(Untitled)

[falloutitchy]

Comments

[celowin]

I'm late to this, but I think I prefer the second. As others have mentioned, repeating the association game strengthens the theme.

However, I do like the "It was no good" line from the first that didn't make it into the second. I'd think about putting it in.

[falloutitchy]

The reason the last paragraph doesn't have the "It was no good" line from the first version is because I used it in the paragraph just before it. That's something I try to pay extra attention to when writing, is not to repeat phrases too often, because when looking over things I've written casually (like emails), I'll find situations where I've used "probably" ten times in one paragraph.

You could argue that Soup is supposed to sound like it's in a casual voice, and so wouldn't suffer from some repetition, but I don't want Chance to sound unintelligent either.

[celowin]

You're right. Still, though, I feel the transition between the 3rd and 4th paragraphs needs something there. Maybe it is just because the 4th paragraph opening sentence has so many phrases packed into it.

Actually, reading it several times, I think the problem might be another repetition one. Admittedly there is a paragraph transition to break things up, but you are still going immediated from a sentence with "maybe I could piece it together" to one with "I couldn't piece anything together."

I'm not enough of a writer to make a specific suggestion, but I think it might be smoother if either one of those phrases were altered a bit, or else there was a buffer sentence in between.