Workshop Two Responses

For the two in my group who have posted their profiles:

Andrea—

I think this is a really fascinating story and you’ve got a really good start. I’d like to see more detail in some places—you pass through the marriage/divorce really fast, for example, as well as the post-divorce, and I think you could make it more individual to her. I also think that breaking up the description and quotes will help the piece aesthetically, and maybe you could shorten some of the quotes in order to free up more words. I also had some confusion about timeline stuff—like, you call the guy her ex-husband before they’ve actually been divorced in the story, and I think you could just refer to him as “this guy she knew from earlier whom she started seeing.” That’s easy to fix, though. And also just remember to vary the words you use to begin sentences—there are times you repeat them a few times, and that can make it harder to read.

I wonder if there’s a way that you can re-create some earlier scenes from her life—a scene from their marriage and how it wasn’t working, something with her kids, etc. I don’t know how easy it would be to get that from her, but if you can, that’d be cool. Great job so far, though!


Myles—
I LOVE this piece—you do a wonderful job carrying the reader through it, and keeping it interesting. You’re obviously going to have to streamline parts, since you’re 500 words over the word limit, but what you have right now is a really great start.

I wonder if there’s some way you can slip in more about his personal life. It obviously isn’t central to the piece—and it shouldn’t be—but if you could just slip in a few details here or there, I think that would help to make him more than one-dimensional. The other thing I’m wondering about is the use of “me” in the fifteenth paragraph—I think it’s the only time that you put yourself in the piece, and I don’t think that you need to, I think that it stands really well on its own (and the one-time use of it is kind of abrupt and causes the reader to pause).

The ending and the beginning are both really powerful, for which I applaud you—they can be the most challenging to write, in my opinion, and you do them really well in this piece. I can’t wait to read the final draft of this!