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anonymouse21	How's this sound?	Lead	[-]
Posts: 314 (04/21/08 20:38:13) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Tags : None This is the beginning of the story that I came up with, so please tell me how it sounds so far. Thanks! Chapter one- I am not normal. I am anything but normal. Of course, I appear to be, but that's only because you haven't seen me wearing crazy hats through the grocery store yet. I always wear crazy hats through the grocery store when the mood strikes me. Another thing that you must know is the fact that my family isn't normal either. When I think about things that we would have to tell people about how we live, all the "except for...'s" start flooding into my head at an overwhelming rate. "Except for we have a bed in our living room," "except for my cat actually wears a red bow around her neck," "Except for I play this one instrument, it's an Indian, not Native American, Indian, sort of drum..." Yeah. "Except for we have a cat box in our shower. Not the shower that we use though, the other one," Except for that's not all of them, not even close. Forgive the bold. I for some reason couldn't figure out how to get rid of it. Until now.
Lilith Nightwalker		#1	[-]
Posts: 1294 (04/23/08 09:06:34) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Well, it's an interesting concept, certainly. But I think you could find weirder stuff to make the family seem more "not normal." A bed in the living room, while strange, isn't something that someone would say "THAT'S SO WEIRD" at. After all, many people have at least fold-out couches or futons in their living rooms. That isn't the same thing, I know, but it's similar enough to make it not "anything but normal." And a cat wearing a red bow doesn't seem strange to me at all. Just cute. A cat box in the shower seems to be getting more strange, though. And playing an obscure, foreign instrument isn't necessarily strange, it's pretty cool. What about, "except for my dad never wears ties around his neck, only around his head," or "my mother is building a spaceship in the backyard out of trash cans she steals from the neighbors," or "my little sister collects teacups and glues them to the wall," or "all of our clocks are set to different timezones, so that the kitchen is in China time and the living room is in France time." Just a few ideas.
Lethe Gray		#2	[-]
Posts: 559 (04/23/08 10:47:35) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	I am gonna agree with Lilith, my old room mates slept in the living room, and I've known people who played tablas professionally, so that's more 'unusual' or 'rare' but not really what I'd consider 'weird'. It sounds like a fairly reasonable family to me, so... Maybe crank up the 'oddity' if that's where it needs to go. Unless of course, the point may be that the family's not actually all that different from anyone and the main character learns that in the course of the story?
Wolfgang Kaiser		#3	[-]
Posts: 418 (04/23/08 12:30:08) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	On the one hand, I like the repetition of "except for" throughout the passage - repetition is a nice technique, and keeps things in peoples' heads for much longer than usual. On the other hand, the grammar is off by a proverbial mile. "Except for" must must must be followed by a noun clause without active verb or pronoun. "Except for we have a bed in our living room" is incorrect; "except for the bed that we have in our living room" is the right way to phrase it. Alternately, you could just drop the "for", and then everything checks out fairly well. Lil and Lethe are right, on the content side of things: crazy hats are about the weirdest thing you put in - but only if they're bona fide crazy, like a top hat with a bonsai tree in the crown, or a hollowed-out bear skull. The rest of it sounds pretty tame. ~ Wolfgang Kaiser, Zeppelin Vigilante ~ "Kidnapping Nubile Victorian Ladies Since 1867"
anonymouse21		#4	[-]
Posts: 327 (04/23/08 15:32:28) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Umm... your haven't met me... . I actually set this on stuff that... actually happened. Perhaps I'll have to improvise. And I was actually going for the more "unusual" rather than weird. I have more, too. OK, well... I'm gonna come up with stuff. The family wasn't supposed to be overly abnormal, but a tad bit strange. Enough to make people want to back away sometimes though. And I actually do play tablas by the way, but I always have to spend way to long explaining to people what they actually are, that's where that came from.
anonymouse21		#5	[-]
Posts: 328 (04/23/08 15:33:48) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	And thanks for the advice! I really do appreciate it, I just forgot to say so in my first post, sorry.
Wolfgang Kaiser		#6	[-]
Posts: 423 (04/23/08 16:40:28) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Umm... your haven't met me... . I actually set this on stuff that... actually happened. You say this like it is supposed to be a surprise to us. I dunno 'bout Lil and Lethe, but I was pretty sure it was based on reality, and this does not change my verdict. Your family = fairly normal, if these are supposed to be weird things. ~ Wolfgang Kaiser, Zeppelin Vigilante ~ "Kidnapping Nubile Victorian Ladies Since 1867"
anonymouse21		#7	[-]
Posts: 333 (04/23/08 20:23:47) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	You actually haven't met my family (cringes). We're crazy. It's just hard to explain... but we are.
Wolfgang Kaiser		#8	[-]
Posts: 426 (04/23/08 21:13:51) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	Is this a story or a "my family's crazy" contest you're trying to write here? If you want to write about a weird family, and you want to use examples from your own life, go ahead and do it. If it's that hard to explain, though, then writing about it and convincing the reader you're not just being overly dramatic may be a tricky proposition. ~ Wolfgang Kaiser, Zeppelin Vigilante ~ "Kidnapping Nubile Victorian Ladies Since 1867"
anonymouse21		#9	[-]
Posts: 334 (04/23/08 21:20:04) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	No... it's a story. But now I have to convince you of the point... ah, my writing is way too shabby. I often get the point lost and then have to go about explaining things... magh. Especially when the point should have been clear, and then I have to in depth. But really, I was trying to convince you of the fact that my family is not normal. And now I've got to figure out how to fix this... somehow.
Ablean Buckslinger		#10	[-]
Posts: 3068 (04/24/08 00:49:40) Reply Quote More My Recent Posts Message Me Connection Blocking Invite Ignore User's Posts	My mother has psychotic rages at me about once a week and cannot stop herself from controlling my life. My father is a fireman and we discuss dead bodies, stranded cattle and house fires over dinner. My sister vlogs too often. None of them know I'm bisexual. One of my grandma's has more metal in her than flesh by now. She's like a bionic woman. We have lived in the same street my whole life, but in two seperate houses (that have just four other houses between them). We don't argue - we ignore each other when we're angry. Fact is, Nonny, everyone's family is a bit strange, but I've met many cats with ribbons and hats aren't particularly weird unless, as Wolfie says, they've got a tree in them. We'll need to see these hats. Everything we do is a choice. Oatmeal or cereal, highway or side streets, kiss her or keep her, we make choices and we live with the consequences. If someone gets hurt along the way we ask for forgiveness, it's the best anyone can do. A blog: http://michaeljritchie.livejournal.com/ Fran: You know, in Tibet, if they want something, do you know what they do? They give something away. Bernard: Do they? Do they? That must be why they're such a dominant global power.

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