A tiny little story written by...ME! :)
Hi guys!!
I'm posting here a story, well, a beginning of one I think, that I had to write to one of classes at my university.
I like her, but I still have to make a zillion changes, but I have re-read it so much that I don't know what I wanted to do with it when I started anymore. ( I had to make lots of changes because she had to be at maximum two ( Read more... )
Weeeeell, donhisiewen already said half of what I thought of, including the confusing he/woman bits. I also like the discussion between the seven voices, and I agree about the courage line. That's one of my favorites. Right next to "we all know the problem with Sundays, right? Monday is next." XD Some of the lines are a bit rough grammatically, but for the most part, when the voices start going, I really like the flow.
I do have some thoughts from a storywriter's perspective. From the short snippet here, I don't know what you're thinking of doing for a full story, but the framing at the beginning and the end sounds more like a description of a story than an actual story. I realize that might've just been because of your extreme space constraints. But personally, I think the story (presuming it were a longer piece) would be more intriguing if you let the character's inner dialogue--and the way you describe it, like labeling courage and apathy and sarcasm and all that--convey that feeling of seven distinct pieces making up a single whole. Like, instead of telling me that's his deal, show me, you know? That's something you couldn't do with the space you had, but if you were to write something longer with him, you definitely could, and I think that would be a very interesting and promising premise. Besides, as it is, I feel a little bit lost about who the narrator is. The narrator clearly has a very strong presence, like a distinct storyteller, but I don't know who this narrator is. Is the narrator really the author, self-inserted? Is the narrator *an* author? Someone else telling the story? A character being used as the narrator? I get that strange feeling that I ought to know who the narrator is, but I can't tell who it really is, either. That threw me off a bit. Reworking the execution of the premise would help with that.
Also, I don't know how open-minded your school is, but I actually think it makes for a better story in this instance if Seven, as a man, is in love with another man--precisely *because* of real life. The possible negative consequences of one's love turning out to be unrequited are so, so, so much worse when one is in love with a member of the same sex, which makes it all that much more natural that he's finding himself stuck, unable to act. That's how I think anyway. A sort of sense of shame, if you will, presents itself in that case, in my mind.
Still, you have a very interesting premise here, and some really good lines. If you're worried about making the different voices inside Seven distinct, you could always give them pseudo-names--like Sarcasm or Courage or what have you, just capitalized to make them more distinct, even though they are all Seven. That's your call though; the only reason I thought that might even be nice as a reader is just because I was too lazy to try and count the different voices and figure out if you were taking seven character traits and making them "characters" or if the trick was something else. And--I have talked way too long here. Sorry. >.<
Reply
Leave a comment