Opposites?

After doing the readings for Monday, which were "Go Like This" and "How to Talk to your Mother (Notes)", I initially thought of them as almost opposite stories both in time and to some extent writing style.

Here's the most obvious one to get it out of the way: "Go Like This" presents a tale in a "correct/standard" way, with time moving forward. "How to Talk to your Mother" is in the exact opposite order. I feel that if either story flipped their chronology around, that is to say if Liz narrated in reverse chronological order and Ginnie narrated the story in chronological order, the stories would be much more lame to be frank. First of all, it's impossible for Liz to narrate in reverse because she'd be dead, and dead people can't narrate. Even if its a story about something like her life flashing before her eyes, I feel the story would 1. be pretty cliche, like the type of stuff you see in second rated movies, and 2. would make little sense, as when your life flashes before your eyes you (supposedly) see the whole course of your life, not just the small details a couple of months before you die. To add onto that, we would also loose a lot of the detail and feelings given off such as when she is talking to her friends about suicide, trying to get their support, her explanation to Blaine about her suicide, as well as her thoughts right before she died. We would also loose a certain sense of honesty from the author, as right now the format seems more like a journal that Liz would pour her thoughts into, and even see her feelings in the moment (like when she tells Elliot "Hey, baby, I'm not dead yet; I'm writing. . ."). As for "How to Talk to your Mother", I feel that making the story flow in reverse chronological order gives it sort of a spin. First of all, if I read it chronological order, then we'd be starting from when she was born, then to her toddler years, and I'd think that that would be quite boring. However, starting out with her murmuring to a fridge makes you think "what the hell happened to this girl" and makes your read on, and as you read further you find out more and more about the things that lead to her going crazy.

Another difference is the time period scope. Like I mentioned above, Liz's story happens over a course of a couple of months, and only talks about certain days in detail, while Ginnie's tales cover the range of 43 years, and her descriptions are very general, summing up whole years in a few sentences. Again, I feel that these narrations worked for their perspective stories: if the styles were switched, the stories would make no sense. For example, the whole point of Liz's narration is to justify her suicide, putting her judgement on paper to further secure her resolve. If we get the whole scope of her life, we would get a lot of irrelevant information as well as little information for the actual point of the story (like I mentioned previously), which is her going through with her suicide. Like so, if we were only to get a short segment of Ginnie's life, we wouldn't see the process (backwards) of how she became from a child who gives her dolls names, to a teenager who can't appreciate her father's love, to a woman who has gone through so many abortions or births (we never quite get to know).

I feel that both of these stories were very well written and unique in their style It would be hard to create another story with similar formats, especially the one in reverse chronological order -- though now I feel like I must mention that for our short stories I was lucky enough to peer edit a story that was in this reverse chronological order (which worked very nicely).