Tragic Rabbit
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Posts posted by Tragic Rabbit
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A blind man enters a lesbian bar by mistake. He finds his way to a bar stool and orders a drink. After sitting there for a while,he yells to the bartender in a loud voice, "Hey bartender, you wanna hear a dumb blonde joke?"
The bar immediately falls deathly quiet. In a deep, husky voice,the woman next to him says, "Before you tell that joke, sir, I think it is only fair, given that you are blind, that you should know five things...
One: The bartender is a blonde woman.
Two: The bouncer is a blonde woman.
Three: The woman sitting next to me is blonde and is a professional boxer
Four: The lady to your right is a blonde and is a professional wrestler.
Five: I'm a 6-foot, 200 pound blonde woman with a Ph.D., a black belt in
karate, and a very bad attitude!
Now, think about it seriously, mister. Do you still want to tell that
joke?"
The blind man thinks for a second, shakes his head and says: "Nah. Not if I'm gonna have to explain it five times."
:walk:
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Have you ever watched your beloved boyfriend sleeping?
If you did, I'll bet you spent some time admiring his...
(Shhh! Don't wake him!)
Admit it, you've done this.
Read Peter's Penis by Rick.
TR
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A short story.
A father's anguish.
A blank sheet of paper.
An angry pen...
Read Broken Pen, by Graeme.
TR
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Hey, how do you load a photo to the forums?
TR
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Oh, I LOVE Flip's Tale, I am the one (I think!) who insisted the Dude read it waaaay back last year. I knew he'd love it. Its so wonderful, the most beautiful scenery, the sweetest, sexiest kilted boys, fun times in boarding school, rugby and all that jazz. I wrote him some fan emails but he never answered me...but I forgive him. Great, great story, much fun of all kinds in Flip's Tale.
Kisses...
TR
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Reminds me of a time back in fifth grade when a story came back from the teacher marked in red for this sentence:
Just then, he spotted the leopard.
I no longer remember the story but I will never forget how gosh darn dumb I felt when I realized what I'd done. It has made me more conscious of that sort of thing, but it is NOT easy to notice while you're proofing your OWN material.
Kisses...
TR
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Terse can be good, sometimes not. Clear?
I believe you mean 'brief', not 'terse'. 'Terse' suggests rudeness, among other things, I think you are referring strictly to short length. I don't think 'terse' would ever be good in a novel, I'm not even sure what sort of novel you could apply that word to. I see it listed as a synonym for 'brief' here online but it's not, it has too many other shades to it. You have to use care with synonym lists, temper them with your own knowledge of words and, when you don't recognize one, refrain from using it. A lot of listed synonyms have similar denotations but dissimilar connotations.
Some of the books you refer to were written with precise word count limits by the 'pulp' publishers so might in no way indicate the author's actual intent or preference. And overlong novels are nothing new, ever read Solzthenitzyn (or other Russian novelists), Joyce's Ulysses, Balzac, or...who is that famous 19th c. guy who churned out hefty romances like clockwork?
The idea of least number of words is a hallmark of several authors, not least among them Hemmingway or, to a lesser extent, Faulkner. For a modern writer who can make 'anything interesting', I'd suggest Anne Tyler, who writes about extremely ordinary family events with a tender, heartfelt appreciation for same.
As forum moderator, I give you permission (I'm not sure you really needed permission) to post little things for critique but I'm not sure that's helpful on the road to actually completing fiction works. Wouldn't it be better to actually write a short story or at least begin a novel, then post it and look for critique? I think the storyline or characterization would be areas where you'd be looking for improvement, from what you say, so a few descriptive paragraphs wouldn't really help anyone help you. But, as I say, feel free.
What you've posted is okay as a description to begin a scene, but doesn't go far to tell us what kind of story you might produce. Some don't like the use of italics like this (not me, I use them myself) and the alone-ness of the narrator might be a little heavy handed. Maybe you could show rather than tell? For myself, I'd rather intuit sadness or loneliness from the text, rather than have it spelled out so directly.
If you tell the reader everything, where's the fun of reading?
TR
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Nothing beats having a second pair of eyes.
Maybe so, but my experience is that editors don't return your stuff to you, with the exception of the times Gabe has proofed for me. Maybe no one else can stomach my writing style.
Dude is always after me to stop sending him repeated revisions after he's already posted...a side effect of no editor. Occasionally, a reader has proofed for me, though I do think that proofing and editing aren't the same thing-I just have no experience with the latter.
I'd prefer having an editor, actually, as I'm told it improves your writing.
TR
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Do any of the Awesomedude authors NOT use editors?
Gabe and I did some mutual editing a while back, but mainly I use no editor other than myself. Which may explain a lot...
TR
Sigh..that was me, not logged in. I am so not happy with all this...
Sniffle.
TR
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Lousy constructions, both.
Speaking of peeves, Mother used to punish us for saying words like 'lousy' or 'crap'. You people just have no 'home training'.
A lot of these words and phrases are just collequialisms, not necessarily wrong, in context. And don't any of you write internal or spoken dialogue? Sheesh.
Kisses...
TR
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* Sadly, this is all that is hung :(
Speak fer yerself, Elf.
Kisses...
Lovely TR
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I thought it was WBMA that misspelled suspense originally.
Ooooh, he's right! What sayeth the Scarab to that?
Kisses...
TR
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The suspence doesn't bother me.. it is the SUSPENSE that is killing me... :P
No one wanted to hurt Naillo's feelings.
Except you.:twisted:
Kisses...
TR
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I'm particularly proud of its brevity. Less is more, especially with my poetry.
Kisses...
TR
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Q: How do you keep a turkey in suspence?
A: I'll tell you tomorrow.
What WOULD we do without WBMS to keep us humble?
Kisses...
TR
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Literary elitism aside, Stephen King IS a good storyteller, that's why people buy his books, and why Hollywood makes movies of them. I know that some people whose books sell aren't good storytellers, but they don't have the devoted fans that King does. I used to know a girl who read nothing BUT Stephen King, she was otherwise unliterate. Just amazing to me.
He does, usually, tell a good story. Doesn't that make him a master of it? People telling and retelling his stories, rereading them? A storyteller does need an audience, I'd guess, whether his audience lived back during the last Ice Age or now, between Ice Ages, and standing in line for a latte. Storytelling is a kind of entertaining, maybe the original kind. If people are enthralled by someone's stories, aren't they a master? If not, what makes a master storyteller?
TR
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In a very real sense, you are all like the painters of old, who became famous and treasured after their deaths.
Well, that certainly would be 'underground', Trab. :twisted:
I guess that's something to look forward to...
Kisses...
TR
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Yeah, see, that's how I thought of it, though I was, yes, concentrating on the hunt itself, as a kind of rite of passage of its own, before getting to the prey. I did not intend it to seem like some cheap trick, I was trying to show Robert's perspective, his excitement and then his shock.
I do, though, like to surprise readers, maybe that's a holdover from cliffhanger chapter endings in Drama Club, or maybe I just think it's fun, haha. I know *I* like to be surprised when I'm reading.
Kisses...
TR
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Maybe it's just defined by the existence of people who like to hear or read the stories. Storytelling is an old art, something that we've been doing since we could talk, I suspect, entertaining one another with tales, whether made-up or true.
I don't think you have to have any set amount in sales, or even any sales, to qualify as a master of this. What you do have to have, I'm not sure how to measure, except that people keep coming back for more, asking or demanding more, of whatever it is that you're doing. Which would allow a lot of leeway, I realize, as there are JO storytellers at Nifty who are read by many avid fans...maybe they are master masturbatory-tellers?
Some writers frighten us with their story-telling (Poe, Stephen King, Bram Stoker), some make us laugh (Garrison Keillor, Mark Twain...George Carlin?), some make us cry or feel love or...whatever. Maybe those cookie-cutter romances like Harlequin or grocery-store check-out aisle romances are a kind of mastery, even if of a sort of lowbrow level of English usage, since people seem to keep buying them as fast as they can be printed.
Are only writers who write above a particular level of English usage masters? American newspapers are traditionally written on a fourth grade reading level, generally said to be because of the low level of literacy. Do our own vocabularies sometimes work against us?
You know, some vaunted stories are more than a little bit tedious or repetive, Finnegan's Wake takes a certian amount of energy to finish, in my opinion...and maybe the only reason anyone does is so they can SAY they read it!
I do think creating whole entire fictional worlds is a special talent, one I particularly admire in Tolkien or Lewis, for instance. But is it required? Is a story less masterful because it appears in our ordinary world the way all of Anne Tyler's subtle masterpieces do?
Personally, I'd vote more for character than settings but I'm not sure either could stand alone. I think people like to read about people (or else animals or other non-humans that SEEM like people) and that characters are what makes anything masterful. Still, you have the Illiad and the Odyssey, masterful storytelling that has lasted so many centuries and driven by BOTH vast panoramas AND unforgettable characters working through difficulties. Maybe that's another key, working through problems, what they call 'conflict', even if, as with Anne Tyler, it is subtle and deceptively ordinary.
Some people say there are only a few stories out there, told in an infinite variety of ways. I don't know if that's true or not, but I know when I love something, or some writer. What makes one a master and one a lesser light, I honestly have no idea, despite the many, many lit classes I've endured (and taught).
Kisses...
TR
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I'm no fan of blanket statements, neither first nor third person is something one can make generalizations about. A lot of top notch literature can be found in either voice. Still, I guess the question is how to decide which way to tell a particular story, esp for us here online, and how we approach first person storytelling, or storytelling decisions.
I looked back at what I've written in the year since I began and found only two short stories in overt first person by TR, 'Something About Tom' and 'King of Shreds and Patches". In the former, the reader knows things that the speaker does not (that the new teacher likes the speaker, for instance), and I think that's a good way to approach first person, not to think of it as limiting the writer but as another way of making the character seem real and likable to the reader.
One danger there would be that the writer might be tempted to tell the reader things that he shouldn't, either things that the character wouldn't know, or things that he'd not think because they were obvious. Now stories that do that I'll agree are not too great and would be better done in third person where, perhaps, the writer might not be so tempted.
In the latter, King of Shreds, the first 'person' is actually a dog, so that let me both tell the story from his perspective, not the usual one a reader might expect, and to allow the reader to BE a dog, in a sense, to see with dog eyes and feel with a dog heart. I guess in that one, too, the reader knew things the speaker didn't, things that people know about other people but dogs might not (that the man was getting old, then that he was dead).
Again, I think that's a virtue in any story, that the reader sees or knows things that characters in the story do not, because it allows the reader to feel an active part of the story and to enjoy it more.
That's what I actually like about first person, the way you can tell things to the reader without the speaker even knowing them, which seems to contradict what some are saying about first person storytelling. I like for the reader to know things that the characters do not, and first person is a great way to do that.
Now that I think about it, Lucky Strike Hit Parade 1941 is a kind of first person story, too, because the story is TOLD by an interviewer (presumably TR) but the story is presented as first person, as told TO the interviewer, and as a MEMORY of events of 1941(maybe it is first-person present-tense stories that writers are finding limiting?). So it was a flashback, and that did present some tricky problems which I hope that I resolved in the telling.
Lucky Strike was really tough to get the way I wanted it, I had so many things I wanted IN it, done a particular way, but I think it does also qualify as a first person story. Still, I had always thought of it as told that way, Johnny telling me about what happened decades ago. That allowed me to interject his comments TO me, about young people today or how things were then, while telling me what happened so long ago. It was fun, actually, sticking myself into a story, even in the background, and having Johnny make comments to me as he talked, calling me 'kid'. So I had a lot of fun writing that I wouldn't had I written it in third person as I did Der Cowboy, also a war story, set in 1944.
I've read an awful lot of great stories told in first person: Catcher in the Rye, almost anything by Kurt Vonnegut, some by Saul Bellow, Anne Tyler, Anne Rice (she also did an interview type story though the interviewer seemed evident only at the first and last). Confessions of a Crap Artist, by Philip K Dick, is a fabulous novel told in first person by a complete geek outcast type, which allows us in his head and to evaluate what happens by OUR standards, even as we read his own hopeless-geek reactions. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is first person, I think, as are others of Twain's. In Huckleberry Finn, we can think OUR thoughts while we read the reactions and words of the scruffy outcast Huck as he meets people up and down the Mississippi.
These are awesome stories, told from the first person perspective of people we might not actually like to meet, but we somehow still enjoy their stories as they tell them, to which we add our own ideas and reactions. This is an advantage of first person, far and above third and maybe it's a better way to present unlikable characters. Does Nabokov use first person for Humbert Humbert or does someone else tell that one? It's sometimes hard to remember what person a story is written in when all you have in your head is a clear and shining image of the character. Either that or I have a bad memory!
So I don't think first person alienates readers and I don't think it limits the storytelling, it just makes it different. If you feel a story in the first person, write it that way! I'm a big fan of writing what you HEAR in your head without changing it around because of what others tell you is right, or what you THINK is the correct way to tell a story. As long as the story gets told, whatever way you hear it, and then write it, can work and be...correct. What's correct when we're talking about an artform anyhow??
Kisses...
TR
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I know that things I write often show my prejudices pretty clearly: anti-war, anti-gun, anti-racism, anti-homophobia. Pro-love, anti-hate. I don't mean to be preachy but I imagine that sometimes, if not all times, I might come off that way.
I have gotten some unpleasant email in regards to this story. I don't mean the people above, though their voices sort of added to my current feeling, maybe a teensy bit. I can only remember other negative email in regard to The Velveteen Boy, and that more directed towards MJ than myself, and I know that TVB was kind of trite. It was just how I felt one day after hearing a news story.
Maybe Dog Boys is a lousy story, too, trite and cheap and pushy. It wasn't meant to be great literature, just something to show my feelings after looking at the Without Sanctuary site. I know that Lucky Strike and Der Cowboy are pretty obviously, maybe annoyingly, anti-war. Some Enchanted Evening has a ghost who doesn't like guns, how corny and stupid is that? I don't even know if anything I've written is at all worthwhile, or whether I'm providing enjoyment to others as I'd like to.
I have recently also gotten some pretty negative general email to Tragic Rabbit from someone who says he's not a reader, but also says he found my stuff at Nifty? Anyhow, that and one Dog Boy email have really upset me, they felt too personal to just shrug off, not that I take lightly criticism of my writing. These emails contained really mean things, about me myself as well as my lousy pornographic writing, things that are proving hard to remove from my head. I feel hurt, to be honest, and unsure about writing...just when I was trying to rev up and get back into more regular writing.
I KNOW that I'm too sensitive, both in general and as a writer, but I don't much know how to let it slide off easily. Somehow it seems worse that I do this for free, write things for people to enjoy, and yet still am sometimes attacked. Also the computer attacks that destroyed my computer around New Year's, the more recent AD attacks, some other attempts....it's just tiring, you know?
I don't get why people enjoy being mean and I don't get why people want to tear down someone else's attempts to do something, to give something to others (like writing and posting online). What do you really gain by hurting someone that you don't even know?
Sigh.
TR
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I must confess to being a tad put out. I have, thus far, received three emails from readers who said that they did NOT like the story. This has never happened to me before, that people would take the time to email about a story they didn't like. I'm not saying no one has disliked any of my writing before, just that they haven't spent time informing me of it. What this means, I'm not sure. Now, all these did say that they liked the WRITING, but not the story, or that they felt it was well-written. So I'm concerned, trying to work out what this means, what they are saying between the lines.
Dog Boys is the second TR short story to deal directly with racism. The Velveteen Boy was the other and it was also disliked but, at least overtly, that was because readers disliked the person they think it was about. In retrospect, I wonder if it was the racism ITSELF that they disliked, but felt more comfortable talking about MJ. I wonder if there is something about racism, talking about it, that strikes notes that make people angry.
Drama Club discusses racism right along with homophobia and other hates but the main threads of the story are the loves and lives of the characters, so maybe it is more digestible there, or anyhow less objectionable. Or maybe more easily ignored. I've said before that I have the feeling that a lot of people who like Angel de la Torres in print would never have a little Spic faggot over to their house in real life, and that I found that interesting. But what does it mean?
I wonder if that means I should write more on the subject because in MY world, racism is alive and well. And the readers who mention where they live, Australia, the American South, tell me they are reminded of where THEY live. But racism is a human trait, isn't confined to any political boundaries, it's perhaps something left over from the days of tiny tribes strewn across a world essentially unpeopled. I just think it's a bad one and I worry that so many seem to think it lives only in the past.
The events of Dog Boys really happened but they didn't stop happening in 1933. I doubt James Byrd's family would say that lynchings have stopped, even if the form is sometimes different. The thrust behind them is as alive as it ever was in America, but not only America, racism lives around the world and is not even exclusive to white people. The Japanese are famously racist, could probably give Americans a run for their money on who is more likely to hate the hardest based on skin color and background.
That website, Without Sanctuary, truly upset me. Not because it was news to me that lynchings occur, but because of the images themselves and his dry commentary, so restrained, so horribly informative. Who knew that there was a brisk trade in souvenirs of lynchings, post cards openly sold for a quarter that displayed the pitiful body of some victim. When the photo of John Holmes made the front page of the morning paper in San Jose, the 'city fathers' were outraged...NOT because a boy was dead, but because his naked body was shown in their newspaper. They were against indecency, those honorable men, but missed the boat there, as the true indecency was the death itself, that image of men in hats looking up to admire their work, the fruits of their night's labor hanging in that tree.
It's that blindness, that ethical interrupt, that fascinates me, moves me, and caused Dog Boys to appear here at AD. And, evidently, it's the portrayal of that which readers find disturbing enough to actually write to me about. What does this mean? That I should avoid the topic, or that I should write MORE on it, in despite of how people feel?
What exactly is it that I want to do with my storytelling? I've said that I want to entertain, to make people laugh, cry, love, to feel things as they read and to remember a character or two. It looks as if Dog Boys makes people FEEL...is it my obligation or intent that they also and always enjoy their feelings when they read? Is there something to the topic of racism that engenders this reaction and, if yes, does that mean it should be avoided? Or is it a boil that needs lancing, despite all the great works that others have published?
Meaning, have I also found, while looking for my Voice, the meat of my future endeavors? Or have I just kicked up a small anthill, should I keep on walking and let things die down?
TR, pondering
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This is one of Gabriel's (Rustic Monk) older stories, revived here for your consideration.
End of Man is something like an introduction, something like a commentary, something like the sound of crying in an empty room. Bow down to Science, a God of Man, if Man indeed will have any other god before him. It isn't Science itself that's at fault, but what lives in our hearts that drives it. Hate, fury, vengence, even curiosity, all trying to thrust us into Ragnarok, into the End Times. Just to see what might happen...
TR
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Which 'humble' RM is this? His Evil Humble Twin?
I enjoyed it last time, I'll try to catch it tomorrow, too!
Kisses...
TR
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A Scotsman moves to Canada...
in Laughs & Limericks
Posted
...and attends his first baseball game.
The first batter approaches the batters' box, takes a few swings and then hits a double. Everyone was on their feet screaming "Run"!
The next batter hits a single. The Scotsman listened as the crowd again cheered "RUN, RUN!"
The Scotsman enjoyed the game and began screaming with the fans.
The fifth batter came up and four balls went by.
The Umpire called "Walk." The batter started his slow trot to first base.
The Scot stood up and screamed," Run ye lazy bastard, run!"
The people around him began laughing. Embarrassed, the Scot sat back down.
A friendly fan noted the man's embarrassment, leaned over and explained," He can't run--he's got four balls."
The Scot stood up and screamed," Walk with pride, laddie, walk with pride."