Subtly weave your own opinions into the narrative


Simone was late home from work that day, something that could have been prevented had the local council consulted more widely before implementing their scheme to fully pedestrianise the city centre. At the moment her key turned in the lock of her front door, it was 6:36pm and the streetlights, despite the fact it had been getting dark for the last hour, were just beginning to blink on (another result of the local authorities seemingly being in the pocket of environmental pressure groups, she supposed).
At first, she didn’t see the body slumped in the middle of her flat, bleeding onto the carpet in a way which would undoubtedly require the use of cleaning products whose sale was restricted due to their “hazardous” chemical content. She just wanted effective carpet shampoo without having to consider every so-called endangered fish in every scummy pond, she thought as she screamed in horror.

10 comments:

  1. Another good one, but I reckon nowadays those opinions would mostly of leftist nature rather than conservative.

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  2. Surely 'irrelevant opinions'?

    Subtly weaving your opinions into the narrative, if they relate to the subject, can be really good.

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  3. The last sentence made me snort in a most unladylike manner. This is one of my favourite entries so far (up there with the one about the ant who was NFI to the wedding). Keep up the good (bad) work.

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  4. As with so many of your (absolutely wonderful) posts, there are elements of this post that would be GREAT in a (consciously) humorous novel. I want the comedic novel that contains that last sentence.

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  5. love it, Joel. You is a funny dude.

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  6. And yet, if only I had a dollar for the number of published literary novels I've opened (but usually not finished) wherein the story came to a grinding halt so that the author could hold forth for three pages on his personal philosophy on culture, politics, or, above all, writing...

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  7. The last sentence made me snort in a most unladylike manner.

    Although Silvia spells her name oddly, she described exactly my reaction.

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  8. These may well be the opinions of the author, but I read them as characterization, effectively conveying Simone's libertarianism.

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  9. Well, that's Robert Heinlein in a nutshell.

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  10. Or "Gridlock" by Ben Elton...

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