Exercise #10: Keep the Engine Running

[Creole Ned]

Exercise 10: Keep the Engine Running
Due Friday, Feb. 13th, 2009 (scary!)

This exercise has some specific requirements and one that is optional. The next exercise will be broader, so you can write more what you want.

1. Two characters of any age, gender or relation are heading out in a car or truck on a specific task or errand.

2. The driver of the vehicle will never turn the engine off.

OPTIONAL: They must stop a minimum of FIVE times during the journey and each time they stop they must interact with at least one other person. Note that not all five people should or will be given equal space in the story.

3. They will not reach their destination.

4. The entire story will take place in or around the vehicle.

This post will be updated with links to the submitted stories as they come in.

Submissions:

Keep the Engine Running (http://creolened.com/fiction/engine-rimbo.pdf) (Rimbo)
End of the Road (http://creolened.com/fiction/end_of_the_road.pdf) (Lazy Shiftless Bastard)
Hunting (http://creolened.com/fiction/hunting.pdf) (Arioch)
Out of Business (http://www.paladinsplayroom.com/stories/Out%20Of%20Business.pdf) (Paladin)
Lily Tries to Go Shopping (http://creolened.com/fiction/lily_tries_to_go_shopping.pdf) (Creole Ned)

[Creole Ned]

The first two submissions are in (early!), both from Quarter to Three Folks -- Rimbo and Lazy Shiftless Bastard. Enjoy!

[Creole Ned]

I'm pushing to get my story in today but it may not be till later tonight. I've been a bit distracted by events over the last few days.

[Paladin]

I'm pushing to get my story in today but it may not be till later tonight. I've been a bit distracted by events over the last few days.

Ditto. I'm also hoping to get #9 done this weekend.

Edit:

Going Out Of Business (http://www.paladinsplayroom.com/stories/Out%20Of%20Business.pdf)

Ned, feel free to move the link up top.

[Creole Ned]

And to make us look bad, here is Arioch's entry, Hunting (http://creolened.com/fiction/hunting.pdf) (although I think it was technically past the 13th for him). I've also added it to the first post.

[Rimbo]

Arioch's entry wins.

After rereading that one and the other 3, no doubt about it. Although it misspelled "to" as "too" at one point.

[russellmz]

Ditto. I'm also hoping to get #9 done this weekend.

Edit:

Going Out Of Business (http://www.paladinsplayroom.com/stories/Out%20Of%20Business.pdf)

Ned, feel free to move the link up top.

hey paladin, in the last line, is that supposed to be tom or harry?

[Creole Ned]

Pal, is your entry above for #9 or #10?

I feel bad about being late but getting laid off really sucked the wind out of me. The writing wind. Yeah, that's it. I'm trying to go through all five stages of depression/acceptance in one day to get that out of the way, then I'll give it another go. If I can't get something done by tomorrow I'll break my usual rule and read the others first to get some feedback out there.

[Paladin]

hey paladin, in the last line, is that supposed to be tom or harry?

Crap. Crap. Damn. Shit. Crap.

It's fixed.

[Paladin]

Pal, is your entry above for #9 or #10?



Number 10.

Sorry about the job Ned.

[Creole Ned]

Here's mine: Lily Tries to Go Shopping (http://creolened.com/fiction/lily_tries_to_go_shopping.pdf)

EDIT: I'll have feedback on all submitted stories later today.

[Creole Ned]

Feedback on stories submitted so far:

Rimbo:
We both like Ford pickups, it seems. It would have been downright freaky if we’d matched the model numbers.

There is a sense of place to the story that I quite liked. As a kid I spent many a summer vacation traveling along the interstates with my parents and I think you did a good job capturing simple details that reflect moving along those interminable highways. Frank is sketched nicely as a bit of an emotional wreck and the constant need to pee was a good device to keep the tension ratcheted up. The interaction with the police officer also works well, especially the way the conversation keeps drawing out just a little bit longer.

The reference to Area 51 may come too soon. Before it’s brought up I was thinking the sack contained a person they were kidnapping and that could have played out a bit longer. That’s just my own take on it, though – there’s nothing “wrong” with the way you did it.

It was a bit odd that the father from the minivan asked where they were taking the sack rather than what was in it.

The scene of the creature breaking free lost some impact because there’s no description of it. On the one hand I can see it as a kind of “make your own monster” thing but there should probably still be something there – claws, tentacles, a snarling pseudopod filled with bees, something for the reader to grab onto and embellish from there.

Nitpick: “curvaceous” is usually used to describe a sexy body, not so much mountain roads. :)

Overall, I think this was a good first story. It stuck to the requirements of the exercise but never felt constrained by them. Here’s hoping you write more.

Lazy Shiftless Bastard:
Another character named Stan. I think I’m going to change my name. :P

Okay, let me start by saying that I *love* the reveal at the end that the characters are escaping through the zombie apocalypse. You’d think with zombie talk all over the place these days that I’d catch on but I didn’t. Well done.

The story works well in terms of relaying the chaos and mayhem of the night – it seems the characters are nearly cursed as they come upon one obstacle after another. My main criticisms have to do with the actual nitty gritty of phrasings and word choices. A few seemed awkward or odd.

I would drop Stan saying “It’s not mine” at the beginning since the context is quickly established that the truck is not theirs (and the reader presumes, stolen). I was thrown a bit by the description of a “large boxy building”. The phrase stood out enough that I expected a significance to it that never materialized. One other I will mention is the line “Still panicked from the encounter, Stan sped down the street at almost sixty mph.” I have a problem that I usually catch when I re-read one of my stories and it’s giving things descriptions that are a bit mushy or too specific. In this case, you could probably lose the “almost” qualifier and perhaps make the high speed apparent without actually specifying it. I’m not sure if you know what I mean but the idea is to streamline the phrasing, make it flow better. As I said, this is something I’m pretty bad at myself.
Still, love the concept and a bit of tidying up would make this zombie tale even better.

Paladin:
Another truck. We like trucks!

I’m afraid I had one big problem with the story.

First, I did like the basic setup of a couple of scummy crooks on the lam with a truck filled with loot. The scenes with the (literal) jailbait and the cop are done well but the story kind of goes off the rails right at the very end. I can buy that the gun goes off accidentally and the one guy (fatally) shoots the other, although you could have the reader more easily buy into it by establishing earlier that Howard is a bit of a klutz or maybe especially with guns. But the final line with him going through the windshield and seeing the sticker? The whole story is gritty and grim. Ending it with that kind of cute bit just feels really inappropriate and it pretty much undid everything that came before it. If the whole story had been presented with a light, joking tone it would have fit nicely but it feels really out of place.

Strangely I had trouble keeping the characters straight because neither the name Tom nor Howard really stands out. I appreciated that Howard was the “horny” one but they seemed a bit interchangeable otherwise.

The trucker with the stubble on her chin was plain creepy. Made me think of Tim Burton for some reason. Ah, wait – Large Marge. Was that from Beetlejuice?

Anyway, apart from the ending and a few descriptions that felt a little clunky, I thought this was pretty decent.

Arioch:
Truck #4! Haha, and a zombie story. I’m beginning to think one day all of our stories will merge into the same parallel universe.

First, a great job on capturing the voice and mindset of the excited, eager and ultimately confused kid. You have a real knack for getting inside the head of a character. The details of the story are terrifically laid out as you learn about the kid’s life, raised on zombie movies and seemingly not knowing a world without them.

However, I didn’t really care for the ending. Endings are tough, especially for short stories and especially for stories written as exercises on a deadline. :) But still, there were two things. The first is the suspicion that there are no zombies and the man has concocted an elaborate fantasy world that he’s forced the kid to be a part of: “I didn't understand why Rich was so sure those weren't human cops, but he can spot zombies better than I can…but then they started shooting, and now I knew that they must be human, that all of this was a misunderstanding”. While it could be an interesting twist, I’m not fond of twists for their own twisty sake and it felt a bit like this to me. Even if they really are zombies, I’m not sure what the purpose is to raise doubts on the matter. To me it weakens the story a bit. But I especially didn’t like the way the story just ends with the truck out of control and the kid not remembering what happens next. I don’t think the ending has to neatly tie everything up but this one felt a bit too unfinished and the way it’s phrased from the kid’s perspective, it doesn’t even make much sense, as if we have been hearing the story told as a reminisce and suddenly we’re snapped forward to a strangely opaque present.

But that’s just my take. I otherwise thought this was an excellent story.

[Creole Ned]

By the way, writing detailed feedback is hard. :P Let me know if I'm being too specific, too vague, too picky or whatever.

[Paladin]

Rimbo-

I thought the characters were very well done and liked the sense of setting. Your story really conveyed the sense of two guys on the road with a cargo they'd rather not get asked about. I have to agree with Ned that the Area 51 reference was probably either too early or telegraphing too much to the reader. I also missed not having a more of an encounter with the creature and something to indicate what it was. Was it a monster, an alien or just an animal they didn't recognize and mistook for an alien? The story doesn't give enough for the reader to make up his mind, and given that, we're left with the early Area 51 reference to make a guess.

LSB-
You did a great job keeping the zombie-story reveal until the end. I got that they were running from something, but zombie apocolypse didn't cross my mind until I read the line about the crowd forming around the crashed truck. At that point, I was like "Huh, what?" and had to reread the whole thing. I mean that in a good way. It took me completely off guard and made me want to reread the story with that bit of information in place to reset the story in my mind. I thought the dialogue was very well done, but some of the descriptions of the action seemed too wordy or too exact. I didn't think it conveyed a sense of chaos at all. THat's probably my biggest criticism of the story: neither the dialogue nor the descriptions conveyed much in the way of urgency, chaos or fear to me. That's why the zombie thing caught me so off guard, I guess, because up until that point it could have been two guys joyriding in a stolen truck, then running from a hit and run. There wasn't anything to make me feel like that afternoon was particularly different from any other afternoon for the characters.

Arioch-
Funny how put two people in a vehicle and don't let them reach their destination lead to a bunch of monster and zombie stories. I like that yours turned out to be an elaborate fantasy portrayed on the kid rather than another real zombie story. That said, I didn't get the kid at all. Was he mentally handicapped or something? His descriptions of Rich were so overboard, and it seemed like he had no human interaction at all other than Rich, just felt out of place to me. I get that you were going for a kid, maybe just about a teenager, with a serious hero complex. But I don't get how his view of reality got so controlled by this guy. The ending was also pretty vague and abrupt, but as Ned said, short story endings are hard to do well. Points for not copping out and ending with a gag like I did.

Creole Ned-
Well, you certainly get the award for the most original story of the bunch. No monsters or zombies, and one of your "dudes in a truck" was a girl. The story was a nice, light, easy read up until the end, then I lost it. I don't get it, was Lily doing something to cause these people to have heart attacks in the truck, or was it the truck doing it somehow? Or were the two heart attacks supposed to be coincidence? Her reaction to Gus having a heart attack struck me as not fitting the character either. I mean, if she caused it, then her reaction would make sense to me. If she didn't, though, why wasn't she more concerned about Gus and why was she so concerned with getting her tea (and why two cups, when the nurse is certain to be too busy to join her)? Did I miss something when he said the nurse should bring her tea and biscuits?

Overall, I liked the tone and descriptions of the characters and truck, but somehow the plot went completely off the rails for me and I can't figure out what the ending is supposed to mean.

Paladin-
The characters, it turned out, were so interchangable that I actually got them reversed at the end, even when both I and my wife proof read it. I needed to do more to differentiate them. Like my first story, I got stuck for an ending and opted to end on a gag line. It didn't really fit with the rest of the story, but with the deadline approaching and the story taking longer to reach it's conclusion than I had intended, it seemed like killing off the characters in a quick one-two punch solved the problem rather neatly. Having Tom be accidently killed by Howard resolved what to do with him, because aside from being a thief, I'd written him to be a basically normal, compassionate guy. He probably deserved to get away, or at least end up alive, but I didn't want to push the story much further at that point.

[Creole Ned]

The husband having the heart attack over 40 years earlier is just a coincidence. I never thought someone might try to connect it to Gus's. In hindsight it's the kind of detail that stands out to the reader but not so much to the writer. :) But she is concerned about Gus. This is demonstrated in a number of ways: first, as soon as she suspects a heart attack, she immediately heads to the hospital, she then asks Gus the questions in a manner to not alarm him, assures him he'll be fine and then tells the nurse he is likely having a heart attack in a hushed tone so he won't hear her confirming his own suspicions. Asking for two cups at the end is because she intends to have her tea with Gus -- not alone. I didn't want to write it out as obviously as that but perhaps it's too ambiguous. That tea line at the end could probably be cut out altogether. As I said earlier, endings are hard. :P

[Creole Ned]

I've made some changes to my story re: Pal's feedback so if you read it before this morning (Feb. 17th) please check it again. Thank youse!

[russellmz]

spoilers

Rimbo
fun story. i wished there was a bit more description of the thing at the end. the sack needs a bit more description of size and what kind of restraints it has. that might help alleviate the questions of why random strangers are asking about it.


Lazy Shiftless Bastard
i kind of glommed onto the idea that it was going to be zombies from one of your earlier posts. still, it was entertaining waiting for the inevitable screw up that would doom them.

plus, the ending where the heroes are doomed and there wasn't any hope or haven to begin with is classic and faithful to the genre.

Arioch
that was fucked up arioch. great story! reminds me of the curious incident of the dog in the night which has an autistic character's pov. the main character is interesting to me in that he lies several times to rich (favors the new dawn of the dead, hides his tears), so he's not just a complete puppet of rich, but does have some tiny shred of independence that he hides.

Paladin tbd
Creole Ned tbd

[Lazy Shiftless Bastard]

I just wanted to say thanks for the feedback. I read and enjoyed all the other stories here, but anything I can think of to say has pretty much been covered already. All I have to add is that Ned's slightly changed ending seems to work much better at wrapping up the story and conveying the relationship between Lilly and Gus. She sacrificed her tea and biscuits, it must be true love! ;)

[Creole Ned]

Thanks for the feedback on my revised exercise. I felt it worked better as well.

Looking forward to more stories when you get the time!

[Arioch]

Paladin:

I think the last word in "Tom retorted sarcastically" is not really necessary, as we got the sarcasm from his actual answer. Show, don't tell. Of course you then run the risk of being ambiguous, but this time I think you'd be in the clear. Also, you're engine was cut off, man. You broke the rules! No, wait a minute: Upon closer inspection you just used a loophole. Carry on!

Ned:
Wait, so they stood still for twenty minutes, had low gas, but didn't turn the motor off? Nitpicking, I know, but it's not like you didn't made the rules. A sweet story, with nicely written characters. Well done. I haven't read the story before your changes, so I can't comment on that.

Rimbo:
Man, is there anything more pathetic than a man with weak bladder and sphincters? Good job in conveying the character through (involuntary) actions. Plot issues already discussed aside, I liked the tone of the main character, very cool, hardened. And though you don't describe the creature much, the fact that it "galloped" away at least makes it four-legged, which didn't fit my picture of it. Which is always good.

Lazy Shiftless Bastard:
Although I began my story with a similar premise, I didn't get that it's zombies until you pretty much spelled it out for me. In hindsight it's obvious, but you got me there. I enjoyed the fact that you're story is in a way the complete opposite of mine, in that you're going from mundane to Zombie Apocalypse and I'm going the other way. Nice naming convention you had going there ;). Good story, although the behaviour of the men was maybe a little too calm for what they were facing - I know I wouldn't get out of the cab just to inspect a broken-down car, and they probably knew what the Woman was afraid of too. But that was necessary to not spoil the surprise, I guess.

Arioch:
I guess ambiguity got me again. One of the most common mistake I make as an author is to presume that the reader knows as much about the characters, the setting and the plot as I do, I really need to be a little to a lot clearer. Okay, the following happened in a nutshell:

There are no zombies. The kid is a complete shut-in, illiterate (hence his problems with the film titles and the video player) and has absolute no contact with the outside world. Why? Because Rich made it so. Why? Maybe he needs company, or wants to be adored, or wants someone to live on his dream, whatever. All his stories about his heroic deeds are of course fabricated, and the zombie hunt consists of no hunting at all, but of stealing and killing. When he siphons off gas, he gets surprised by someone, and shoots him. That's why he came running afterwards, because the shot probably woke someone else there. The zombie the kid shoots is a hitchhiker. The police car was sent because there really was someone else on the parking lot who called them, and when that car found the hitchhiker's body, he called for assistance. The second car chased them, the kid fired, the cops fired back, shot Rich, he swerved off the street, crashed and they both died.

Yeah, maybe it is a little too convoluted, although not everything needs to be known by the reader. I thought the last sentence would be pretty clear in telling that the narrator died, but apparently I was wrong. Do you guys think it would improve the story if there was a short newspaper clipping added to the end, about the two suspects in the killing spree which had plagued the area for a long time being chased and killed after opening fire on the police? That would spell it out for the reader that there never were zombies (or maybe that zombies could write newspaper articles...) and that both of them died... Your thoughts?

[Creole Ned]

No, you're right, Pal totally cheated -- he had them fill up the truck with the engine still running. I don't know a lot of people who would try that. :)

As for me, in my defense I'd say that the truck was never low on gas, Lily just wanted to hurry Gus along at the start and later it's never shut off because Lily, like a lot of people, thinks you burn more gas by turning the engine off and starting it back up again (which is in most cases not actually true).

For your story, Arioch, I think you need to decide how much you want the reader to know and when you want them to know it. To me, it felt like the reveal that there are no zombies is a key element, so the reader is led to believe the kid is telling things at face value and then realizes over time that his whole world is a fantasy. My problem is that it didn't feel like the reveal came over time but abruptly. I had bought into the zombie story (which is good) but when the reality of the situation is revealed, it's presented (to me, at least) with enough ambiguity (because maybe the kid is not "all there" mentally) that I'm still left uncertain about which is real and which is not. Even that can work, leaving the reader forever uncertain but the whole presentation just needed to be smoothed out a bit.

I completely agree with your concern about revealing too much to the reader because there's the fear you'll drift into telling and not showing.

I still don't like the ending, though, even less so after you've explained it. :) Dead men (or boys) tell no tales. If you want them to both die at the end, you really can't have the kid tell the story directly. Well, you can, of course, but to me it's a little too much. How does this dead boy relay the story? As a ghost? Are we getting a live feed from his brain that ends when they hit the tree? Without changing the details, the only way I could see it working is if you changed the perspective from first to third person, but that would affect the tone as well, as you'd naturally create more distance between the reader and the kid's recollections.

The other thing would be to have the kid survive but not elaborate on anything after the collision if you want to preserve the ambiguity of whether or not the zombies were real. Or the kid could say or do something to cement that the zombies weren't real.

And actually, knowing the hitchhiker is just an innocent victim, why would Rich let the kid shoot her? It seems he's stealing stuff but not necessarily going out and gratuitously murdering people -- or is he? Even if they were real zombies, it seems to me he wouldn't trust the kid with a rifle. That's more of a nitpick, though.

And I only write all this because I do think it was an excellent story, as I mentioned in my first post, it just had issues that left me unsatisfied. I'd be curious to see how you'd handle a rewrite.

I don't think the newspaper article would work, in part for reasons I give above.

[russellmz]

...and they both died.


what!?

it was clear to me that the zombies were a cover to fool the narrator into committing crimes. i thought that was laid out and revealed subtly but clearly.

but they both died? i assumed the narrator got a head injury and then was telling his story to the cops/doctors. i think the story is stronger if he survives to tell the tale. as mentioned above, first person tends to imply survival or at least, has not shuffled off this mortal coil.

is there a particular reason why you want the narrator to be dead?


And actually, knowing the hitchhiker is just an innocent victim, why would Rich let the kid shoot her?

rich is fooling a not so bright kid into thinking the entire world is overrun with zombies to use him. he's a very evil person. i doubt the killing of a random woman would turn him off.

[Arioch]

Hmm, I told the story in present tense to circumvent the problems with "dead man tell no tales"-syndrome, and I don't see a problem with a dying/dead narrator, but maybe the story would work better if the kid survives. I like to see how different the view of the reader and the author is, as I never thought of the kid as handicapped, or of the hitchhiker as a woman :).

On the topic of Rich making the kid kill the hitchhiker: He made the kid clean his bloody knife after the first stop and we heard a shot at the second, although we don't know if that one was fatal. He's a killer and a thief, although we don't know if he's just evil or as deranged as the stories he tells Dick.

Thanks for the input guys, I really enjoy this. I will definitely try to rewrite this story in the future.

[Creole Ned]

A dying narrator is fine. A dead narrator, not so much. That's one of those unspoken things you don't do (unless the story is deliberately framed as from the perspective of a ghost/dead person -- see a possible upcoming exercise, oddly enough). I'll see if I can turn up an explanation on why to avoid the dead narrator that explains it better than I can.

Part of my criticism may be because I like the zombie story better than the "psycho killer with kid" story but that's my own personal bias showing. Strangely, I found the zombie story more credible, so that may have been a factor, too. The transition from "no, this isn't about zombies, it's about some sick guy taking along an innocent (if somewhat addled) kid on his killing/crime spree" wasn't as smooth as I'd like but it worked for Russell, so again it may just be me not latching onto the relevant details and sorting through them as intended.

It'd be interesting to get more views on this. I want to know if I'm totally out in left field here. :)

[russellmz]

It'd be interesting to get more views on this. I want to know if I'm totally out in left field here. :)

the biggest clues are the fact that rich runs from the cops, which rich explains as the zombies getting smarter. assuming your standard shambler zombie as opposed to your "send more medics" type zombie, that explanation doesn't hold up.

when the hitchhiker is killed, it screams, which implies it's human rather than zombie.

the "zombie" cops fire back. so either rich lied or the zombies became smart enough to drive and maintain cars, and load and fire guns.

the last indication is the fact that zombie movies exists. i may be mistaken, but this happens somewhat rarely in zombie universes.

[Creole Ned]

Ah, see, it's those very zombie movies that threw me off!

Like the kid, I bought into the idea that zombies could adapt and "get smarter" because several films have explored the topic and I find it an interesting one. Granted, it becomes too much of a stretch to really believe when it comes to the zombie cops, so maybe I find the concept of zombie cops sufficiently enthralling to shut down my critical thinking. :)

And good catch on the hitchhiker. The scream never registered with me, for some reason.

The kid watching zombie movies struck me as more of a meta nod to the genre more than anything.

So in summary, yeah, I am mostly out in left field here.

[russellmz]

Paladin-
The characters, it turned out, were so interchangable that I actually got them reversed at the end, even when both I and my wife proof read it. I needed to do more to differentiate them. Like my first story, I got stuck for an ending and opted to end on a gag line. It didn't really fit with the rest of the story, but with the deadline approaching and the story taking longer to reach it's conclusion than I had intended, it seemed like killing off the characters in a quick one-two punch solved the problem rather neatly. Having Tom be accidently killed by Howard resolved what to do with him, because aside from being a thief, I'd written him to be a basically normal, compassionate guy. He probably deserved to get away, or at least end up alive, but I didn't want to push the story much further at that point.

i liked their banter, from their joking about the lady truck driver and harry saying "fuck you" with a grin.

maybe if tom stopped to help the cop, that would get a better ending for tom? it felt to me the story was from tom's point of view, then he gets killed and it's harry's pov in the last paragraph.


creole ned's revised story still tbd.

[Rimbo]

By the way, writing detailed feedback is hard. :P Let me know if I'm being too specific, too vague, too picky or whatever.

Nothing wrong with that.

I don't have nearly as detailed of feedback as the rest of you did. I enjoyed reading all of the stories and writing.

I appreciate the feedback from everyone, and look forward to the feedback for #12 (which I'll be posting presently).

[Rimbo]

I was able to figure out from Arioch's story that there weren't any zombies really. I thought he did a fantastic job of it, actually. What's more, Arioch's story really sticks in my mind.

On mine... definitely right that the Area 51 reveal was too soon. And it seems no one was happy with the lack of a monster description. I actually had something like a giant pterodactyl, but with ambulatory legs, in my head, but I wanted to describe just enough that the reader would come up with whatever image was most terrifying to him. But I clearly didn't give enough. (I've found that horror works best when you don't see what's killing and rending -- you only get to hear it, smell it, or see the aftermath. But this was the wrong way to apply that and probably the wrong story.)

And I admit that part of the problem was that I didn't know what was in the damned bag, either. I wanted to see how far I could get in the story without coming up with anything. :) The only reason I gave them a destination of Los Alamos is because I've done the drive from Amarillo to Santa Fe a thousand times myself (as a passenger in my parents' Suburban), and got myself hungry just thinking about those green chile Quarter Pounders and the amazing burgers at The Shed and, of course, that restaurant off the tracks in Lamy. And of course Los Alamos has the Nat'l Labs there, which has an air of government mystery, but I fucked up by suggesting that Area 51 would be better.

By the way, I noticed a lot of profanity in the stories when I read 'em. In general I felt that the profanity was not used very well. I mean, in general, profanity is not a great way to express oneself, but when you're writing a story and you're trying to demonstrate that a character is stressed, simply throwing in a "Fuck!" here and there doesn't cut it. The character can say, "Fuck," but we need to know why. I'm pointing the finger at myself, too, because I'm a lazy fucking writer.

Right! Great feedback, great stories, can't wait to see what happens in #12.

[russellmz]

The only reason I gave them a destination of Los Alamos is because I've done the drive from Amarillo to Santa Fe a thousand times myself (as a passenger in my parents' Suburban), and got myself hungry just thinking about those green chile Quarter Pounders and the amazing burgers at The Shed and, of course, that restaurant off the tracks in Lamy.

i forgot to mention, but yeah, your story did give an authentic air of someone who has driven that route many times before, even though i've never been there.

creole ned
i liked this ending much better. the call back with the hand squeezing works.

i was just reading the seven basic plots by christopher booker and it's weird how the movies and shows i watch do fit the patterns and templates he lists. this story fits the quest best i think. let me put my monocle on and copy out of the book...

the call
life in some city of destruction(home) has become oppressive and intolerable(no orange and biscuits) and the hero must make a long and dangerous journey(to the supermarket).

the journey
the hero and companions encounter a series of ordeals: a monster (the black squirrel!...maybe i'm stretching), temptation ($20,000), and possibly some deadly opposites (not in every story but a bunch seem to have it). it alternates with periods of respite where the hero and companions receive aid advice or comfort from wise old men or beautiful young women(girl with red balloon).

arrival and frustration
the hero arrives within sight of his goal(parking lot) when he sees a new series of obstacles, a last great, most threating ordeal(heart attack).

the goal
after a last 'thrilling escape from death' (literally happens here) the princess (gus...heh) is finally won with an assurance of renewed life stretching indefinitely into the future.

[Creole Ned]

Heh, that's pretty funny.

Yeah, it's interesting to see how you can slot most stories into those archetypes. I haven't seen the list of seven plots for awhile. Internet Public Library on the 7 (and more) plots (http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/plotFARQ.html).

1. [wo]man vs. nature
2. [wo]man vs. man
3. [wo]man vs. the environment
4. [wo]man vs. machines/technology
5. [wo]man vs. the supernatural
6. [wo]man vs. self
7. [wo]man vs. god/religion

[Rimbo]

Heh, that's pretty funny.

Yeah, it's interesting to see how you can slot most stories into those archetypes. I haven't seen the list of seven plots for awhile. Internet Public Library on the 7 (and more) plots (http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/plotFARQ.html).

1. [wo]man vs. nature
2. [wo]man vs. man
3. [wo]man vs. the environment
4. [wo]man vs. machines/technology
5. [wo]man vs. the supernatural
6. [wo]man vs. self
7. [wo]man vs. god/religion

Actually, the way I was taught it, there were only 4. #1 and #3 were identical, #5 and #7 were identical, and #4 didn't exist except as a redux of one of the other 4.

[Creole Ned]

Would have helped if I got my link right, too. :P The IPL details versions of the list that have 1, 3, 7, 20 and 36 basic plots.

[Rimbo]

Ahhh.

Yeah. Well, it was only 8th Grade. :)