I Like You Just Fine When You’re Not Around by Ann Garvin is an interesting and creative story about a therapist whose life goes awry. The story is a hilarious yet accurate depiction of the rollercoaster life that everyone goes through. It is the character and the imagery that gives the story a fuller and richer experience. To begin with, the story is about a therapist whose life goes off the rails when she must put her mother into assisted living due to her mother’s Alzheimer’s. In addition, she loses her job and that same day he boyfriend leaves her to go to live in Hawaii on sabbatical. Later in the story her sister shows up with a huge surprise, she is pregnant, and around the same time Tig gets a new job as a radio host. Unfortunately, her sister runs away after giving birth and Tig is stuck taking care of the baby, while her radio shows starts to fall apart. Near the end of the book things start to get better
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Burroway states that, “the trick is that if you write in words that evoke the sense- if your language is full of things that can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted and touched- you create a world that your reader can enter” (16). Writing a great story with imagery requires concrete details which evokes the five senses. It also requires using significant details to create a judgement or a generalization. For example, Burroway writes this about details:
The notion of detail is important to the image because it moves away from the generalized and toward the particular. For example, creature is a generalized notion, hard to see except in the vaguest way. Animal is still vague; four-legged animal is a little more specific; domestic animal a little more; dog narrows the field; shepherd we can see; old Sammy asleep on the red rug, his haunches twitching in his dream brings the dog into sharp focus in our minds (Burroway 20).
Garvin uses imagery throughout her story to describe characters and
Burroway states that, “the trick is that if you write in words that evoke the sense- if your language is full of things that can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted and touched- you create a world that your reader can enter” (16). Writing a great story with imagery requires concrete details which evokes the five senses. It also requires using significant details to create a judgement or a generalization. For example, Burroway writes this about details:
The notion of detail is important to the image because it moves away from the generalized and toward the particular. For example, creature is a generalized notion, hard to see except in the vaguest way. Animal is still vague; four-legged animal is a little more specific; domestic animal a little more; dog narrows the field; shepherd we can see; old Sammy asleep on the red rug, his haunches twitching in his dream brings the dog into sharp focus in our minds (Burroway 20).
Garvin uses imagery throughout her story to describe characters and