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From: Katie McN <katie@katiemcn.com>
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NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 09 Aug 2001 11:36:45 PDT
Subject: {ASSM} {REVIEW} REVIEW - BECKY and ME as told to Adrienne Brown
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2001 05:10:04 -0400
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BECKY & ME
(c)   2001 as told to Adrienne Brown.  All rights reserved.


Morgan recently posted a story called "The Callaways: Jean &
Jim." Some of Adrienne Brown's friends were mentioned in the
story and decided to "set the record straight." They did it in
the story Becky & Me with the help of Adrienne. The story can be
found here:


<http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Collections/Alt.Sex.Stories.Moderated/Year2001/31663>


What can you say about a story that ends with this piece of
advice?

"And so, that's it.  Just remember my advice: in this land of
plenty, a girl must spread her legs and grab any opportunity that
cums her way!"


The story is a humorous piece describing the life of two women by
the name of Ms. Grant and Ms. Richmond who operate a Personal
Services business where they provide very personal services,
indeed. In addition to the discussion of Morgan's story, we also
read the bios of the two women. They've gone an awful long way in
a mighty short time.  

When I first started reading the story, I discovered one of the
characters was named Amy Grant. I usually don't care for Fan
Fiction stories and seeing the name of a well known Christian
Musician gave me pause. There was no reference to the famous Amy
Grant in the story which was a relief for me.

The story is fairly long and contains quite a bit of narrative
summary. This would normally turn me off, but the story is told
so well, it didn't bother me.  I felt like I was sitting over a
cup of coffee listening to one of my friends tell me a story. A
very nice writing effect. The story started out with the
suggestion of second person, but maintains third simple
throughout so we get the best of both worlds as far as I'm
concerned.

Adrienne developed a voice for her character, Amy, who is the
narrator of the story.  I had no problem seeing the character.
Early in the story we are told that Adrienne edited the story so
the combination of poor grammar in some places and phrasing of an
obviously educated person in others was not a problem. This was a
smart move on Adrienne's part. Mentioning that she was editing
the story prevented me from being trouble by some of the
language. There are several Post Scripts at the end of the story
where the narrator discusses how the story was created. These
were fun to read, but would not have been enough to get me past
the language. I made a note of this technique and may use it
myself someday in a story. Thanks, Adrienne.

There were quite a few phrases that painted a picture of the
narrator. Here is one that gave me a giggle:

"Since I'm not the brightest bulb in the string of lights, ... "

Dialog like the above was used in the story along with a few
cases of incorrect grammar to remind the reader that a lower
class person is talking.  The following was found in the story a
few times:

"Becky and me disagree ... "

Grammars errors like the above happened periodically, just about
the time I was forgetting that the character was a hooker who got
through High School and College by granting personal favors to
her teachers as opposed to actual study. This worked well for me.

The nature of the story didn't provide a lot of opportunities for
dialog. I found most of what the story contained to be well done.
There was one section, however, that bothered me and I wonder if
it could be improved:

'She paused just a moment.  "Another thing.  Whoever that Morgan
is who wrote that story seemed to know his way around that place.
I mean, how many three hundred acre estates are there up in
Deerfield?  And how many of those have not one, but two nearly
identical sprawling ranch-style homes built around an eight-lane
Olympic size swimming pool?  Would you believe it?  The
Dawsons--Jean and Jim--live in that second home!  And each of
those homes have built-in climate control systems, very unusual.

'"So, when I saw you and Ms. Richmond named...  I mean, saw your
names in the story, I just wondered."

'"Well, it's possible that we may have met Mr. ...  What was his
name again?"'

It's usually a good idea to break up long winded dialog like that
shown above. Normally, no more than three sentences should be
written before something else happens. Dialog speeds up the
action and so is very useful in excitement building. Too much
dialog gives the reader a subconscious feeling that he or she is
racing and soon feels put upon. Extensive dialog can be broken up
with what writers call a beat. This simply means adding a little
action in the dialog to maintain a reasonable story pace. In this
case, Adrienne might consider adding some action to indicate the
character was getting excited just before the words:

"Would you believe it?"

I think additional action is needed just before:

"So, when I saw you and Ms. Richmond named ... "

I mentioned earlier that there was a large amount of narrative
summary in this story. It works well for the most part with the
exception of this part:

'Anyway, Rachel blushed ever so slightly and then plunged ahead
and toldus about ASSM, which, of course, we knew about already
(_but notthat our dear sweet Rachel read it!_).  We thanked her,
let her get to work, and thought no more about the story.  Until
last week.  That was when Rachel, going over our bookings,
informed us that although business volume and new inquiries were
still at the seasonal rate, conversion of inquiries into personal
contracts had dropped off drastically.  We went over the records
with her and found that the drop off began with the posting of
"Jean & Jim."  Two in the first week, none since then.'

This paragraph needs work. The conversational tone of an
uneducated rustic doesn't come through here. To be honest, I
found this hard to read at any level. It really slowed the story
down and I'm glad this was not how the rest of the story was
written.

There were a couple of minor things that I'll mention here since
I know Adrienne is looking for all possible input. 

We find this sentence:

" ... but that was strictly business; the marriage was collateral
on the loans ..."

I suggest getting rid of all semicolons. They are hardly ever
used in published fiction and certainly wouldn't be something one
would expect in a story told by a low class person. The semicolon
could be replaced by a period and the next part reads perfectly
well as a sentence.

I noticed that an ellipsis was used a few times in the story. It
was not overdone and used properly in dialog. Normally an
ellipsis is typed as space ... space. This is the normal rule for
manuscript preparation. 


Anyone who wants a fun read should take a look at Adrienne's
story. She does a nice job writing a humorous piece which is a
challenge for many writers. She also has good story telling
skills and keeps the readers interest throughout. Two thumbs up
from Katie.

--
It's me! Your pal,

Katie McN <katie@katiemcn.com>

Read all my stories at:
www.asstr-mirror.org\~Katie_McN\

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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