Comments on: Earned Pleasure

By: Jen

Jen — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:49:24 +0000

I agree. I rarely put dialogue in my flash pieces, because it doesn’t seem to fit. I think I was just saying that this stuff is easier for me to write because I’m not so good with the dialogue yet Thanks for the great comment!

By: judy b.

judy b. — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:49:24 +0000

Jen: That wasn’t a criticism – this piece doesn’t need dialogue. It was more a note to other writers who load half their story with dialogue, which is at least twice too much. If you think about how you would recount an exchange with a group of friends you bumped into on the street to another friend who wasn’t there, you would not repeat everything that everyone said. You would pull out the most clever and salient remarks. You would, however, describe the scene as you saw it and add your interpretation of how your friends were acting to make your listener feel like she was there, seeing and hearing what you saw and heard. That’s storytelling. We all do it, but sometimes when we sit at our desks we take it too seriously, we think we have to inflate ourselves, step up to some higher skill level in order to do it correctly. We don’t. We just have to be observant and convey all the details that make a story ours.

By: Jen

Jen — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:40:28 +0000

Thanks, Judy. I’m still learning, and dialogue isn’t a strength!

By: judy b.

judy b. — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:20:45 +0000

This is nicely turned; the images appear slowly, and the narrator’s state of mind is shown rather than described. It is also a great example of how a short short doesn’t need dialogue.

By: Jen

Jen — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:41:01 +0000

Thanks, Dan! The images in my head were vivid. I always struggle to put the images into words.

By: danpowell

danpowell — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:39:33 +0000

Great piece and I love how you got all that from a picture of a mailbox. Writing from photo stimulus often reveals some wonderful fiction. The verbs in your piece really made it come alive,the narrator scuffing to the mailbox and groping in the drawer being my favourites.

By: Jen

Jen — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 13:57:13 +0000

Thanks, Kevin. I haven’t written in a while, but love the #fridayflash. I just opened my flickr account and looked for a photo to inspire me. When I saw the mailbox, the story was just right there.

By: KjM

KjM — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 06:09:44 +0000

“Watching him marry and raise his family…”. Reading that, my heart broke. What we do to ourselves, the fantasies we create in which we live.

Beautifully captured. For something you “just spat out”, please don’t go polishing anything. I’m intimidated enough by what you can do in a hurry!

By: Jen

Jen — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 04:29:27 +0000

Publisher’s Clearinghouse!!! LOL!

By: 2mara

2mara — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 04:28:06 +0000

OMG! I was thinking what our friend Jeff posted, but for the sake of arguing I am going to say that the seal envelope was from Publishers Clearinghouse.

ok… it was the letter! Damn it, I am going to be thinking about this all night.

Great story!
~2

PS – you can email me… what was it, really?