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.
No comments:
Post a Comment