Week Feb. 21-28: A conversation starter

My brother's friends pulled a fake hijack prank on my brother at Dairy Queen, and here's how he opened up with the story:

"We went to Dairy Queen, got blizzards, went outside, talked about a sweet car that passed, walked to the car, got in, and that's when shit hit the fan."

It stood out to me because it built up anticipation if the person who was listening knew something big happened. Otherwise, it would just be ramblings and no one would pay attention. But because I knew there was a prank, I was listening with such intent and his opening sentence built up the suspense. I was wondering in that mess of random crap that didn't really matter to the story where the prank was going to come in. Usually, this would be a not so good technique, but I thought in this case it was actually a great way to build up that anticipation and then deliver the punch at the end. The summarization aspect of it, not using exposition, made the rhythm fast-paced, so it didn't seem like I was listening to a long line of crap. I believe this sentence is an example of where its not completely parataxis or hypotaxis. Grammatically, it would be complete after Dairy Queen, but the final point, the point that makes the sentence, isn't until the end, and the last phrase of the sentence is one that climaxes anticipation so the stuff before (eventhough semi-forgotten by the time the last phrase comes) is still relevant in order to build up that climatic ending phrase.

We came, we ate, we left, we got in the car, shit hit the fan.

In my imitation I tried to make it more fast-paced and anticipatory. I took out most of the prepositions and articles in order to do that. However, I don't think I accomplished making it more anticipatory. Instead, in my example, what happened is the phrases before "shit hit the fan" is skimmed and even if the reader knew something was coming, the phrases aren't sufficient enough to build that anticipation. In the original, the phrases vary in length. The first is longer than the next two, and the forth is the longest, kind of like taking a deep breath before spilling the news. The phrases after that forth one get smaller, gaining speed before the big kicker "and" signals something structurally different is coming, which means, in this case, a final blow before the finish. In mine, all that is taken out because the phrases are all the same length until the one before "shit hit the fan." It's longer so actually momentum is lost in this case. Which, would be okay if the writer was trying to bring the audience down. So, in my failure, I realized in greater depth why his opener worked so well, and why short and choppy doesn't always build a speed to anticipation, and how to bring the audience down from something that was fast-paced previously. YAY!