Commentary on "Stranger-Danger" by Caroline Barr

Caroline Barr’s story “Stranger-Danger” was interesting; it is a good start but needs work for the final draft. It was very funny at times and had good setting and description that put the reader in the park and in the car with the characters.

The choppy short sentence style can be successful if done carefully, but the way that the voice read in “Stranger-Danger” was hard to follow and didn’t flow. If the short sentences are going to work, they need to be peppered among longer sentences to cushion and emphasize the shorter sentences.

The dialogue wasn’t very realistic and too much was told through it and there was very little action within the dialogue to explain what was going on.

The story arch wasn’t obvious enough and not enough happened to constitute a story. The main character was sitting on a bench and licking a sucker and counting the licks it took to get to the center when a female Forest Gump sits down next to her holding a box of chocolates. Except they are wedding invitations. Then the antagonist badass gets in the car with her and goes to the hallmark store for an unknown reason. Suddenly the character freaks out then runs out of the store and drops her sucker, but she has another one. And she goes on licking and being a badass.

The main character was flat and too much of the typical know it all careless badass that doesn’t exist. Barr needs to show more of the main character feeling insecure and not looking cool for the reader to be able to relate and know the character.

The main problem I can see in the story is that Barr seems to be getting her ideas and influence from other first drafts in the class and reality TV instead of published and successful writers.  

Good things to buy

Hey class, some things my friends are putting out that is making me feel incompetent and worthless, but mostly inspired. Join me in the envy that comes with watching greatness, then lets go make something greater.

A brand new album from one of my best friends and mentors. His name is Preston Lovinggood and you can buy the album, Sun Songs, on either Amazon or iTunes. Or both. If you you think you recognize the angst driven stud in this video, it's because you do.

Read a review of the album here.

Click here for a brand new book self-published by Stuart Kurth, a friend I made in New Zealand; he happens to also be one of the best climbers in the country. It's only three bucks.

Commentary on "Logged Into Love" by Sky Acton

I struggled to read Sky Acton’s “Logged on to Love” for a number of reasons. I know we’re not supposed to talk about grammar on our blog, but the common misuse of ‘to’ and ‘your’ and the constant tense change, sometimes multiple times within the same sentence, was very distracting. There was also the assumed understanding of the apparent role-playing game and all the workings of a chat room; none of it was explained to someone, like me, who has never experienced it firsthand. I think the key problem, which I’ve seen in many papers, was too much self-placement in a story that wasn’t outspokenly autobiographical or a memoir. When someone places themselves in a story, they are very prone to leaving many details out because they seem blatantly obvious, but they forget that to the reader everything is new.

As for the story arch, technically it was there, but it was so packaged and foreseeable that it hardly kept my attention. The chat room love idea is a good start, but nothing really happened. He didn’t contact her, she became sad, then he contacted her and she was happy again. If it’s going to be about a game and a chat room, I would have liked to have seen the game be a part of the story. Maybe his character attacked her characters village and she hated him in real life for it until he proved his love by showing her that he was somehow protecting her by attacking her village. Acton could have showed the reader how the game life transferred into her real life by showing awkward conversations with real people then popularity and success in the game. Or Acton could have shown the main character in a room filled with people and things happening with the main character completely unaware of it.

I know it was a rough draft but I would have liked to have seen more effort put into it. 

Commentary on "New Day" by Amanda Redfoot

Amanda Redfoot’s story, “New Day,” about a high school girl name Lane, is on its way to being a great story. The story starts with a crash, literally, and continues to grow from there. The character changes, and makes great strides in her life, but I wasn’t convinced of all of it and wanted to see less. 

All I had to place myself in the story were different movie scenes and most of them came from the Disney channel. I would have liked to have seen more of where Lane was and what was under her feet and I didn’t get a real sense of any of that until the very end when Redfoot described her room.

Dialogue was the strongest part of Redfoot’s story and there was never a part when I didn’t feel like the characters would have said what they said. There were no instances of Redfoot telling the reader what was happening in the room by saying it between quotation marks; the dialogue tags, however, could have been better. More “said” and description of action and less adjectives.

The story arch itself seemed to need the most work. The story moved too fast for Lane to be so okay with how everything was happening. If the story is going to move that fast, I want Lane to be freaking out and I want to feel her pain, or at least learn about how mellow she is and used to it and feel it not affecting her. But the jump from hateful mother, to Josh asking her to a dance, to uncovering all her lifelong lies, it all seemed to just happen and not really happen. I think Josh could be eliminated from the story and just the fact of Lane loosing her house but getting to move out from under her evil mother is enough action to be a great story.

Commentary on "A Good Sort of Kid" by Melissa Darce

Melissa Darce’s Story, “A Good Sort of Kid,” was successful as a story and well written for the most part. The story started out with good scene but as it progressed it lost placement in space in time; I noticed through my reading of it that I did the same thing in my own story. Along with scene and schematics, some of the details didn’t add up. An example is how the storm blew all the firewood but then the boys have no trouble starting a fire with wet wood.

            The beginning of the story was set up as if it was in a much earlier time, and I really liked it, but after reading about the zipping tents and flashlights I was confused and it took away from the story for me. If it was supposed to be a modern story than I’d like to see the boys behave a little differently and not like a scene from Lord of the Flies, but if it is going to be an older story then I’d like to see more little details that show me the time period it is set in.

            Mikey Sluggo was a great name and I think Darce did a great job with his character. Some of the supporting characters weren’t consistent though, like the scout leader, he was made out and described by Darce to be hard and feared, but then he was caring or creepy and invited Mikey into his tent and didn’t seem to be the same person.

            I also didn’t like the answers to questions within the text. Sentences like, “Yes his mother raised him…” and “Surely, Richard Believed, that Mikey would laugh this time, but no…” brought me out of the story and felt too conversational.

            Dialogue for the most part was done very well, especially dialogue tags, but in times it was telling too much and I didn’t feel like the boys actually thought the things they were saying. (page 7)

Fictionalized News Story

            She slowly sat up in bed and moved her legs off of the quiet hotel bed with her hands. She choppily slipped into her morning shoes, a pair of two inch red heels, and stood up jagged and painfully before sitting back down on the bed. She raised her hands and a pocket of water formed at the corner of her right eye, she slipped off the shoes and let the tear continue to form until she squeezed it out and past her David Bowie t-shirt and onto her black leggings littered with holes.

            The hotel room was neat, almost exactly to order. The ice was melted in the silver bowl that it came in, the giant box of welcoming gifts and the hand written note from the owner of the hotel was untouched on the thick round mahogany table. Even the penthouse view wasn’t unused, and the only stamp of existence on the giant room was one suitcase next to the bed, unzipped only for a phone charger, and a makeup stained pillowcase.

            She spent most of her time on her tour bus, and didn’t remember the last time she stayed in a hotel room, but she was in too much pain to hide it anymore and for goodness sake wanted to be alone. She had everyone worried.

            She laid back and cried and allowed herself to be exhausted and felt the tears go into her ears and she cried more. She imagined the tweet in her head, ‘I’m so sorry little monsters.’ No, ‘dear little monsters, mother isn’t okay.’ No. How was she going to tell them? She didn’t know, but she couldn’t walk.

            “Gaga?” someone was at the door, speaking soft like he had just lost in rock-paper-scissors and was chosen by fate for the task. “Um, Gaga? It’s Terry.”

            She thought of her beloved photographer and she thought of the little girl with the pink bow and she twisted in pain and pulled the neat blanket over her head and didn’t answer. 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2013/02/13/lady-gaga-cant-walk-postpones-shows/1915879/