While reading the beginning of your post, I wondered whether writing a story in which you introduce a hippo and then never mention the hippo again would work. The point would not be to annoy the reader (though I'm sure it would) but to challenge her assumptions about how life proceeds. I mean, in our daily lives we depend perhaps too muc…
While reading the beginning of your post, I wondered whether writing a story in which you introduce a hippo and then never mention the hippo again would work. The point would not be to annoy the reader (though I'm sure it would) but to challenge her assumptions about how life proceeds. I mean, in our daily lives we depend perhaps too much on the security that we know what's coming next and on the idea that everything must happen for a purpose. But maybe that's too much of a gimmick or too contrived. Off-hand, I can't think of a piece of writing where it worked.
You make a good point about the gun going off sooner than we expected. That didn't occur to me, but I see it now. And I appreciated when you wrote, "It takes his feelings all that time to catch up to reality." I think the word that I used in my last comment, "disassociate," is not as good, because it's not as concrete and direct, as "shock." The only value of "disassociate" is the clearer sense of the mind going blank, as if separating from the physical body, and the snap of the divergence. But "shock" is less clinical and more comprehensive.
I look forward to mining this story further. By the way, FWIW, I'm not (yet, at any rate) participating here in order to improve my writing. For the time being, I'm here to learn to read more attentively and thoughtfully -- although I'm getting inspired to try a short story. For me, your method connects the head and the heart better than any literary criticism I've read, most of which leaves me cold. So, thanks for that.
While reading the beginning of your post, I wondered whether writing a story in which you introduce a hippo and then never mention the hippo again would work. The point would not be to annoy the reader (though I'm sure it would) but to challenge her assumptions about how life proceeds. I mean, in our daily lives we depend perhaps too much on the security that we know what's coming next and on the idea that everything must happen for a purpose. But maybe that's too much of a gimmick or too contrived. Off-hand, I can't think of a piece of writing where it worked.
You make a good point about the gun going off sooner than we expected. That didn't occur to me, but I see it now. And I appreciated when you wrote, "It takes his feelings all that time to catch up to reality." I think the word that I used in my last comment, "disassociate," is not as good, because it's not as concrete and direct, as "shock." The only value of "disassociate" is the clearer sense of the mind going blank, as if separating from the physical body, and the snap of the divergence. But "shock" is less clinical and more comprehensive.
I look forward to mining this story further. By the way, FWIW, I'm not (yet, at any rate) participating here in order to improve my writing. For the time being, I'm here to learn to read more attentively and thoughtfully -- although I'm getting inspired to try a short story. For me, your method connects the head and the heart better than any literary criticism I've read, most of which leaves me cold. So, thanks for that.