Young Writers Society

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What I'd most like to see here is an outline of where we're going next. Since the poetry is so free form and every moment could potentially have a couple of posts by different people to cover it, just scheduling what we want her to experience and who will cover it is important.

I'd like to start with a phone call -- however she receives the message.
And I'd like to decide the plain facts here so we're all on the same page where she's coming from without having to be TOO explanatory in our poetry.



So -- how'd he die?

Mmmmm so many ways to die.

I woopsed and started with a tiny intro to get to know her relationship with her friend, just a bit of a smooth entry to get the reader to love their friendship before she receives the phonecall. This can go on for however long people want to write about happier things.

I love the idea of a phonecall being the turning point. Dramatic and cold.

Personally, I think the best way to avoid being too informative (blatantly) with narrative poetry (like this all will be) is to find a motif in your piece, however long or short, and bring that around. For example, my motif in the entry is "This is _____".

Personally, I think Dialogue is the tricky part!

Also, anyone's welcome to join. Have fun with it!

I love this idea! I'll try to contribute a few poems. So we're not controlling our own character really - just each contributing to the story as a whole.

Right. And theoretically we could just go improv with this -- moving with whatever the next poster does, never saying NO to a suggestion, and see where that takes us?

But just post hard facts here so we can be on the same page when poetic language might make the exact meaning hard to decipher (or sometimes it's not necessary in the poem except in the background).

What are glucosamine chondroitin and rheumatism?

Aley: Glucosamine is a joint supplement (my mom takes a truckload of supplements) and rheumatism is a form of arthritis (though I don't think it's the only one).

I'm definitely intrigued by this, although still a little confused. Hopefully I can contribute once I get a better feel for the whole thing.

Nitey Knight, what are you confused on? There hasn't been lots of solid discussion here, yet, so we're just kinda floatin' along. How do you think he died?!

Yeah I think that's why I'm confused. I thought the first poem "surprise" was the news of the death, but now re-reading, I'm thinking the first two poems are more like memories, which makes a lot more sense.

As for how he died, it has to be something that could look like natural causes. So some sort of poison? Or perhaps an overdose on something he was already taking (so it could look accidental). Or a staged suicide?

Oh yeah! Like Lumi said above, "surprise" was just an intro to the relationship to set up the normalcy before the big event.

I was thinking it could be something really heart wrenching like a disappearance after a party. I remember a friend of mine had a friend of his just disappear, then later the body washed up in the river. So there was a whole period of hope, with a little tinge of expecting the bad because they were drunk and that means no one was really paying attention, but then there was also the time afterward when they finally found out what happened. Then the girl might blame the friends who were around at the time before finally coming to grips with the fact that her guy made a bad choice.

The overdose could be interesting, too -- do we want the guy to be suicidal? Or if there was foul play, what would it be? Who would have done it to him?

There are also things like car accidents, acts of war/mass destruction (school shootings, 9/11...), and the abnormal diseases for young people that still happen, like cancer. We could go with something that could threaten her too, like an STD, etc.

With a murder mystery, since she's not the police that I'm aware of, it would have to be something that they might dismiss without further proof of murder, like poisoning food with infected blood and feeding it to the victim. It could also be something they assume is some terrorist act, but in reality, it was a specific hit.

All that can be figured out later! People just need to post. :P

So, right now we've gone from eating breakfast with someone else, to popping pills, to praying?

Right-o! The difference between this storybook and others is that the narrative isn't a straight line. You'll see a flash here, a slip there, and it'll build into the emotional meta-narrative that connects the "I" to the "You". Try not to think in straight lines. Just very near circles.