Peer Response 1, Week 3

Response to Susannah's Memory 1, Week 3

This story is chock full of interesting, ripe happenings. To start in the middle of the action, you might think of opening with "The house across the street from us was a drug dealer’s mansion" or a brief quip about how your neighbor's tiger crashed your cousin's coming-out party.

Also, you could make this memory pop by streamlining your prose. For example, what if, instead of saying, "I imagine the tiger must have been doped up on some kind of sedative because my father grabbed the chain that hung from its neck and walked it back to the neighbor’s house as if it had been a puppy Labrador that had come to join the festivities and beg for left-over meatballs," you shortened it to: "I suspected animal doping when my father led the tiger back home by its chain, as though it was a puppy Labrador, come to beg for left-over meatballs." That's certainly not the only option for cutting the prose a bit, but I think trimming the language allows the spotlight to remain fixed on this unexpected scene.

I'm fascinated with this background of yours. I imagine you have lots of other stories from this kind of odd neighborhood mingling. I'd love to hear them!