... but I'm damned if following his wonderful advice has put me on the NY Times Bestseller list yet!
So, maybe it'd be fun or instructive to write a communal anti-novel, because after all, the world ALWAYS has room for a little more bad writing. <img border=0 src="http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/wink.gif" />
I'll start, in the hopes that you'll all join in!
<clears throat>
The wind rattled through the gate, to begin with a tedious natural description. Alvin, my protagonist, is sobbing or screaming or railing angrily against some terrible tragedy to which you, the reader, are not yet privy, and therefore do not give a damn about. Alvin’s lovely, pretty, beautiful wife Zaweeba [which name I found in a dictionary of exotic baby names- makes my story original, don’t you think?], Zaweeba is sitting by, patting her heavily pregnant stomach so sanguinely that you just know that something is going to come along to wipe that silly smirk off her face. Then the couple launch into a fraught dialogue:
“How could you do this to me?” Alvin yelled loudly.
“I only thought of you,” Zaweeba whispered quietly.
“Squish squish squish,” squished the foetus in Zaweeba’s womb squishily.
“Oh my,” exclaimed Zaweeba in a surprised and shocked tone, clutching the gate which the wind was so recently rattling, like a rowdy rotisserie on the rat-riddled rocks of Rotterdam. No, I meant the gate, not the protagonist’s cannon fodder wife. Even if my syntax is ambiguous, any decent reader should have been able to grasp my meaning instinctively.
“What is it?” asked Jeff in a questioning tone.
“The baby, OW, I think it’s, ARGH, coming,” screeches Zaweeba, forgetting, amid her abnormally rapid contractions, to screech in any particular manner.
“Oh no!” Jeff moved to open the gate, serendipitously aforementioned, but it was locked! He had locked it himself earlier either because it had been flapping about too wildly in the wind, or because he didn’t want his Zaweeba, who had cheated on him with his brother so that his brother, Chris, would advance to Jeff the money he needed to launch his exciting new career in carpet manufacturing, to get away. Jeff was a bit of a control freak, but he was only copying the example of his father, Michael. Jeff and Michael had been estranged from each other for many years, and it would likely take only a great tragedy to bring them back together. Remember that as a very very subtle piece of foreshadowing.
Anyway, Alvin had locked the gate for some very convincing motive. Now, changing tense for dramatic effect, he starts forward as Zaweeba falls down dead.
“Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo,” moans the protagonist, who is actually known as both Jeff and Alvin, depending on who’s talking to him. He looks very sad, like the unhappy clouds which float overhead. He suffers through some introspection, blaming himself for her death and using lots of rhetorical questions such as “Why?” and “How could I have done this?” and “What am I to do? What is to become of me?” like Ariadne stranded on the island of Naxos, abandoned by her spouse. Only Dionysus was a god and Zaweeba just had a foreign name.
~~~~~~~~tildes denoting passage of time~~~~~~~~
Alvin looks noticeably greyer, showing that a year has passed in which he has done some more grief and introspection. He looks at a photo of Zaweeba, his beloved but dead wife, who died, and feels sad and then suddenly remembers something that she said to him once. “I wish that you would be reconciled with your estranged father, Michael. You must do this one thing, even if it takes a great personal tragedy to inspire you.” [Please note the very, very skilful aftshadowing.
So Jeff drives away to find his father. On the way, he is blinded by tears and suddenly skids off the road. He finds himself hanging off a cliff! Why? How could he have done this? What is he to do?
=============== end of chapter ================
So, maybe it'd be fun or instructive to write a communal anti-novel, because after all, the world ALWAYS has room for a little more bad writing. <img border=0 src="http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/wink.gif" />
I'll start, in the hopes that you'll all join in!
<clears throat>
The wind rattled through the gate, to begin with a tedious natural description. Alvin, my protagonist, is sobbing or screaming or railing angrily against some terrible tragedy to which you, the reader, are not yet privy, and therefore do not give a damn about. Alvin’s lovely, pretty, beautiful wife Zaweeba [which name I found in a dictionary of exotic baby names- makes my story original, don’t you think?], Zaweeba is sitting by, patting her heavily pregnant stomach so sanguinely that you just know that something is going to come along to wipe that silly smirk off her face. Then the couple launch into a fraught dialogue:
“How could you do this to me?” Alvin yelled loudly.
“I only thought of you,” Zaweeba whispered quietly.
“Squish squish squish,” squished the foetus in Zaweeba’s womb squishily.
“Oh my,” exclaimed Zaweeba in a surprised and shocked tone, clutching the gate which the wind was so recently rattling, like a rowdy rotisserie on the rat-riddled rocks of Rotterdam. No, I meant the gate, not the protagonist’s cannon fodder wife. Even if my syntax is ambiguous, any decent reader should have been able to grasp my meaning instinctively.
“What is it?” asked Jeff in a questioning tone.
“The baby, OW, I think it’s, ARGH, coming,” screeches Zaweeba, forgetting, amid her abnormally rapid contractions, to screech in any particular manner.
“Oh no!” Jeff moved to open the gate, serendipitously aforementioned, but it was locked! He had locked it himself earlier either because it had been flapping about too wildly in the wind, or because he didn’t want his Zaweeba, who had cheated on him with his brother so that his brother, Chris, would advance to Jeff the money he needed to launch his exciting new career in carpet manufacturing, to get away. Jeff was a bit of a control freak, but he was only copying the example of his father, Michael. Jeff and Michael had been estranged from each other for many years, and it would likely take only a great tragedy to bring them back together. Remember that as a very very subtle piece of foreshadowing.
Anyway, Alvin had locked the gate for some very convincing motive. Now, changing tense for dramatic effect, he starts forward as Zaweeba falls down dead.
“Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo,” moans the protagonist, who is actually known as both Jeff and Alvin, depending on who’s talking to him. He looks very sad, like the unhappy clouds which float overhead. He suffers through some introspection, blaming himself for her death and using lots of rhetorical questions such as “Why?” and “How could I have done this?” and “What am I to do? What is to become of me?” like Ariadne stranded on the island of Naxos, abandoned by her spouse. Only Dionysus was a god and Zaweeba just had a foreign name.
~~~~~~~~tildes denoting passage of time~~~~~~~~
Alvin looks noticeably greyer, showing that a year has passed in which he has done some more grief and introspection. He looks at a photo of Zaweeba, his beloved but dead wife, who died, and feels sad and then suddenly remembers something that she said to him once. “I wish that you would be reconciled with your estranged father, Michael. You must do this one thing, even if it takes a great personal tragedy to inspire you.” [Please note the very, very skilful aftshadowing.
So Jeff drives away to find his father. On the way, he is blinded by tears and suddenly skids off the road. He finds himself hanging off a cliff! Why? How could he have done this? What is he to do?
=============== end of chapter ================
