[stylist] Comments on external description exercise

[Bridgit Pollpeter]

Chris,

I really felt the pain of Lester. I am intrigued by this character and
find myself wanting to learn more. Great hook, and definitely great job
with those strong verbs and descriptions. One of my favorite lines is:

 like a freshly hatched moth, unfolding its wings for the first time,
Lester 
forced his frozen bones to move, to uncurl from their fetal embrace,
shift 
into a sitting position. He blinked a few more times, ran his fingers 
through his ragged, gray beard, picked out a little piece of carrot.

This is just full of imagery, and we get the sense of his story. Very
moving.

Sincerely,
Bridgit Kuenning-Pollpeter
Read my blog at:
http://blogs.livewellnebraska.com/author/bpollpeter/
 
"History is not what happened; history is what was written down."
The Expected One- Kathleen McGowan

Message: 6
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 20:34:35 -0400
From: "Chris Kuell" <ckuell at comcast.net>
To: "Writer's Division Mailing List" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [stylist] Writing exercise- external descriptions
Message-ID: <5E5C2BAB2DE54D6FAD5AD37F19ECFAA4 at ChrisPC>
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	reply-type=original


Lester

Something hard nudged at his shoulder, interrupted his dream. Elizabeth 
Taylor, dressed in a see-through, silk kimono,   was washing his back.

"C'mon, Lester. Time to get up."

The nudge came harder, pushing Elizabeth far away, forcing him to deal
with 
the cold, the lights, the noise.

"It's almost seven o'clock," the hard voice said. "Time most respectable

folk are at work. Now get up. Move along."

Lester used a dirty finger to smear the sleep glue from his eyes. A dark

figure stood above him, waving a night stick. He blinked, twice, and he
saw 
it was that cop.

 like a freshly hatched moth, unfolding its wings for the first time,
Lester 
forced his frozen bones to move, to uncurl from their fetal embrace,
shift 
into a sitting position. He blinked a few more times, ran his fingers 
through his ragged, gray beard, picked out a little piece of carrot.

"Ain't you got nothin' better to do?" Lester's voice came out uneven, as
if 
one lung had more air than the other.

"Serve and protect," the cop said. "Which means getting bums like you
off 
public benches like this."

Slowly, methodically, Lester put his boots on the pavement and slipped
his 
mismatched socked feet inside. He took the boots off at night to keep
the 
thieves from stealing them. He slept clutching the boots like they were
a 
sack of cash. They had no laces; he'd traded them for a few slugs of
whiskey 
to the Puerto Rican.

Lester rubbed his gloved hands along his thighs in an attempt to bring
about 
feeling. He heard footsteps and rapid breathing, looked up just in time
to 
see a young blonde-haired woman wearing headphones and a bright blue
sports 
bra run by. The cop turned to admire the view.

Lester shut his eyes, slipped a hand into his jacket pocket, past the
crust 
of bread wrapped in a napkin, ran the tip of one exposed finger along
the 
rosary beads. Sylvia's rosary beads. He saw her auburn hair twisted in a

braid halfway down her back, eyes bright as new pennies. It gave him the

will to push himself up, to stand, to shuffle through another day.

chris