Monday, February 1, 2010
I Don't Even Know Your Name (Group 1 W.W. 4)
Maybe that night they talked to each other as young ladies hung on their arms, giggling, batting their eyelashes. He gave the girl in the yellow dress his number and told her which run-down hotel he was staying in but knew that really, it wasn’t her he was telling the room number to. And the next day, when he had that satisfied smirk on his face, he let his friends talk about that pretty brunette he must have nailed that night.
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I can't decide whether this story is happy or sad, and I think that's a good thing. You work his imagined life so well into the real story that I believed it was actually happening and then had to remember that this guy was old now and just sat in his yard. Your descriptions are really nice, especially the one about how he kept only the sun for company and how he would wave as though the air were pushing back on him. Also, the transition from the neighborhood scene to the imagined flashback was well done.
ReplyDeleteI want more feelings from the scene when he comes and yells at you and your mom in the car. I think that scene might be more powerful after your imagined past for him, because it makes a statement that your ideas simply aren't true anymore. It also lets us connect with you as a narrator sooner because the real connection is in the past you imagine for the man.
As far as the actual past goes, all of the details you include in this one paragraph of characterization are so perfect. If you were to make this a longer piece, I'd definitely include more of that just because it is so much fun to read.
I think some of the scenes are a little too short. I think these paragraphs have potential but that there are too many of them. They jump around from scene to scene a lot and it's difficult to follow.
ReplyDeleteI do like the characterization of "this man" who we cannot exactly figure out but I kind of like that.