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comment by daltonslaw
daltonslaw  ·  3402 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Today's writing prompt: The Beginning

I smile and look at this person. I've never met her before, but being a generous young woman, she offers me a hit of her joint. How kind of her! Never have I exchanged a word with her, yet amid all these lowlifes and bums, and idiotic teenagers, she decides to take her chances and offer me the chance to relieve me of the burden of my sobriety. I gladly accept and ask about her name. "I'm Françoise" she says, in a heavy norman accent. She isn't especially pretty, but she isn't exactly ugly. She had a certain allure to her that quite intrigued me. "Blaise!" I exclaim as I bow and kiss her hand, "pleased to meet you". She laughs and gives me a funny grin, at which I smile. "Would you like to dance," I say in my most refined voice, "mademoiselle?". She denies my request, but invites me to sit in front of her. Then we just stare into each other's eyes, not really because of anything, just that our brains were too clouded to say anything. Suddenly, I interrupt, and ask whose house we're in. She says it's hers. We take another hit. "I guess we should all apologise about how we're wrecking it," I laugh. She giggles, in an insincere way, not showing that she's bothered or anything, just showing that she wouldn't if she were in her right mind.

She then takes my hand, stands up and leads me to her room, without saying a word. It's a dump, but then again, I wasn't expecting anything else. "Well, she says, now that we're alone, we can talk better, don't you think?" I didn't really mind the others, so I shrug. " Look at it," she says pointing to the room, "what do you see?", "Well, it doesn't seem as if you put more effort into it". She gives me that funny look again, at which, again, I proceed to laugh. "I'm kind of confused, I'm not sure what you want, is it company, a conversation, or sex?" She looks around the room, sits down on a pile of clothes and sighs. "Any of them, really, I just want someone around," she answers "Hence the party". "Can I stay here?" I ask "I don't really want to go home tonight, and my parents don't really mind." She nods, and says "On one condition; please talk to me as long as you can".





user-inactivated  ·  3402 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I like present tense because it gives the whole thing a sense of ethereal urgency. It fits that the characters are getting high and sitting around. It makes me feel like I'm in the midst of the decision making process with the character.

Isherwood  ·  3402 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Thanks for the entry! Glad to have you and you're off to a great beginning.

It's an interesting start and you seem to have a good setup for the upcoming middle. I would say two things 1) I want to know the characters better and 2) I want to feel like I'm in the place more. Fran has a bit of description about her, but I have no image of the narrator. I don't have an image of the house either. Take a little time throughout the story to fill in the world and the people a bit.

On the topic of people, also give me some emotion. I know there's some kind of feeling between these two people, you painted a great little interaction between them, but I want to know at least how the narrator feels about it. Get in there and share some depth.

That's it for this one and thanks again for submitting.

daltonslaw  ·  3402 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Thanks for the feed, I'll follow up in the next one, where I think I'll develop my characters a bit more.