levelwave wrote in message ...
Sheryl Rosen wrote:

He's telling a story.
We weren't there, he was. He is describing the scene.
A good story teller provides details so that you can visualize it the way he
witnessed it. Ever read Hemingway? Faulkner? It takes them 3 paragraphs to
describe the evening air. But when you finish reading those 3 paragraphs,
you can almost SMELL it, they described it so vividly.

By providing the detail that they were elderly, chinese ladies, you
immediately get a visual in your mind. If he had just said "two people",
the story wouldn't have been as interesting to read.


Thank you Sheryl. You just proved my point. Now where were you when I
was getting flamed for this *exact* same thing?

A few months ago I started my story with "An elderly black lady in a
wheel chair" to "describe the scene" just as Mark did... and I got
Flamed pretty bad... I guess it's OK to mention their race if it's
Chinese and not Black... too funny...

That's the way it seems to be on TV news crime stories. I remember
once - in the same news broadcast on a local station - two crimes
were reported. On was about a woman who was beaten to death by a
homeless man she was kind enough to take into her house. No mention
of the killer's race even though he was still at large. A few minutes
later, another news stories about two men who had been "gay bashed".
They stated that "a group of Asian men were later arrested" for the crime.
No mention of the race of a criminal still at large (later when he was
finally arresed it turned out he was black...), but no problem mentioning
that the gay bashers were Asians even though they were already in custody.



~john!