the plague! Exception: Used in dialog to to show how out of touch the character is.