Party notes, taken from an unfortunately sober point of view.
-Two fully grown men are playing WWE in the front yard.
-Three girls are crying somewhere in the house.
-Five hippies are standing around a fire.
-Two shirtless white guy are sandwiched between two big, black girls.
-Eight people are sitting on the owners bed, smoking pot.
-Ten guys and ten girls are going home alone.
-Five of Ten drunk hook-ups went poorly.
-Zero children conceived, hopefully.
-Thirty red cups.
-Five different kinds of vodka.
-Hundreds of beer.
-One sober house owner in case the cops come.
-Zero cops the entire night.
Ben,
ReplyDeleteFirst off, I love the structural idea of this free write. I think that listing off aspects of real-life situations is a great way to get poetic material. It would even be interesting to keep this list form, organized in bullet points, throughout revisions. However, I also think that you stuck too close to the expected, the known. These are more or less typical party observations (alcohol, pair-ups and loners, etc.). This can be transformed into ANY kind of party. Your eventual tone can be angry, depressed, remorseful, blaming, or even turned to show relief, reflection, you get the idea. The first two lines do the best job of individualizing THIS party, pointing it out as full of specific images. Another line I do really like is "Thirty red cups". It adds variation to line length and calls up a particular image and night-theme without being overly explicit.