Short Story 1
Scott: I really like the thematic reasoning of your story. The fact that the main character has all these habits and activities because of his girlfriend, especially the observation one tying into his regret. Plus, the fact that he seems to have a fascination for the close connection he no longer has. It really tells the audience a lot about him that his actions are both isolating and connection-seeking. Your portrayal of depression or grief(or both) is very interesting, especially since his focus is on other people rather than trying to ignore them or simply being numb as he goes through the day. Your story flowed very well and I thought the movement is great for keeping the reader engaged.
Gracey: Reading this story after reviewing it all those weeks ago was a real treat. I loved how you expanded on the characters, especially looking into Winter’s perspective and making Devyn more of a character. The inner turmoil of the characters being represented by the raging ocean, which was a beautiful description as can be found in so many other parts of your work, seems obvious, but I was blown away at how you merged that and the characters into such a heart-wrenching story. I did wonder about the mother. Is she a character or a plot device? Which one would be better for the purposes of your story?
Alexa: Your story was just heart-warming and so sad in the best way. I loved how you endeared us to the characters and that connection became so strong that the main character’s grief at the end just hits you like a truck. Your descriptions were wonderful, especially in the love between the main characters. The emotional beats through the dialogue just pull at your heart, not to mention the quiet, tender moments. There was also the fact that the wife’s death was, in a way, like a Chekov’s Gun where her situation would change by the end of the story, whether she got better or died. I definitely would like to know more about the main character and their situation, whether familial or financial or something outside of the relationship that may still be kind of connected.
Teresa: This was a crazy, suspenseful experience. I kept wondering if and/or when the main character would get found out. Despite the absurd situation surrounding your story, the anxiety feels normal and believable. I can see why someone would go to great lengths almost on automatic when put in a situation such as that. There is that weird disconnect between the crash and the rest of the story. I understand the main character pushing the memory of the crash away, but it seems as if it never happened except for the muddy clothes. Also, having consequences to the main character’s actions would probably make the story more engaging rather than just the dialogue between the main character and her mother or more exposition.
Alex: Your story was beautiful. Such deep, realistic ways depression can show itself. Plus, the imagination/dragon section which I assume symbolizes the main character coming to terms with her depression and finally confronting it along with the consequences of her actions. The emotion, the perspective of the main character felt so real, and the transformations were so incredibly descriptive that it was like I could see each muscle and scale growing and shrinking. However, parts of the story did feel disjointed. Like at the beginning of the imagination sequence, it comes so out of nowhere, which does, admittedly, bring us into a similar mindset as the main character. But you made some structural choices that made the story hard to follow at times. I believe there’s a mugging at one point, which I didn’t understand how it fit into the story overall. Otherwise, very good job!
Mia: This story was refreshingly real in a way many of the other stories aren’t. Your depiction of a quiet infatuation with someone when at the workplace was so relatable, and your dialogue felt natural. I felt endeared to the main character almost immediately, or at least once I understood his situation. The descriptions of people and actions and just situations in general were beautiful. Plus, the ending, how Trevor didn’t get any of the aspects of a traditional happy ending and yet it still made sense and he still seemed more or less content with ending in a similar place to where he started. Still, when he didn’t get the promotion and found out Jack was in a relationship, especially after that moment in the breakroom, practically made my heart drop. You did a great job here and I can’t wait to see what other pieces you write.
Short Story 2
Jordyn: Though your story felt awkward at the beginning, I really liked the aspects of humor and how the dialogue flowed in most parts. The dialogue during the phone call was especially effective and showed readers how powerless the main character really felt. It was very relatable to anyone with any kind of pressure keeping them down. The storm and the crash also seemed to represent how stuck the main character felt in her way of life. Speaking of the crash, the start of the story was very confusing to me, where you introduce the readers to a main character and we know nothing about how or why she’s in a stranger’s house. I understand if you want to reveal stuff like backstories and motivations later on as you go, but maybe don’t wait until page 5 to hint at the snow storm and the crash. Then comes the characters. I liked both of them, but the main character seemed extremely naïve and Jasper struck me as inexplicably creepy. He’s almost unreal, like a mind reader, with any explanations he gave seeming unnatural in the story’s context.
Kenzi: Your story was very sweet. I think you really captured how it feels to lose a friend when neither of you want that. Loss of friendship isn’t talked about very often, despite how much it can affect people. The events of the story and the dialogue and actions of the characters felt very real. Then the funny moments mixed into the serious ones were incredibly relatable. I loved that the whole story took place in such a short amount of time, like thirty minutes. Expanding a moment such as this to encapsulate a whole story is just so cool. I did feel like the context for the story seemed pretty sudden. Things are hard to talk about, but why wouldn’t you tell your best friend such life-changing news? I’m going to France next semester, and almost everyone I know has been told so it doesn’t come as a surprise and so we can make the most of our time together. This is really the only part that’s unnatural. Hopefully it’ll be an easy fix.
Skyler: The conflict of the main characters of your story is set up right from the beginning, which I really like. They have a rivalry that is kind of riding on mutual dislike with no classism or other stereotyping prejudices, which also makes the rivalry kind of mysterious. You don’t tell the reader when or where we are, but there are implications from the dialogue and just certain parts of the story that make me believe it takes place sometime in the late 1700’s to mid 1800’s, so narrowing down our sense of time in that way is really important and very cool. The characters are interesting and just different enough to be separate characters though they are still similar enough to butt heads. Two things that took me out of the story; one, the rivalry itself doesn’t seem based on anything. As some side characters say, it is an infamous rivalry, yet the reader doesn’t know how it started nor how it lasted so long. Personally, this isn’t too bad since I know that the reasoning behind the rivalry probably isn’t important to you and the story’s events. The second thing is that the time in between scenes isn’t communicated very well. Maybe I skipped something or read it too fast, but the big time jump of months later simply felt like the next day. The readers knew almost nothing of the time that had passed as if it wasn’t important to the story whatsoever, despite the big deal previously being made about it.
Sophie: I loved the description in your story, the role of the bunny, Pistachio, and how you used both to portray grief and guilt and eventual feelings of reconciliation pretty well. Though this beautiful writing makes up most of my praise for the story, there are parts that are confusing from a logistical standpoint. For one, the reader doesn’t know the backstory of the main character that is referenced constantly until at least halfway through. I totally understand wanting to start where you did, but the reader needs that knowledge since it’s practically the emotional backbone of your story. Also, the time between the accident and the story’s present day seems too long to me. How can someone avoid such close family friends for five whole years? Maybe shorten the time to one year, which would be far more believable and still allow for all the feelings the main character is experiencing.
Brady: I love the feeling of youth and freedom your story exuded. The urgency, the scheme, it all comes together to make such a fun experience. The dynamic of the friendship is believable through the dialogue and the hair cutting scene. I would recommend, however, adding some conflict, whether it’s through the remembrance of their home lives or at the hotel or something like that. I would like to talk about the home life thing, since it may not be important to you, but it would be nice to know why the characters are running away and who they were there as opposed to their current situation. Finally, I recommend proof-checking your story, as I noticed many spelling and grammatical mistakes.
Izzy: This story made me feel as if I were right there with the main character, kneeling down and crying as if it’ll bring back the happiness taken from her. She has struggled for so long and now she is confronting her pain after so long avoiding it. Then her characteristic transition and the very end give the reader a feeling of hope for her. The lead up to the end, especially the set-up and pay-off of the letter was very nice, but definitely could’ve been planted earlier in the story. The exposition it is set-up with was too much, I felt. Very sudden, too much exposition, but I don’t really know how you would remedy this if you even could or wanted to. Other than that, I thought the descriptors were beautiful and incredibly emotional.
Jenna: Your story was a bit of a whirlwind. I liked the journal as a narrative tool. It was new and a part of me is glad that you let the reader go through it before saying that it was a journal. The main character was definitely relatable in some ways, since having connections and a support system when first starting college is extremely important. The friendship that is supposed to be developed is fun and the main character meets tons of people and I really liked that there was no romantic intention between the main character and that boy she meets. However, the boy’s motivation and kind-of the whole gist of the story is flawed since the boy seemingly wouldn’t actually know how the main character is feeling. He is also a freshman, the semester started a couple weeks ago at most, and yet he has tons of friends and is extremely likable and sociable which is almost the opposite of the main character. Plus, the journal entries are so long that they kind of marr the structure of the story as a whole. Unfortunately, to fix these parts of the story, I think you’d have to start anew and figure out what would be best for structure, language, and character development.
Cole: I definitely liked parts of this story. The dialogue for instance, especially in the beginning, was emotional, yet fun at times. The exposition and how the main character’s life centered around movies is a really nice piece. On the other hand, there were a good number of places where the events made no rational sense. The girl decides to talk to this random stranger and go theater hopping for the rest of the day, the mill blowing up, the eventual cancer and then an inexplicable explosion. Admittedly, these strange happenings could be written off as the story within the story, but I feel like you could definitely do better. Something I want to praise and criticize at the same time may be something you didn’t notice, but the fact that Jamie, the manic pixie dream girl of the story, dresses up as Marla Singer, who is the manic pixie dream girl of “Fight Club,” is so funny to me. I don’t like the manic pixie dream role in anything since, like this piece, it uses that character as a kind of set piece for the main character’s development. I realized that’s why Jamie feels unrealistic, because she has the same characterization as the other side characters but is supposed to be more important than them.
Alexa: This was unlike any of the other stories I’ve read in this class. The first sentence truly hooks you in, but it hooks into a story that truly has something to say. Every sentence reads like melancholy poetry written by an artist who stopped writing too soon. I like how you merge thoughts of the past with the actions of the present and skip through time in a way that makes sense, as if we’re simply cutting to the next piece of action, and how the main character and her self-deprecation feels real, as does her desperation to save that girl. There was more to saving that girl than simply preserving a life, but the earlier events are set up so the reader can tell that without the narration. I am a little confused about the main character’s motivations. She has these mental problems that aren’t getting better, but instead of doing the internal, day-to-day work to get better, it seems like she’s trying to use external methods to get better and relieve her guilt. The only real criticism I have is that the story seems almost hopeless even though that seems to be part of the point.
Bridget: This story is honestly really cute. Most likely, you’re tired of hearing it compared to “The Notebook,” but it has a simple beauty in common with the beginning of that movie. The first few pages were fun and I really enjoyed them, especially the fake-out with the date the main character brings to the dance. Then the fact that he walks Violet home is very nice and cute, and her journey with memory loss is so heart-wrenching. I loved that you showed the first time her affliction became apparent. After the dance, their bond and the apparent timeline of their relationship seems so rapid that we go from first meeting to meeting her parents to moving in together and most likely marriage in practically the same sentence. I am of the opinion that you should separate that night and the doctor’s appointment more, since they feel merged together. The ending felt sudden as well, with a simple paragraph providing the epilogue and making the story feel suddenly cut off.
Teresa: Unfortunately, I didn’t really like this story. The best part was the clear friendship between the main character and his friends. The language and flow was good as well, but I really think that this story’s downfall came with the insertion of the love story itself. The progression and any mention of the romance felt like a stereotypical and unrealistic portrayal of first love. The characters felt pretty one-dimensional and unrealistic. Even if the love interest really liked him and was a sociable person, I can’t think of any intelligent woman who would practically skip off to a bar with a stranger she had only exchanged glances with. Also, you disproved the very first sentence of your story near the end, when the main character tells the girl that he was in love with that girl from high school. Besides these, which could honestly be pretty easy changes, I also think the story is too long for the events that take place. The parts of your story that are less critical to the plot could be taken out without much, if any, negative effect.
Gracey: This is a really awesome improvement from your last story. The relationship between the main characters are believable; they act like friends who simply want to spend time together. The time skips are clear and the behavior is typical for how long the characters have been apart. I loved the design details you did with the font and sizes. It really illustrated the emotion in your story in a far more visual way than any of the other ones. This story is extremely human. The reader can understand the characters’ decisions even when they’re infuriating and the story makes you want to root for Noah and Sophia to be together despite the title and first paragraph telling the reader exactly what the end result is. This complexity in navigating feelings is also incredibly relatable for your audience, seeing as how many of us are still young and new-ish to relationships. There is one problem I have with your story and that’s the character of Asher. We don’t actually meet him, he’s just mentioned a few times, but after she breaks up with him the first time it’s a little weird that he’s still in the narrative. In real life, this is believable, since love doesn’t just fade like we may want it to, but why can’t Sophia pursue a life away and outside of these boys? Plus, how did the relationship with Asher just conveniently get better after Sophia realized she still loved him?
Alex: Your story is really great! The opening is practically perfect and then you pull the rug out from under the audience almost nonchalantly in the second or third paragraph to bring us back into the action. Reyes and Penny’s relationship is very cute and I love that Penny kinda gets irritated in a way that would be more in line with Reyes getting a call from work, rather than thugs wanting to kill. Penny is also clearly a three-dimensional character with her own thoughts, feelings, and priorities, but still plays the love interest. When Reyes dreams of their potential life together, it’s so normal and yet feels so unattainable due her line of work. Plus, the sentimentality of them and the “normal” side of Reyes’ life is a great contrast and a nice break during the fight. I liked that you counted down when Reyes killed one of the thugs, since it’s a kind of through line for the readers to more easily follow the “present” moment. A couple questions I have about it, though; where are the cops? It seems that one of the bar patrons or someone would realize that a fight had broken out in which people were dying. Maybe the story is set in a place where violence is normal enough that people have hang-ups about calling the cop, but you should really look into that. Then I wanted to ask, how is Reyes going to be better in her relationship with Penny like she expressed a desire for? I think she should come to some kind of life-changing realization before proposing to Penny, like that she should quit her job or that Penny can protect herself or something of the sort.
Mia: This was such an amazing story to end the semester on. I love stories about people standing up for themselves and realizing they deserve better. The main character was very compelling, with her longing and fear and sheer disbelief so clear and understandable. The first paragraph displays this with powerful wording, so the reader begins to care for this character and sympathize with her despite knowing nothing about her. The concierge both at the beginning and the end is a nice relief to what the main character is going through. Despite the fact that it’s not likely he would actually have a whole “abuse survivor plan” on standby, it’s something I can suspend my disbelief on since it brought the story to a nice conclusion. The only things that took me out of the story are the flashbacks, wherein the dialogue felt very sudden and out of left field for a reason I can’t determine, and the fact that we never see Preston go after the main character after she leaves the hotel room, since his past behavior of trying to patch things up immediately with her was previously established.
