@MetaEd Well, you say that now. You haven't read what I'm going to do with it.

jumps up and down

throws cookies into the air

chomps

so is ok if my writing exercise is 5 paragraphs?

Sure, why not? It accomplished its purpose.

do you want to read it?

It's not Tuesday yet, is it? Because I haven't done my homework yet.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, I would like that.

heh no but I don't think I'm going to work on it again until then

I'm going to share a time-limited Gdocs link, you ready?

Yes.

did it work?

Got it.

> Stuff simply grew there; that stuff wasn’t grass, thus it was a garden.

I like this character already.

heh it's based on a true story.

The true story of my back yard

I like it.

thanks

I think it will become harder to keep writing as the number of exercises piles up though. Whipping one story off after a long drought is usually easy for me. Especially if it's short.

So I checked out your blog again, is the story complete? I mean, the first draft, or whatever

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I suppose there's that. That's why I thought I'd keep them short, just to keep writing.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yeah, the first draft is done. I started on the second part, but it is slower going.

I have a less clear idea of what will happen in Mark's story.

@KitFox yeah it's a good idea. It'd be nice to see if we can get a few stories posted every week or so, to keep things flowing.

Yeah. I'm hoping it will encourage people to come to chat regularly too.

@KitFox second part?

Yes. The story is going to be in three parts: Macy, Mark, Ada.

Ah. In that case I will refrain from commenting about the ending until I've read it all.

Macy's story is finished through the first draft, and now I'm working on Mark's story.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 No, please. I am interested to hear it.

Well, I just thought that the ending lacked punch. But if there is more to it, i.e. it's not really the ending, then that isn't necessarily a problem.

I hope that the savvy reader will end Macy's story with certain questions, and noticing that certain things don't add up.

But I'm concerned because it's not supposed to be a serious venture. It's meant to entertain, so all-in-all the endings should read like a joke. I've missed a good balance for that though, and the timing needs some work.

Now I'm wondering if I should make it more serious, or less.

Or both.

@KitFox It kinda read like a serious story in a funny setting.

I don't know if you can work "rape-victim" into a funny story very easily

Except she's not one.

Ada is a great big liar.

hm

But we won't know that until Ada's story, although Mark's story will make us suspect that.

That's my plan anyway. We'll see how long it takes to write and what happens then.

But I was thinking that I should maybe make the treatment reflect the character type, so Macy's story would be bold, impetuous, and almost melodramatic.

Mark's would be pedantic and narcissistic.

Ada's would be austere.

That sounds interesting

I don't know if I can pull it off.

Just take your time

I like it so far

In which case, I should make Macy's story more serious.

Mark's would be funnier because his character is so pathetic.

Then Ada's story would just be...I don't know. She's one f-cked up woman.

But I keep talking about what I'm writing. I don't mean to be that kind of annoying.

I was going to share my writing exercises via blog post. Would you be comfortable doing the same thing? Or should we find some other clever way to share group writing?

Yeah, I think I will probably post it on my blog

I wanted to clear the length issue with you first though

Haha. I feel like such an authority.

I think with a little polish your exercise would make a nice little short story.

It almost feels like a poem.

Yeah, it has a little bit of lyrical repetition to it. But it's meant to, essentially, spiral down into absurdity/insanity, and given the constraints I didn't have a lot of space to describe things, so I used the repetitive parallel structures to highlight the changes. Actually I should probably go back and make it more parallel and repetitive.... maybe the narrator should hum something different in each paragraph....

Hmm, yes. I think those are good ideas. It is not immediately clear that you are intentionally repeating yourself at the beginning of the second paragraph, but strengthening the parallels would probably make this more obvious.

@KitFox The other thing is that in the last paragraph I have the ivy climb much faster and the repetitive paragraphs are abandoned in favour of repetitive sentences. I don't know if I like that or if it'd be better with more paragraphs. I was trying to keep it short, especially once it's clear what's happening.

It adds speed to the ending. You could make the dynamic broader, but I like the sort of crescendo.

@KitFox I'll keep an eye out

Ohai!

[hæaʊdiː]