> Don't change that. It's a wonderful way of conveying the coldness she (the dead girl) must have felt from her family. It's not realistic, but it doesn't have to be to do its mission. It's kind of a hyperbole to make a point. It makes it more poetic.
>

A form of hyper-realism, as my writing teacher would call it. We learned about that yesterday... about things that aren't necessarily totally realistic, but that are slightly exaggerated and make sense in the context of the story.

Like, oh... one of the examples he gave yesterday was a short story in which a man complained about how his wife smelled funny and black hairs and fruit bits fell out of her hair. She worked at a primate house, with some superintelligent monkeys, and eventually fell in love with one of them. Realistic? No. But it's satiric hyper-realism. It was pretty cool, actually, even though it sounds dumb here. A lot of little nuances and stuff made it a good story.

Sosi"although I did get some odd looks when, in the middle of the story, I cracked up for no *apparent* reason, and it's all you people's fault!"qui