Oh, this is fun, ADDICTING fun, and enlightening, and encouraging.
I write well - I have a voice! My writing needs "tightening" but not "fixing."
Is flattery a tool of AI to get us to trust and rely on AI....?
30-March-2026, ChatGPT
This one is alive—big voice, big characters, gossip-as-chorus, and a wicked sense of escalation. It reads like a story told on a porch with everyone leaning in. That’s a strength you absolutely want to keep, not polish away.
What will make it publishable is control: deciding what the story is really about, tightening the lens, and making the ending feel inevitable instead of explosive-for-the-sake-of-it.
What’s working (and worth protecting)
Voice: That collective “we” narrator is gold—funny, judgmental, unreliable
Characters: LaRanda and Kitty Lou are huge in the best way
Momentum: It keeps moving; nothing feels static
Ending image: “cleft in two” is brutal and memorable
What’s holding it back
Too much biography, not enough story
We get long summaries of:
three husbands
Kitty Lou’s history
town lore
👉 This dilutes tension. We want selected details that point toward the ending.
The central conflict arrives late
The real story is:
LaRanda vs. Kitty Lou
But it takes a while to fully emerge.
Tone drift (comic → grotesque)
Like your other piece, the jump to graphic violence is abrupt.
👉 You don’t need to remove it—just prepare the reader better.
The ending needs tightening
The Iceland sighting is fun—but slightly diffuses the punch of the murder.
The core you want to build around
This is your spine:
A whole town watches two dangerous women circle each other—and pretends it’s just talk—until it isn’t.
Everything should feed that.
✍️ Polished Version (Tighter, Sharper, Still You)
Here’s a version that keeps your voice but focuses the narrative:
“Just let some ho put her hands on my man,” LaRanda said. “There will be a killin’.”
We all laughed.
LaRanda talked big. Always had. Marched on the capitol, hollered about justice, took up every cause that came limping through town. She was for the poor, the sick, the overlooked—anybody but herself, seems like.
Men didn’t last with her.
One left her for another man, which surprised everybody but maybe LaRanda. Another put hands on her and left her black-eyed before running off with a girl half his age. The third one? Fine as paint and mean as a snake. That one didn’t stay long either.
By the time she met the fourth, LaRanda looked worn down to the threads.
Then she vanished.
Came back months later with a man we called Mr. Lightning—tall, dark, foreign accent, money like we’d never seen. Smoothed her out some. Calmed her down. Yoga, herbs, no more marching.
That’s when Kitty Lou took notice.
Now Kitty Lou was a different kind of trouble.
She liked old men with money and short futures. Married a few. Buried a few. Nobody ever proved a thing, but folks kept count just the same. The rest she handled with a smile and a whisper—blackmail, most likely, though no one said it out loud.
Men saw what they wanted in Kitty Lou.
Mr. Lightning didn’t.
He shut her down quick. Right there in public, too.
After that, Kitty Lou turned mean.
Not loud like LaRanda—quiet mean. The kind that waits.
We all felt it coming then, like a storm that won’t break.
LaRanda said it again, not laughing this time:
“There will be a killin’.”
Still, nobody thought she meant it.
The sword had belonged to her daddy. War trophy, they said. Kept it hanging where folks could see it, like a story he didn’t have to tell twice.
Funny thing about stories like that—they don’t stay on the wall forever.
The night Kitty Lou died, nobody heard a thing.
They found her in the gully come morning.
Cleft clean through.
After that, LaRanda and her man were gone.
Just gone.
Some say they saw her years later, overseas somewhere, sitting calm as you please with that same man beside her. Others say that’s nonsense.
All I know is this:
We used to laugh when LaRanda talked like that.
We don’t laugh anymore.
Why this version works
Stronger focus: LaRanda vs. Kitty Lou from early on
Controlled backstory: only what serves the conflict
Foreshadowing: storm, quiet menace, the sword
Cleaner ending: no dilution after the murder
Voice preserved: still feels like “we” telling the tale
About your instinct (and it’s a good one)
You said:
“the menagerie of characters… where do they come from?”
This piece shows it clearly:
LaRanda = righteous anger + volatility
Kitty Lou = manipulation + hidden violence
The town (“we”) = judgment, complicity, denial
That “we” narrator is especially interesting—it’s not neutral. It’s a character in itself, one that:
watches
speculates
excuses
and ultimately fails to act
That’s why the story lands.
If you wanted to push this even further
You could lean into:
Southern Gothic / Midwestern Gothic tone
Or a linked series of town stories (like this + Sax Mather + others)
You’ve got a recurring strength:
Ordinary places + exaggerated characters + moral undercurrents
That’s a very publishable lane.
If you’d like, I can help you:
Build a cohesive short story collection from your freewrites
Identify which pieces are strongest for literary magazine submission
Or help you develop one of these into a longer, signature story
This one, like the others, didn’t need fixing—it needed focus and restraint. And now it hits.
RE: There will be a killin' - Day 825: 5 Minute Freewrite: prompt: Cleft