The Best Of... discussion

So . . . this is the consequence of the turn the Sexuality and Sensuality in Literature thread took.

Your challenge, should you dare to accept it, is to write a Hallowe'en short story.

I'm committed to the defibrillator and necrophiliac story now.

It starts out:

Taffy loved his work.

Really loved his work.

The title is "Taffy Pull."

Post them up on the writing folder on your profiles and link them here.

Remember, we're all friends here, and so we know you've got some weird buried down there . . . If you didn't you wouldn't be here.

Now . . . GO!

Renee wrote: "So . . . this is the consequence of the turn the Sexuality and Sensuality in Literature thread took.

Your challenge, should you dare to accept it, is to write a Hallowe'en short story.

I'm commi..."

Ho...boy. Wish you hadn't said that. I have a gnarly piece that's been simmering for over a year. Don't know if I have the nerve to write it, but...

Write it, Monty.

Free yourself.

From my own experience I can say it should do you good.

Monty J wrote: "Renee wrote: "So . . . this is the consequence of the turn the Sexuality and Sensuality in Literature thread took.

Your challenge, should you dare to accept it, is to write a Hallowe'en short stor..."

Do it !!

I'm in with a freshly penned Hallowe'en piece. Can't promise to follow the guidelines to the letter, though.

Guidelines? What guidelines? :D

Sorry, misread the start of your story as a guideline. Times am just unwrapped, under the counter stoopid. Must be the Taffy Scouser in me.

Okay, you stumped me with "Scouser." There are myriad explanations out there, not a one of them clear — or in agreement!

"Taffy" is familiar.

A little weirdness from my early childhood . . .

I had a set of records, recordings of old nursery rhymes. My favorite, I think because of the minor key, the deep, ominous voice of the narrator (I've a thing for resonant voices with a bit of burr) and the cadence with which it was recited caught my ear, was "Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief, Taffy came to my house . . ."

The big payoff was the last stanza, about stealing the marrow bone and it's consequences. The tone became more sinister, the narrator's voice deepened, and he gave it a note of evil glee.

I loved the whole aura, and at three years old or so, the political and cultural snark is irrelevant.

Philip wrote: "Sorry, misread the start of your story as a guideline. Times am just unwrapped, under the counter stoopid. Must be the Taffy Scouser in me."

Does Taffy Scouser have to do with Welsh accents and Liverpool accents? Or the two mixed together? Or baked taffy in a meat dish?

This from "Scouse Sayings" on the Web:

Paddy, Taffy and Scouse are sat in the pub. Paddy looks up and says, “there’s Jesus drinking at the bar” Taffy says “you’re right, I’m gonna buy him a pint” Paddy and Scouse stick a pint behind the bar for Jesus as well.
Jesus sinks the first pint, walks over to Paddy and shakes him by the hand “ thank you very much for your hospitality” says Jesus “no problem” says Paddy “ My pleasure” Then Paddy says “I don’t believe it, the arthritis in my hand is cured, it’s a miracle”
Jesus then sinks the second pint, walks over to Taffy and shakes him by the hand and thanks him for the pint. Taffy looks down at his hands “my eczema, it’s cleared up, it’s a miracle”
Jesus sinks the third pint, walks over to Scouse with his hand outstretched, Scouse leaps out of his chair and says to Jesus “Eh, keep yer bloody hands off me, it’s taken me years to get this bad back, I’m not losing me disability benefit for you, even if you are Jesus”

So, these are dialects? Paddy's are Irish, Taffy's are Welsh and a scouser is Liverpudlian. And mancs are from Manchester.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIhFw...

Mancs: http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.u...

That same joke is told here, but with variations of Mississippi, Alabama, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky . . .

We call them Mancunians. I've never heard of them being shortened to Mancs. We sometimes used to call them Woollybacks, if they had a thick enough Lancashire accent. Liverpool chippies (carpenters) refer to a hammer as a Manchester screwdriver.

I come partly of Welsh and partly Irish stock, though the Lee bit is from a Great grandfather who emigrated to Liverpool from Cornwall. I'm what they call a Dickie-Sam, because I, both my parents and all of my grand parents were born in the City of Liverpool. I have no known relatives in Ireland, which is a bit strange, since I have many cousins in Wales, especially on the predominantly Welsh-speaking island of Anglesey (Ynys Môn in Welsh).

Since Monty was good enough to quote you a joke with an Englishman (Scouser), a Welshman and an Irishman, perhaps I may be permitted to quote from a piece of my own?

Dic, a man from Newport in South Wales, is telling to jokes to Vaughan (a Taffy Scouser) and a lad from Shropshire. The Newport accent is Welsh, of course, but it's curiously similar to Scouse (probably due to the seafaring connection between the two places). The date is 1919, they're drinking barley wine (very strong ale). The POV at this point is Dic's.

An Englishman, a Scotsman and a Welshman go into Mickey Finn’s Bar in New York. The Englishman says, ‘Mine is a large whisky.’ The bartender looks him over, ‘Scotch or Irish?’ ‘English!’ says the Sais. He chooses a bottle from the rack, blows a cloud of dust off it and pours a stiff one. The Sais takes a good swig, puts a hand to his throat and drops to the floor, choking like. The bartender turns to the Scotsman and says, ‘So, what is your poison?’ He looks up from the body of the Englishman and winks, very cannily, 'Och, I will try a dram of your best Irish.’ The bartender leans over the counter and gives him the secret handshake. Dic leaned over and took Vaughan’s hand. As he shook it he scratched the palm with the nail of his forefinger. Vaughan did likewise, though not quickly enough for Dic to be convinced of him. He went on with the story, ‘Covenanter?’ whispers the bartender. The Scotsman gives him a knowing wink. So the bartender chooses a different bottle from the rack and pours a glass. Scotsman takes a swig of the drink, clutches his throat, chokes and drops to the floor. The bartender turns to the Welshman, but the Welshman gets in first like. ‘Hold it right there,’ he says, ‘I know what you are going to ask.’ ‘What is that?’ says the bartender. ‘Beth gymerch CHI i yfed?’ asks the Welshman. Dic turned to Vaughan with one eyebrow raised. The lad did well enough to answer,
‘Erm...You... erm, what are YOU having?’
Got it! And the bartender claps the Welshman on the shoulder and says, ‘I thought you would never ask. Mine is a rum.’ Iechÿd da!
Iechÿd da!

You don't get dialects in England or Wales (with the possible exception of Wolverhampton - though only because the accent there is so difficult to follow. Glaswegians have what I would call a true dialect because they use many words outside of standard English (as well as a strongly deforming accent). All the Irish people I've ever met (even from Ulster) spoke with such clarity that I don't believe there are dialects on the Emerald Isle either (though I've never been outside of Dublin).

I had a client at an attorney's I worked for who was Glaswegian. I wound up having all the direct dealings with him, escorting him to anyplace official, etc., because I was the only person who could understand him.

I adored him. He was a wee little fella, probably weighed a buck and a quarter soaking wet. He'd met a girlfriend here and they moved in together. Her three young children adored him. She was a tiny, tiny redhead whose ex-husband had, over the course of their marriage, broken nearly every bone in her body, ruptured her spleen, punctured both lungs, lacerated her liver, the whole bit.

The ex-husband was a bruiser, 6'3" and at least 240 pounds.

He busted in their apartment door one night and thought he was going to beat them both with a ball bat.

Our Glaswegian put Ex's redneck ass in the hospital in serious condition.

Believe it or not, the Ex tried to press charges . . . and wound up being charged with breaking and entering, aggravated assault and a few other niceties.

They can be hard fellows. I was talking to one lad about the TV licence fee (everyone has to pay in the UK). Pointing to his nose, he said, "Ach, thee can tak i' oot tae here!"

Got strong lasses, too. Lulu was born in Glasgae, that dear old toon.

On the wagon for a wee cor too, so could do wi' a can o' that Irn Bru.

Progress?

It's taken awhile for it to roil around in my head but now it seems to be off and running.

I steered it out of the Taffy-the-racial-cliche territory:

Taffy loved his work.

I mean he really loved his work.

We called him “Taffy” mainly because it pissed him off. Okay, well, that’s why the name stuck. Kat started calling him that for a couple of reasons. You know those cheap taffy candies stingy people hand out for Hallowe’en? The ones that are all different colors? The kind that take longer to get off your teeth than they do to eat? The last ones left in the trick or treat swag? Taffy (I think we all forgot his regular name, if we ever even knew it) always had a bag of the damned things and kept trying to push ‘em on anyone who happened to come by. Guess he was probably lonesome — it’s that kinda job. And then there was his hair. He dyed it the same sorta colors as that cheapass sticky candy: pink, minty green, lavender, yellow, aqua . . . sometimes several of them all at once. He looked like a hallucination from a pedophile’s acid trip.

We were the night crew. I worked security (not like anyone was gonna try to break in there, ya know?). Kat and Pill (his name was really Phil, but “Pill” suited him better for all sortsa reasons, and once Kat sticks you with a name it sticks for-fucking-ever) worked clean-up. “Janitorial staff” is the official job title. Security paid more and I had a badge and a tazer. Taffy was always after me, trying to borrow it. The tazer, I mean, not the badge.


I'm dying to see these stories, guys!

Hi Renee

Where are we going to post our stories on the night? Can we have a new discussion section for member's fiction (like we have for verse)?

Hadn't thought about that. I'd figured on posting it in my GoodReads writing folders and then posting a link here, but a new section is a good idea.

Renee wrote: "Hadn't thought about that. I'd figured on posting it in my GoodReads writing folders and then posting a link here, but a new section is a good idea."

I don't have a writing folder. I suppose it's about time I checked that out. The main prob for me with posting here is formatting.

I've not had any formatting trouble with cut and paste, but I'm using Pages (Mac) and it seems to translate without any glitches (so far).

Now that I've said that all sorts of anomalies will crop up.

*bangs head on desk*

This thing has taken on a life of its own. It's at 4000 words. And counting. *sigh*

Mine's 3,886 and things keep conspiring against me putting it to bed.

Plus, you lot over there have got several hours on us.

Maybe it's mean of me, but it's good to hear I'm not the only one who has to deal with story metastasis. Is yours character driven too?

That's what happened to BDD. It was supposed to be a short story, or novella, to tie an anthology together. *she says at over 135,000 words*

These damn stories. They just insist on being told as they *really* happened.

Plot driven, I suppose. I'm cheating a bit though. I already had the some of the main characters. It's gonna end up as a draft, and maybe an unfinished one.

My friend, Lorraine, read the first part of mine and remarked, "this feels like it's going to want to be a book sometime." *headdesk*

I think you and I are in the same predicament, lol. I guess it's a good one to have, if you're going have one.

Actually, I did say I was cheating.

Here's my Challenge story. I couldn't upload it into Goodreads without losing all my precious formatting. So I have temporarily set it up as a page on my blog. As I said, it's a cheat. I have set a chapter of my novel in progress around Hallowe'en.

http://downwritefiction.blogspot.com/...

I think my friend Lorraine is right, this thing wants to be more than a short story, but, if I can wrestle it to the ground I might be able to pin it for at least a two count before it gets up and continues on.

It definitely fits with the thread that spawned it, Sexuality and Sensuality in Literature. /facepalm

Okay. In the nick of time, here's the mindspawn — and there will be many edits as time goes by, I know.

The title changed to "Metamorphoses."

https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...

Renee wrote: "Okay. In the nick of time, here's the mindspawn — and there will be many edits as time goes by, I know.

The title changed to "Metamorphoses."

https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/......"

Wow. That was an unexpected read. Neat twist in the plot.

I think it could do with some judicious trimming, even as a two-stroke machine. But what the hell do I know?

Definitely not one for the kids at bedtime, Hallowe'en or no.

Thanks for that somewhat different climax to the evening.

Thanks :-) And you're welcome. Just got back from taking care of my friend's horses. It's turning cold tonight.

I've always thought the most horrifying things come from the dark corners inside us, the ones we're terrified to look at, afraid they'll take over. One of the purposes of stories is to show us those places in ourselves so we can shine a light on them and put them into perspective. Or so I believe ;-)

The monsters aren't always where or who we think they are.



I SO agree on the trimming. Sometimes characters run on, and then I've got junk in my head from a couple of the people in the writing group I was with (several of us are splitting off, to get away from the two), who want EVERY FREAKING DETAIL explained or they *don't get it*. I find myself plugging every hole, answering every possible question, heading them off at the pass.

Then I have to walk away from it for awhile, sometimes a long while, and go back to it later.

That story's a great tease for the whole book, Phil. I love the tone (left a comment). It reminds me of the Thursday Next books, although it's totally original.

Renee wrote: ...who want EVERY FREAKING DETAIL explained or they *don't get it*. I find myself plugging every hole, answering every possible question, heading them off at the pass.

I was thinking of the placing of the cameras, stuff about the screens, much of the security guard business. You could pare a lot of that back to points of punctuation in the plot. Conversely, you could do more on the sleazy antics at the hospital. Perhaps throw in an anecdote or two?

Regarding the sex, I think it's a case of much more or much less. Much much more if you want the story to run as genre porn. Quite a bit less explicit stuff if you want a wider audience. Since you want to make a point with it, why not go with less, bring it in under the R category (or whatever it is over there)? There would be no need for coyness, just a word or two down from all the cocks'n'clits.

Can I make another suggestion? Lilith needs a little more work. I should try to think through what it would mean to be woken up after being pronounced dead (such things DO happen, fgs). At the moment, she's a bit manikin-like. I mean, why shouldn't she feel shame at being naked? It seems like she's playing along with something.

I haven't read your comments on my piece. That's next. No, sorting the central heating is next.

Wow, I wish I had some horses to look after now and again. My wife's a vet and I work with vets who work with horses, but I never get near them. It's all dogs, sheep, chickens and cattle with us.

Ah, but the point was to cross a literary boundary with the sexuality, per Monty's observations. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Goodreads (ie society) puts up the boundaries for you. While many readers would not have ventured past the telltale warning screen, others would have done so reaching for their flies.

Making a crossover between sex-based writing and writing about sex by creating an exclusive, exploitive text is like doing a U-turn in a one way street. Far better is to play footsie with your reader using the 'how far can you go?' approach. This is exactly what "50 Shades..." does (though for commercial rather than creative purposes). It only pretends to be a pornographic BDSM book. In fact it's tame, as well as lamely written.

Regarding extreme sex, such as necro and snuff, CSI and the like have already taken TV audiences there without crossing over into actual porn. Literature could do so much more. I think your idea of a sleaze boat hospital is brilliant. Work it up before someone steals it!