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Tuesday, April 30, 2013

MOM DROPS THE ULTIMATUM...(part two)

Today we have the next installment of Chapter One - MOM DROPS THE ULTIMATUM...

     It started on a Monday. The End of My Life. Ah, now I'm interested.
     See, I hate doing Nothing. But I do it anyway. Because in the end, doing Nothing seems just a bit better than doing Something. Something is too ambiguous. How am I supposed to know what’s going to happen if I do Something? At least, if I do Nothing, I know for a fact that Nothing is going to happen. Love the logic - makes perfect sense to me!
     So here (the word here implies present tense; I'd change it to 'there I was.') I was, doing Nothing, AKA shopping. It was the day before Mother’s Day, and because my mom liked surprises just as much as I did, she wanted to pick out her present with me. 
     “Look, Bernie,” she said, holding up a shirt. “Doesn’t this bring out my eyes?”
     My mom was still a child at heart. I used to think that grownup stopped caring about those kind of things, but she still did.
     “What doesn’t?” My mom had these great big blue eyes that are always smiling. This would be a good place to mention what color eyes our narrator has. Is she jealous of her mom's eyes?
     “Why don’t you try it on?” I suggested.
     “Wait.” She disappeared and reappeared with the same blue shirt. “We should be matching! Here, try on yours, too.”
     I groaned and took it. Ew. It was a bright, floral blouse in that all-the-rage see-through style—chiffon they called it. Totally not my thing. I preferred natural tones. But to make her happy, I headed over to the fitting rooms.
     I guess I forgot to do the whole Peek-Under-For-Feet thing because I really just wanted to get trying the thing on over with. At this point in time, I didn’t have a healthy relationship with mirrors (still don’t now). My mom didn’t know that of course. Part of strength is keeping certain issues to yourself. Else, this world would be a bit spew-pot of everyone’s problems.
     “Just in and out,” I muttered to myself, stepping over piles of clothes on the ground. The first door I came to pushed over easily. I started to go in.
     Well, hello naked person.


Okay, admittedly I cut this off where I did to entice interest in tomorrow's post, but still, you do want to read on don't you? I know I do. First off I want to know who naked person is and what's going to happen. Second I'm curious about what our narrator looks like and maybe the mirror in the dressing room will show me. I know she has an eating disorder but does that mean she's overweight? Is shopping torture like it is for some overweight people? Is she underweight? Neither? And I want to know more about her relationship with mirrors. Does she avoid looking in them altogether? Even before she steps into the dressing room there's an opportunity to show how she feels about herself, what her body image is, and for women and girls, regardless of weight, this is an issue we can all relate to.

Now, what do you guys think of this next installment? Any suggestions? Comments? Do tell :)

6 comments:

Patchi said...

I love this page and I can't wait to see who the naked person is.

This is just my opinion, but I wondered why the novel didn't start here. I would move the eating disorder paragraphs to the part where she is thinking about her aversion to mirrors.

Also, maybe a size reference here would help us picture the narrator:
>>She disappeared and reappeared with the same blue shirt [snarky comment about size].

I'm definitely coming back tomorrow.

mshatch said...

I was sort of thinking the same thing.

Alicia Willette-Cook said...

I agree that this seems a much better beginning. Much more focus. There's dialog. There's action. There's suspense. There's internal struggle. I tripped a bit over what "spew-pot" meant. Never heard that before. But I'm pretty smaht. Figured it out. :)

Again. Great voice.

blankenship.louise said...

Testing...

Charity Bradford said...

*sigh* Sorry to be the odd ball out. There are lots of things that I like in this passage, but it still doesn't hook me. It's all character building, which is good--and you need it. But for some reason I'm not really in yet.

For some reason my brain wants to say that the nothing/something conversation has been done, but I can't remember where so never mind. :)

I usually give a book 20 pages so I'd keep reading.

Huntress said...

A truly excellent submission!!

Edits:
I'd cut "...just a bit..." I recognize a Fellow Lover of Capitalization.

AKA: I’d use small case for aka, but that is personal pref.

"My mom had these great big blue eyes that are always smiling." This line seems clunky to me. Maybe it is the tense? Try re-writing this sentence by cutting the verbs.

"Else, this world would be a bit spew-pot of everyone’s problems" Missing some words here?

Humorous, clever and oozing with Voice. A great piece!