: It's always good to be specific. This is what makes the story come alive. On page 9, Dennis gives a flashback about when his cat died: "When I was nine, we had a cat named Captain Beefheart, and he got hit by a UPS truck."
What makes that passage vivid is its specificity with the cat's name and the vehicle that killed it.
Here's another when Dennis wants to be somewhere else:
I sat there behind the wheel of my car, not sure what I should do, whishing I was someplace else, anyplace else, trying on shoes at Thom McAn's, filing out a credit application in a discount store, standing in front of a pay toilet stall with diarrhea and no dime.
Okay, the last one in that list is pretty funny, but I might have changed the discount store to a specific chain, say J.C. Penny.
Exercise: Check your story for non-specific people, places, and things. Make them specific.
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