Commentary on "Secrets of Cooking" by Morgan Shaffer

            Morgan Shaffer’s story “Secrets of Cooking” is a creative approach to the nervousness of a mother-in-law relationship. The elements of story are there, Emma, the main character, is very worried about impressing her mother-in-law with her cooking. Eventually she gets ready and the dinner ends up going well and in the end the mother-in-law reveals a secret that makes everything better.

            The characters were done well, the husband especially, he is kept at a distance enough to keep focus on Emma, but he isn’t completely obscured or invisible. The simple image of him walking around with a lint brush does a great deal for his characterization.

            The dialogue needs the most work; too much is told and it is hard to read and hardly believable. When I read, “‘Allow me to help you clean up, Emma. It’s the least I can do when you made dinner for all of us.’” I was waiting for Shaffer’s next line to be about the humor in the sarcastic dramatic speech that Caroline was using; I was very surprised when I realized that that was really what Caroline said.

Some of the descriptions are lacking as well, Shaffer describes Emma as “hiding her face behind her hands” then “sprinting” to her room to get dressed. Those images felt like a comedic improv scene rather than a short story.

I wasn’t quite anywhere in the story. I vaguely went to a young couple’s house in my mind, but they don’t have a blue couch so I was taken out of that scene as well. I would have liked to have been able to visualize more, know more about what was going on outside, and be in the setting with Emma and Tim.

Telling was also a problem. Telling is for reporting and I don’t want to be reported to when I’m reading a fictional story. After knowing that Tim and Emma had been married for five months, it isn’t necessary to tell me a page later that they are newlyweds.

The story is there, but the details and descriptions need work.