JP's Rules of the Game

Link to Original Story: Rules of the Game - JP

This is the second draft of this story; the first draft had the rules listed at the end. C (aka, JP’s woman) suggested that this was too tacked on, and JED agreed after he read it, so I rearranged it to integrate the rules and make them more of the story’s point rather than an addition at the end. Part of the consequence of this is that the paragraphs are not perfectly parallel with their respective rules; honestly, I liked both the paragraphs and the rules and didn’t want to change either one. According to JED, this semi-symmetry works better than perfect symmetry would have, and I liked the way it read like that too, but I could probably stand to make the rules a touch more on point in one or two places.
Essentially, this piece is a metaphor for the pursuit of love and the chase of a romantic ideal. I didn’t realize that myself until I was about half-way through the writing; it was an undercurrent in the entire piece, trying to pull it together, and once that occurred to me, the rest came fairly easily, though I worry that I might have made it to overt once I realized it.



JED says thusly: