Response to Cole's "The Grind"

The story is about a young man, I’m guessing fresh out of college, getting ready for an interview as a writer on a television show. He looks back on his life with writing that has brought him to this point. The main point of conflict that is presented is this young man’s struggle to get his start in the writing world. His attempt to get hired is the story’s focal point. All seems to be going well until the young man sees that life as a writer (for the show that he is applying for anyway) isn’t what he thought it would be. Seeing this causes a change in the protagonist, who lashes out and leaves, effectively ending the story.
I liked the ending. It was nice to see how you didn’t end with Skipper getting the job and everything was sunshine and rainbows but instead you looked past the supposed glamour that is show business. The perspective fit well and I liked how observant your narrator was of the other people before his interview, as well as his own actions in trying to keep himself busy while waiting. I really liked how he showed concern over whether or not Martin had ran his hand over his hair before he shook hands with him.
One thing that bothered me was a couple of cliché lines during the interview with Martin, such as the “Is that alright if I call ya Skip?” and how he asked about Skipper being Jewish. This chat between Skipper and Martin seemed to lack the professionalism you had set up.

Response to Kody's "Over the Counter"

The story is about a father of three kids (two boys and a girl) who is having trouble making ends meet. He is met with a letter of foreclosure and begins to worry about the future of his children and himself. This is the driving force of the whole story but not really the big conflict. The big conflict comes when he is given the opportunity to sale drugs from the pharmacy he works at on the street. He is torn between going against his morals so he can pay for his home or to uphold them and (most likely) be evicted from his home along with his children. A difficult decision but in the end he decides that his family is more important and steals the drugs to sell.
I really liked how you got the weight of the situation across, especially in the beginning. I really liked the line “each letter hit my eye like a typewriter’s hammer.” It gave the reader a sense of just how desperate the situation was for the protagonist. I also liked how you went through how everyone sees something like a foreclosure happen on TV but no one expects it to happen to them. It made the story a bit more relatable. I did also like how the protagonist looked back at how he’d always been on the good side of the law as he considered stealing the medication.
I didn’t really like how you compressed the conversation with Tim in the bar. It seems like it is such an important scene yet it feels like nothing more than summary in its current form. That section could probably be expanded to at least a short conversation while the call in the car could probably be condensed in same way.

Response to Robert Elrod's "Pretend"

The story opens with an older man who was sitting at a secluded gas station between Phoenix and Albuquerque. He seems to be awaiting in anticipation for something as another car pulls into the lone gas station. The man grasps the gun in his pocket, loaded with blanks (a “glorified noisemaker” as he calls it) and walks toward the car as it pulls in. The driver is a young woman. The man, while planning to rob her, asks her if he can pump her gas. This is part of the main conflict. The man had wanted to feel alive again and seemed to be going through a sort of “mid-life crisis” as pointed out early on, yet he couldn’t bring himself to do it and ends up pumping gas for her instead. He is angry with himself as he performs the task he volunteered for. He meets the young lady’s son during this and soon after has a short talk with the young woman. The gas finishes pumping and he sees them off, seeing the young woman with her child as a thing of beauty.
    I really enjoyed the personality you put forth in the writing. It was third person but it was told in a very casual way and it made the story a very easy read and helped with the flow. I also liked the use of beauty and the way it was present throughout the story. The man saw beauty in the sky and in the young woman and child pair that he met.
    I was unsure how the man really changed at the end of the story. He stares at the sky as the woman drives off much like he did before she drove into the gas station. I guess this has something to do with the fact that the robbery scenario was somewhat forgotten, only being hinted at as he gives the young boy the candy he’d bought earlier.

Response to Lauren Barkley's "Winter's Chill"

The story is about Mr. Smart, the director of the only funeral home where he lives. His works apparently kept him very busy and he took his job seriously so that he could provide for he and his wife, Clara. The beginning opens up with him leaving for a job as his wife warns him of the icy roads, to which he gives an irritable response. It immediately jumps back to the point in the story that causes the major conflict. Mr. Smart finds a message to his wife that leads him to believe that she is cheating on him. He is understandably upset but his wife avoids the confrontation by saying it was only a family member. He doesn’t pursue the matter any further as he is called on a job. Clara sees him off, worried about how distraught her husband is. She awaits his call but when she is called she is informed that her husband had hit a tree.
    I liked how you got into the characters’ heads with thoughts often. It seemed to me like you were showing a rage that Mr. Smart kept bottled in. His thoughts seemed to be things he wanted to say but chose not to while what he actually said was more of a toned down version of it though he still sounded irritable.
    I didn’t feel as though there was a clear cut resolution to this story. The husband ended up dying in the end, which didn’t feel surprising. I would have actually liked to see more confrontation between the two about the text message he finds on Clara’s phone rather than him just driving off and dying in a car accident. Also, instead of just telling us she’s “frisky” in one paragraph, why not use a flashback to show it and to foreshadow her supposed fickle nature. 

Response to Ethan's Holes Full of Dirt

The story is about the narrator, named Jeremy, trying to impress a girl, by the name of Ashlyn. He has known her since he’s been in high school. He seems to have a bit of a crush on her, but she does not return these feelings. She seems to have another boy in mind. This plays out as one of the main conflicts of the story and is what drives the boy to do the work on the road later on. Another conflict arises from this when the truck he is using to move dirt becomes stuck in a ditch. This causes him to feel like Ashlyn will never return those feelings for him, at least not because he repaired the road. He finally sees that he must get his dad for help, and Jeremy and his father manage to remove the truck from the ditch.  His father tells him he isn’t angry with him. Jeremy sees that his father is not angry but proud to see that he had given some effort.
    I really liked your use of first-person in the piece. The way Jeremy spoke was much like inner musings put into a cohesive form. I liked how you showed Jeremy freaking out about the truck and thinking “I [can] fix this.” The perspective used in the story is supported well by the dialogue, which had personality to it. I really liked the use of “dude” and “man” in their speech, typical of most high school students.
    I would like the see the story be a bit longer. The ending felt a bit abrupt and I was a little unsure on whether or not Jeremy had really changed by the end of the story. Did he still like Ashlyn and want her to like him or was he giving up on her?

Response to Adam Smith's Story

The story opens up with a woman, named Lucy Delamar, wanting to adopt a young girl. She adopts young Margaret, a girl who’d been abandoned in a carriage years before and brought there. Margaret is at first excited to start her life with her new found mother but she soon finds herself caged in her adoptive mother’s home. Lucy cages her in, stating that the outside world is full of “wolves.” Margaret begrudgingly accepts this caging and puts up with it for the next eight years. The main conflict here is, when Margaret is fifteen, she yearns for escape from her small cage, avoiding her captor whenever she can, but she is rarely allowed to leave the house (save for school). Her chance at the escape comes from a boy she meets named Marcus, but when she is finally able to leave she see that her mother was right about the wolves that exist in the real world. By the end, Margaret’s views of the world seemed to have become similar to her mother’s after witnessing the violent scene between Marcus and some girl.
    I thought the story was told pretty well and I really liked how her mother’s concept of the wolves kept popping up even until the end. Lucy’s paranoia (especially her distrust of the Germans) fit the time period too. I also liked the difference in Margaret and Marcus’s dialogue. Margaret seems to speak in a more refined way compared to Marcus, the normal kid from the outside world.
    One thing that caught my eye was an inconsistency with Margaret’s name. A couple of times she is referred to as Marguerite, which I was unsure if maybe that was a full name or just a mistake as it is in there a couple of times. Also, the girl being found abandoned is a bit cliché. You could say that Margaret had become an orphan due to the war. Cliché as well I know but it does fit the time period.

Response to Nate's "The Last Bit of Home-made Sugar"

The story is about a young man who is walking through the woods and reminiscing about his childhood. He is thinking about an event, a big party called a “stir off,” that his family held every year during his childhood. They stopped holding these parties as the children became older and uninterested in them. He then visits his grandfather before finally walking to his uncle’s cabin. The peaceful get together is broken when the protagonist’s uncle gets a phone call and dashes from the door, yelling that a neighbor has had a heart attack. The boy is forced to break into the neighbor’s house as the garage his neighbor is in is locked. They pull the dying neighbor into a car and drive to the hospital, but the car gets stuck in the snow and the boy is forced to push it free, narrowly dodging the car as it slides back down the road. The car catches and drives off without him, leaving the boy alone in the snow and the fate of the man unknown.
The story is thick with description and lets the reader know what just about everything looks like. It is a clear scene that the boy, through first person, delivers. This sits well with the little bit of dialogue that is in the piece. It seems casual and natural. I also liked the last line. It fit well with the thoughts that had been going through his mind before the incident occurred.
The story had a few punctuation errors along with some grammatical errors. The sentence structure also felt awkward. This is coupled with some short, choppy sentences, some of which felt either unnecessary or like they could be combined with other sentences. There were also a couple of inconsistencies here and there that need to be fixed.

Response to Laurel's "Deception"

My take on the story is that it is about an aging couple who seem to be distancing themselves from each other, something the wife, Marcy, doesn’t seem to be too happy about. It opens up with them just out and about when a neighbor tells them that there have been some nasty break-ins in the neighborhood and they should be wary. Marcy then wants a dog but her husband refuses and soon leaves for a trip. She discovers this is a hoax and becomes depressed. It is when she is alone that someone decides to break into her home. She hides and the person shoots the bed where she once was. Soon after, another person enters and the two kill each other. Marcy discovers the first man was her husband, who’d decided to kill her rather than divorce her for his mistress, while the other man was the burglar that they’d been warned about. She decides to sell the house and her husband’s practice and buys two dogs.
One thing I really liked was the ending, mostly the final line. You could feel the spite yet there was a bit of triumph in her voice. I also liked that it wasn’t just the burglar breaking in at the end, but the husband attempting to get rid of her. I found it to be an interesting twist.
Something that did really stick out to me was some grammar and punctuation mistakes. This goes along with some awkward structuring too, which slowed the story down sometimes and made it feel awkward at times. Another suggestion, though feel free to ignore this one, is that I think you could do this story in first person. It could give you a chance to show Marcy’s take on discovering her husband’s affair in a more in-depth way.

Response to Aimee Bender's "Off"

The story is about a selfish conceited girl who is out trying to achieve a goal she imposed on herself at the party. She wants to kiss three guys, a goal that is made evident from the beginning as the narrator states it from the get go. The story follows her effort to achieve this goal but also explores her past and her spiteful personality. Maybe spoiled would be a better word. In any case, the story is told from a first-person perspective. The girl tells the reader that she is going to kiss these three types of guys and makes it clear that she’s not extremely picky when it comes to whom she is kissing, she’s only going for what is easiest for her. While she is going through the party, searching for her victims, she gives her commentary on people at the party and, in a way, life in general. Not much (if anything) of what she says comes off as nice and she seems to be no more than a spoiled brat in some cases. Underneath that, the reader can eventually see that the narrator seems to be reaching out for attention through her actions. She is mad that someone can recall something from her childhood that she can’t but can’t remember that she was “really good at painting”. This eventually culminates into the childish stunt of stealing everyone’s coat at the party just so one person will come look for her (which would be her last victim). When she is discovered, her act is shrugged off as nothing more than a drunken incident and she is, for the most part, ignored by the rest of the people at the party, including her would-be victim, who is more interested in another girl. This sends her into a small breakdown that she is brought out of by an old boyfriend (who was coincidentally her second victim).

Response to "The Love of My Life"

The story was well-crafted and played off the teenage dream of love but the dream takes a very…sad turn when the couple gets pregnant. The two of them decide to get rid of the baby in a rather grotesque way. They are found out and arrested then sent to prison. The relationship takes a downward turn at this point. The two see faults in one another they never saw before. Aside from the story, the author provides a great amount of detail and paints a very clear picture of the two young lovers’ lives. It helps pull you into the illusion of the “perfect” teenage love. This helps show the downward spiral of their relationship during the pregnancy and after the baby is born. You see them steadily growing apart toward the end as they go through prison and the trial against them. The beginning of the story is filled with a euphoric daze but the couple is brought down to earth with pregnancy. With this turn, a sense of dysphoria permeates the remainder of the story. The boy has taken to drinking to ease the pain when he is told that his lover would be testifying against him, which leaves him (unsurprisingly) shocked. It ends with the young girl looking back over the relationship, still seemingly lost in love and broken by the events that lead her to this point in her life.

Response to JJ's "Lessons"

I believe the story is about a young boy in a foreign country. He is riding a train when an old man sits across from and converses with him. They talk at length about life. The boy seems to think he is in control of his life and it isn’t so bad. The old man on the other hand believes that the boy is only naïve and knows little about life. He tells the boy the life experience comes with age and mocks the boy’s idea that he thinks life isn’t so bad. They are revealed to both be pickpockets at the end but it seems like the boy was the smarter of the two as he remarks that the old man was an “amateur.”
The dialogue throughout the story was pretty good. It rarely felt forced and the use of the Italian dialect here and there helped. Also, the description that were provided for the characters and setting helped paint a clear picture of the train the boy and the old man were riding.
The way thoughts were conveyed in the story was a bit inconsistent. Early on they were put in quotes and then later on they weren’t and the thought just had a tag following it. I would maybe use italics to separate thoughts from the rest of the story and to fix the inconsistency. There were also a couple of stringy sentences here and there that could be condensed or just separated.

Response to Rhamah's "Leaving"

The story is about two best friends who have grown up together. The friendship is perfect even when one of the friends comes out and says she is gay. The narrator of the story is shocked but accepts her friend as she always has even when said friend begins hitting on her. They end up dating in high school through college when the friend, Kathrine, wants to take it to the next (physical) level. Her friend (the narrator) doesn’t want this and refuses to. Bethany (the narrator) then finds out she is asexual. Kathrine tries to get Bethany to change but this creates a rift in their relationship so Bethany finally leaves. There also seems to be a theme of acceptance in the story as well, though I may be reading too much into it.
I really liked how you personalized the first person perspective in this story. It didn’t feel like someone writing their story down but rather them sitting right next to you and telling you their story. The little nuances, such as “How cheesy is that?”, helped breath life into the story for me. It really made it feel natural and less like a made-up story.
One thing that caught me was that the flow of time in the story seemed a bit off in the middle. The story starts one section in the sixth grade then jumps to the next year and ends saying “That was 11th grade.” Where did the four years go?

Response to Cary Bayless's "Mountain Blood"

       I believe the story is about Chad coming to terms with the loss of his girlfriend after she is murdered and his attempt to move on. The conflict I see is that Chad is still stuck in his memories and is unable to let go and move on. He struggles with these memories and keeping the ring with him helps the reader cement that fact. The ring seems to be his link to these memories and holds him in his dark past. Losing it does help him realize that he needs to move on.
I believe the dialogue works well in the story. Chad and Beau speak as two guys normally would. I also like how their friendship is shown. It feels natural. The first person perspective helped in pulling me in as it felt more personal and not like it was some third party’s way of seeing things. Also, I really liked the fist pump line along with the “better safe than burnt alive” line. I felt the descriptions were well worded as well. I found how Chad lost his girlfriend to be intriguing.
One thing I’d like to see expanded is the relationship between Chad and Beau. Why is he the good friend he is? How long has he known Chad? The serial killer’s motives seem a bit off or just shallow/weak. You also have a couple of corny and clichéd lines here and there. Corny lines aren’t necessarily a bad thing but it caused the dialogue to lose its effect and feel out of place at some points.
All in all, I really enjoyed the story. The narrative was interesting and it flowed well. None of the characters felt like stock characters (unless they were supposed to, like in the case of the officers). I like how you separated the flashback from the story through the use of italics.

Response to Lauren Sides's "New Coach"

The story seems to be about Kaylee, a girl who is obsessed with competitive cheerleading. Her squad’s coach is replaced by a new coach named Alex. This new coach pushes them to the extremes daily and finally forces Kaylee to injure herself during one of their many practices. During her recovery, she is forced to endure physical and emotional stress, both from the healing process and from her coach. She tears herself down for the cruel coach before finally realizing that he doesn’t give a damn about her or the team and only wants to win. It is at this point that she decides to leave the team rather than put herself through anymore turmoil. I think your story really shows that you can only push someone around for so long until they decide to finally snap back.
One thing I liked about the story was how well Alex was portrayed (as a bad guy…). He is said to be (as the story puts it) an ass hole before he is even introduced to the squad. He lives up to this reputation and more. He is shown to be extremely cruel and cares little about the girls’ well being, physically or mentally. This is best shown when he forces the main character to pretty much injure herself even though she told him that she couldn’t do what he was asking. This goes hand in hand with how the practices are portrayed. The work their coach puts them through is grueling and degrading.
A change I feel would benefit the story would be to maybe put it in first person perspective rather than third. Since the story seems to be all about Kaylee to begin with, it would give the reader a more in-depth look at her experiences. Also, a couple of sentences felt a bit awkward and there were a couple of tense issues.