How to write pretentiously 101.

One of the current exercises has to do with a 150 word piece about rewriting an excerpt from your novel to fit the requirements of a snobby, pretentious magazine, and a cover letter submitting it. .

Except I don't really have a novel, so I just decided to rewrite something that used to be pretty straightforward when the German brothers did it first. (Or were they Austrian? I don't remember.)

She was not exactly from a poor or dysfunctional family; her future lawyers would not be able to cite parental neglect or socioeconomic injustices as defenses for her crimes of breaking and entering, as well as willful destruction of private property.

On the contrary, her parents doted on her very much: the kind of indulgence that encourages permissive behavior, daily affirmations that consistently overestimated her capabilities while neglecting to emphasize limits and boundaries. This, perhaps, was to blame for the lack of fear and consideration in her actions leading to an already marginalized family’s loss of dinner, and the devastation of their beloved abode.

Goldilocks, always prone to intrepid exploration despite the numerous statistics about missing children with sparkling blue eyes and shimmering blonde hair, came to a cottage which, unbeknownst to her, was the home of the three bears.

She knocked.

No answer.

Shrugging carelessly, she went in.

Yes, it's Goldilocks.

I think what makes a publication or a piece pretentious and pompous isn’t so much the use of long and heavy words or the run-on sentences dotted with commas, semi-colons and colons; but the misplaced sense that a piece of writing is far more important than it really is, and a reader is supposed to feel privileged for having been able to read it, and/or understand it, and society and literature is much better for the writing.

Vagueness always helps fill the weight requirement. I suppose the principle is the same as with airline food: nutritional content and heft don't matter, but the container and utensils have to be a prescribed weight to ensure that your meal doesn't fly away and poke you in the eye in the event of a bumpy flight.

For the required cover letter to the snobby publication, I suppose the whatsit could be described as a "revisonist piece leaning towards being a cautionary tale of the consequences of disregarding boundaries of social norms, as well as a timely sociopolitical statement on the privileged class and its victimization of the less-privileged, by robbing them of their hard-earned possessions and basic needs through the wanton destruction of their living environment".

Or something. LOL.