kimseinna
Junior Member
"gums 'a' flappin, tongue 'a' waggin"
Posts: 64
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Post by kimseinna on Oct 8, 2010 9:13:17 GMT -5
Kody stared blankly at the guitar leaning against the wall. It had been his favorite since about two years ago. The finish was chipped and faded. The strings new and shiny.
Those strings made a mockery of it. Of him. How many songs had he written on that ole Gibson? Forty? Fifty? Now, nothing.
Nothing would come. It was as if all the music had dried up and blown away like so much dust. Like his heart.
When had he gotten like this? When Maria died? Or, little Rosa? Or was it when he had failed to save them? He could've killed Wilhelm so easily that night. Just one slice to the carotid artery and he could've left the son of a bitch bleeding on the ground.
No, he had to be altruistic and honorable. Imprisonment for the lunatic. Psycho-analyze and sedate. Can't go killing the crazy because that would be wrong. Yeah, like his killing all those people wasn't wrong.
Now he was out. Wilhelm was out. Killing his own brother in the process of escaping. It would start again, and Kody was being called out to hunt him down once more.
Maybe, just maybe...This time, Kody would do the bad thing. The wrong decision instead of the right one. Yeah, he was going to kill Wilhelm. Goodness be damned. Screw honor, it was over-rated anyway.
He reached over and picked up the Gibson. He let the pick strum over the strings. One chord, then another as his fingers danced the old dance of making music.
Finally, music came to him again. So that was it. That was all it took. Making a decision. Making up his mind. To murder.
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Post by The Late Mitchell Warren on Oct 8, 2010 15:39:38 GMT -5
Good job, Kim. Always a pleasure to read your work. I'm interested to see where this is going. The voice is very well done and vocabulary is well chosen. I'm not sure how I feel about the incomplete sentences. There may be a reason for this, and until I see more, I couldn't say if it's a distraction or if it works in the context. I personally think of incomplete sentences like swear words...a little bit goes a long way. But I'll hear what the others have to say.
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Post by karlsie on Oct 8, 2010 17:04:22 GMT -5
I think some of the incomplete sentencing was correctly used as it was a stream of consciousness type of thing. Others could be easily changed with a semi-colon or a compound word. The over-all delivery was perfect. I would also love to see where this story goes.
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kimseinna
Junior Member
"gums 'a' flappin, tongue 'a' waggin"
Posts: 64
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Post by kimseinna on Oct 11, 2010 7:54:19 GMT -5
I've come to refer to the incomplete sentences as mini 'brain farts'. This is the way I've started to write. Its hard to explain. It just comes out that way. It seems 'stunted' to me. I don't know, I have always been my worst critic. So, don't hold back on me, guys. I'll have more later. It comes and goes these days. Thats the problem with 'Tree'. Its full of the farts. Maybe its all that raw fiber?
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Post by karlsie on Oct 11, 2010 16:03:47 GMT -5
The sub-conscious delivers its messages in fragmentary sentences in much the same way it crafts visual images into symbols for your dreams. All your "brain farts" mean is that the link between your conscious and sub-conscious is very strong right now when you try to write. This happens when there's a lot in the storage unit that wants transferring into conscious dialog. Dialog itself is often very fragmentary. It doesn't pay much attention to correct sentence structure, commas, dashes and periods, only to the thoughts that are dislodged with each audio statement. Just keep writing down the passages as they come to you. The corrections into proper structure are easy. For instance, "The finish was chipped and faded. The strings new and shiny," has more completeness and translates more fluidly just by using a comma instead of a period after the word, "faded".
This part of the fragmentary sentencing is correct: "Those strings made a mockery of it. Of him. How many songs had he written on that ole Gibson? Forty? Fifty? Now, nothing.
Nothing would come. It was as if all the music had dried up and blown away like so much dust. Like his heart.
When had he gotten like this? When Maria died? Or, little Rosa? Or was it when he had failed to save them? He could've killed Wilhelm so easily that night. Just one slice to the carotid artery and he could've left the son of a bitch bleeding on the ground."
The rest of it tends to carry redundancy, as though you had purposely left off the presentation of sentence structure through the use of periods instead of commas and dropping adverbs and nouns. Fragmentary sentences are impact sentences, used when there is no need for further clarification about the subject. When they are used too often in sentences that could be just as easily presented through the use of commas, conjunctive words, or a correct subject/predicate sentence beginning, they lose their impact. Don't be afraid of long sentencing, but disperse them liberally with short ones. Fragmentary sentencing has a natural flow for internal dialog, but remember to leave your readers the sign posts; the gradual breaking up of complete sentencing into the emotive response.
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kimseinna
Junior Member
"gums 'a' flappin, tongue 'a' waggin"
Posts: 64
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Post by kimseinna on Oct 12, 2010 7:50:26 GMT -5
Well, now that makes sense. And here I thought it could be the Valium affecting my writing like that. No, seriously, I've had to be medicated. Some days are better than others and the V helps. I was thinking maybe it was taking away my creative flow because of all these incomplete-like thoughts. But, after reading your comments and reviewing old stuff I've written I can see the pattern was there before.
BTW, I'm working on a laptop with Windows 7 now, can anyone suggest how to 'clipboard' some stuff? I tried to the other day but was unsuccessful. I didn't want to do an attachment, karlsie. I know how that could lead to problems with your site.
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Post by The Late Mitchell Warren on Oct 12, 2010 13:48:36 GMT -5
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Post by grainnerhuad on Oct 12, 2010 13:54:42 GMT -5
It looks good. I like that we can use it right from wordpress, which helps me skip the step of lifting stuff from here, running it through word and bringing it back. I also like that I can chose multiple sites for the other places I blog.
But I am sure there are drawbacks as there is to everything which we won't find until we use it. However, I am thinking as I write...it may help us be able to format things the way we want with different fonts and colors which has been a real hold up with wordpress.
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Post by karlsie on Oct 12, 2010 16:00:39 GMT -5
Rocky's new computer was set up with live-writer installed. I think it would give our contributing writers a lot more ease in setting up their submissions with the exact imaging and format they'd like to see go on the Subversify page. He's going to try it out so we can see how well it transfers to word press. If it works, it will save us a lot of blood, sweat and tears in correcting word press formatting errors.
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