Responses to Personal Essay Drafts

Steven –
I think I’m confused about what you want the take home message of this piece to be. Is it about you, or is it about your grandfather? There is some mention about your relation to him and how you personally felt about his death, but the piece itself seems to be more about him as a person, and I think you could make a greater connection to yourself and the impact this had on you. What is the relationship between you and him/his death, and why is it important for you to be talking about it now? If you answer this question, the focus of the piece may become clearer.

I do think that you have some really great lines, but the piece as a whole could be strengthened if you could put in some scene or dialogue—there’s too much telling/description the way that it is, and it’s easy to get lost in this. Is there a time that you can remember with your grandfather, or a time that you had a discussion about him that could be recalled/depicted on the page? It feels like you’re talking about him in a very impersonal and removed way, and though it’s clear that you didn’t necessarily have much of a relationship with him, I think I need to feel something more behind this emotion-wise—why should the reader care about your grandfather’s death? Why is it important?


John—
I think you’re off to a good start with this piece. I like the scenes that you show, the picture you paint that way, but I’m wondering if we can get some more detail in the description areas that could help to flesh the piece out a little more. For example, in the third paragraph, you give important details in your family in one huge sentence—these are important details, and the length of the sentence makes it easy to get lost in them. I’m also wondering if we can get more of them; maybe you could give us a better picture of your parents overall.

I also think that we need to see more of your reaction when your father moves out. It’s clear that this event was a big deal for you at the time, but we see your mother and brother in that last scene and not you. What was your response to discovering your father had left?

I also think the last line is a cop out, to an extent. Leave us with something more concrete and provocative than that. And on another note, some of the commentary you provide in parentheses (“Don’t ask me why I remember…,” for example) is unnecessary and distracting.


Andrea—
I really like the subject you chose—it’s not something that gets written about all the time and that was really refreshing. You also do a really great job with creating scene in this piece, which is nice because it breaks up some of the longer, descriptive paragraphs and allows for the piece to flow well. I’m wondering if you can work in some more details about yourself as a person, because you give us very little other than the background about your medical history, which is pertinent to the piece. But can you add in a few more details about you that would allow for the reader to see more of a character?

I also like both the beginning and the end of the piece—the beginning because it’s catchy, without giving too much away (you have to read on to figure out what’s going on) and the end because it’s conclusive to an extent, but also provocative. I think the structure of the piece works well, and you may just need to go over some little things (word choice, sentence structure, etc) to polish up the piece. Other than that, great job—this is a really good draft!


Simona—
I think that your story has a lot of potential—it’s an interesting topic—and that maybe it just needs to be reorganized. I wonder if there’s a way that you can streamline the beginning, or break it up a little bit, so that we can get to some dialogue earlier, or at least not have those big, looming paragraphs.

I like the translations and the part about the ring, and I think that you could possibly do more with these to make a better ending—you wrap-up too quickly (and too obviously) and it’s very abrupt. The line “I am assuming you have been able to guess at the essence of my story from the beginning” is both unnecessary, and leaves me, as a reader, to wonder why I’ve been reading it if it was going to be that obvious. What makes this story individual/unique? Was there a moment when the American dream was shattered for you that you can recall and use? I definitely think that it’s there, but that you need to feel that the story is legitimate, and the way you end the piece right now doesn’t make me think that.


Myles—
I think that you have really good organization in this piece. The reader can kind of flow into the story, which is really nice (and probably ideal)—you provide some really nice details and dialogue that allow for a picture to be seen, especially in the beginning.

My concern is more about the second page. You go into a lot of longer paragraphs with much more “telling” and try to explain the phenomena in your town. I don’t think that you need to try to explain it, but that you need to give more about how it relates to you (we get some of that in the beginning with the locker room scene, but we need more—and if you could work in a few more details here and there about yourself it would allow for a greater character on the page). I’d also like another scene towards the end of the piece, something to break up all the larger paragraphs of information (paragraphs that I think could be streamlined if you focus more about how the town relates to you). I do think that you’ve got a really great draft here, though, so good work!