"Stutter" by Taylor Siebert

Taylor Siebert’s story “Stutter” was very interesting and creative. The characters were well thought out and known thoroughly by Siebert which made them come across on the page almost flawlessly. The story had a good balance of pushing the envelope of what is possible in fiction while still keeping the story grounded in reality.

I didn’t understand the importance of the blonde girl and Levi. She is never mentioned again and it seems to be little more than a message against racism that doesn’t add to the story.

The stuttering, which is the name of the story and carries a great importance throughout the descriptions, doesn’t seem to carry much weight once Roman starts talking. Besides in summary, he is never faced with a awkward or difficult situation in the present because of his stuttering and seems to just enjoy being quiet but then talk nearly flawlessly when he wants to.

For the POV shift, I really liked the idea of three different points of view telling the same story and I think I’m going to do that in my next story. If Siebert wants to do that in this story I think it needs to be done more blatant and obviously because where it stands now it looks like it was almost an accident. Also with the three points of view the blonde girl could stay because maybe that part of the story was important to Levi while Roman and Sawyer wouldn’t have that in their versions at all.

The ending didn’t work in my opinion. Everything happened too fast and without enough emotion involved. Levi needs to have just learned of something that may kill him or have some kind of threat other than the fact that he just thinks he is dying. And if Levi is Roman’s only friend I think he needs to be more affected by the fact that Levi is dying.