100 DAYS PROJECT: #29

June 20th, 2009 by susan


Hot Dogs and Beans

29hotdogsandbeansWhat was coming to me as a Chekhovish tale turned into a hard-to-write reality with a more serious tone and no sense of humor whatsoever.

From Steve’s story there were plenty of options; the serialization, the metafictional reference, the element of complication, the building of tension, the pacing via dialogue. All that, and I simply chose beans.

This story didn’t come easy and I’m not sure I’m as happy with it as I would be with some more reworking. The links are attempting to run a parallel world of three people yet play a lot with time. The focus is on relationships and fear and that’s where it was harder for me to be as concise as a flash fiction (though I really should copy and paste the text into Pages and see what the word count really comes out to be) wants the story to be.

4 Responses to “100 DAYS PROJECT: #29”

  1. mary ellen Says:

    Funny, I didn’t take any humor from that one, either, although it was funny when read.

  2. mary ellen Says:

    I love the tension in this. It never leaves the piece. This is very dark. You should definitely tweak this and submit it somewhere.

  3. susan Says:

    Thanks, Mary Ellen–though I’m guessing that the dark side’s your preferred side! It looks like while you and I turned to drugs and sex, Steve was content with creating something from bean dip. What’s that say about us all?

  4. mary ellen Says:

    Live fast, party hard, regret–never!