Response to Corey Good's "Chieko and the Sea of Trees"

  I like what you got here. The idea of someone who is so obsessed with killing himself he spends and absurd amount of money to travel to this historic suicide forest only to have a realization that he was wrong. You do a very good job of telling what is happening in preparation to Albert's suicide, as well as giving a crystal clear description of the setting. Also I oddly like the dramatic shift from all introduction and setting to all dialogue. I gives em this notion that the beginning is him mentally preparing himself so there is no dialogue, it's all internal perspective and that is suddenly interrupted when someone does talk to him.

  A few things that took the story away from me was first on the first page. In three sentences he says "I don't matter" in some way or another. I think you should just say it one time, specifically just keep the last one and cut the previous two. From then on out don't say this because it takes away from Albert's character. We get it, he hates himself. The second thing was more just me being confused. On page 3 you say "I cut my way through the trees toward it." You give all this very detailed description of what he buys but don't mention that he bought a sword big enough to cut through a thick forest. A simple addition in saying he bought this is all thats needed

  The last thing is the dialogue part has way too many dialogue tags. It started to bother me because I was really enjoying this conversation because it lead me to think what was going to happen at the end but I kept getting distracted by "I say", "She replied", ect.

  You've got a good story here but the realization that Albert had and in the end not killing himself seemed a little forced. If you expounded on the dialogue and made this connection that he was selfish and that he shouldn't kill himself more clear.

Response to Alethia Russell's "Train Wrecked"

  This was a very enjoyable story to read and I thought it was very well done. You did a very good job of describing your characters and I loved the little snippets we get of Jupiter's subconscious and it isn't used too much. I like the idea of what's happening here. It has the notion of a mystery story but on the other side of the spectrum. I feel as though we do a good job getting into Jupiter's fears and her anger toward herself, she is trying to move on herself but her guilt keeping her.
 One thing I felt that took away from the story is the overuse of dialogue tags. There were a few places that needed some but most of the time it was a case that you added to many. Another thing was on page 3, you refer to the accident as 'it'. over my first reading of this it was thinking: what is it? Like I said earlier, I like the mystery of everything that is happening but it seems to oblivious right here. Flesh out this thought Jupiter is having. Also on the same page there was a confusion on what I thought was a time jump. You go from Amberly and Jupiter talking to talking about the January air but no time had passed. I suggestion to you is to make the setting more clear. You do a great job of describing your characters, I just want more of that in the setting.
  The last thing is the ending. You have this incredible tension rising when the detective comes by and questions are finally starting to be asked. I see that you are trying to have to main character find her way out of the woods but all your tension and revelation is dropped when you say "Then maybe we can let her go." I feel like thats a cop out. I very really getting invested into the story and then cliffhanger. I want more. But overall I loved the story.

Response to Carson Williford ‘s “Surgery”

This was a fantastic story. I love description use give to environment around Timmy. My favorite line has to be “His face in full looks nightmarishly orgasmic.” It just this poetic feel to what is happening to Cal. I feel as though with many of your descriptive uses of both people and the settling is very well done, very fleshed out. Another comment I want to say is great is you use of stream of consciousness. When Timmy is with Cal in the ER and he is looking at the nurse at the counter, it totally breaks the tension of what is going on in the environment and lets me know that this isn’t just a story of a guy trying to deal with the fact that his friend is hurting himself and possibly severely depressed but also that there are some internal struggles of whether or not he still considers himself to be friends with Cal.

            There were a few places I’d suggested relooking at and either adding more to it or rewording it. The first one is on page 2 when the nurse tells Cal to show her the cut. I thought they had gone to a room or somewhere other than the lobby so I suggested letting us know that but then I realized that they are still in the lobby and at that point it seemed to odd for a nurse to tell an injured person to show her a severe wound in the middle of a semi-crowded lobby. It doesn’t seem realistic to me but I could be wrong. Another part where I got lost for a second was at the bottom of page 4 whenever you said, “It seems like yesterday since we were at Jay’s.” I thought you were going to flashback to a memory because you introduced a new setting and then dropped all the sudden. Maybe if you told us that Timmy was leading into a memory but was cut off by Cal talking. It was seems very abrupt.  

            Other than those things I thought this story was very good. I feel like the use of stream of consciousness was done very well and added a strong dimension to the character, Timmy. It made me think of when I had been in the ER with or waiting for family and having those strange thoughts pop in my head

Response to Simon Winston’s “A Fresh Start (Redone)”

I went into this story very interested and really looking forward to see where it was going to go. I think the introduction to the story is the perfect set up to take this to a multiple of different ideas and the one you choose was good with the weird awkward barber who could be a nice guy or and incredible creeper. When it came to describing your character, I felt you did a very good job of give me as a reader a visual of what he looks like and an insight to how his personality is. One think to go back and look at is how you worked his three looks. Each sentence is very straightforward and bland and it feels that you are only saying these things because you have to. My suggestion would be to reword these sentences and mix them together. Just be careful not to make them to long and have them be a run on.

            There is one part that I got lost and didn’t realize you jumped the time. It was on page 2 were you cut from Jake at his job to him being back at the barber. I like both there parts but I feel that you need to distinguish when time jumps a little more. Another part that needs fleshing out is on page 3, when you are talking about the posters. This is a great descriptive use of what Jake is looking at, kind of gives this idea for what he is thinking, but go into my detail when describing it.

            One part that I felt had the potential to be a great idea for moving plot in a different direction was when the dogs came out; however you never talk about there significance and it leaves me wondering why we are given this information. Add more to it and connect it to why the barber is so creepy.

            The strongest point in the story is when Jake finally is talking about what has been bothering him and believe me, I was not ready for all of that. It was great. You get so into the head of Jake and after reading it I felt let down because that was it. I wanted more. You gave all this great description of his character and his past and all the emotions that are building inside him. I want this to be the story, him dealing with Bobby and try to make it though school. You have an excellent story here but it isn’t told.

            Lastly, I was very confused by what was happening after Jake unloaded everything. It feels like we cut to a completely different story and then just as quick we cut back to the ending of the first story.

            Aside from that last part, I feel as though your story has the potential to be something great. Everything is there, you just need to reword some of the sentences and focus in on what Jake is wanting.

Reading Response for Diaz and Danticat

  Junot Diaz does a good job of showing us the reader in her short story "Aurora" of the use of voice and how to write and design an interesting character. All throughout the story we are following the main character, who is a dealer in New York, in his day to day life. We watch him and his partner go through normal days but what Diaz does well is we watch the main character from his internal voice. We see him look back on moments in his life with a girl whom he lived named Aurora. The big aspect to this is that it is all internal dialogue, sort of a stream of consciousness. We watch him conflict with his outward self versus hs inner self and all of this is done well be how he sets up the scene of the memory and how it is told.
  In Edwidge Danticat's "Night Woman"we have this beautiful relation given by the main character, a mother and prostitute, as she blends together the characters in the story, the men who come at night and her son, and the setting. Danticat uses her tone to set the mood of this small one bedroom apartment and how small it is. I made me think of when me and my mom lived together in a one bedroom apartment in my hometown.
  One thing that both these stories have in common is how the narrator tells the story. They explain everything we need to know and what there is to keep us interested by using their voice and their tone.

Reading Response to Moody, Eidus, and Bender

I love what Rick Moody talks about in To Hell With Likeability. There have been to many times have I gone through a book or short story or poem and been utterly disappointed because the character with predictable and so small in regards to their personality and their depth. In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest; we connect so well to Mac and Chief and all the other characters because a) they aren't all that likeable and in some cases bad people and b) the head nurse, whose name eludes me at the moment, is a terrible person and down right evil. Good books have bad endings because life is bad sometimes. Happy endings are boring and people get tired of them. Just look at your average rom-com movie. They're so bland and dry and the only good ones are those where the guy doesn't get the girl or some other crazy thing.

            In Janice Eidus' We Are Not Your Mother, it really is a good eye opener to how we write characters, at least for me. Looking at the story I am writing now, I realize that I have fallen into that mindset of the reader already knows this person and should care about them. It’s a good idea to have to make your character earn the readers love. My teacher in my fiction writing class told me when I asked her to look over my short story to make sure my character isn't whiny or all woe-is-me and it makes sense to see it like that. Readers don’t have to read your book about your character. They are choosing too.

            In Aimee Bender’s story Off, we see a connection to what I was saying in the previous paragraphs. We are given our main character, which is to put it plainly, a bad person. She is rude, unlovable, and a little slutty. We watch her try to fulfill her goal of making out with a blonde, red, and black hair guy. This seems like a pointless story but you stay interested because you want to see want ridiculous thing she does next and as the story continues, we learn about her past and how she is very lonely and start to feel bad for her. So when the end comes she has been broken and there is a sense that when Adam takes her hand, it is well deserved.

Reading Response to Bausch's "1-900"

  This was a tremendous good read. Going into it I knew it was all dialogue and the basic idea of how it was laid out but I didn't expect the plot to be like that. The general plot is this man John calls a phone sex hotline. His lady for the night is Marilyn, or Sharon. When she picks up, she goes through the traditional motions of her job but keeps getting stopped by John because he just wants to have a "conversation". Finally things pick up and they are actually taking, both sharing personal things about one another. Soon after though, John jumps into wanting to have the phone sex, since it came across naturally but Sharon is freaked out by this and ends the conversation.

  This was a very interesting read. Since the whole premise is taking place in phone wires we as a reader have to imagine where they are. We kinda learn that Sharon is in an office doing this job and we can only imagine where John is. I imagine John in his living room with no furniture. He mentions that his wife took a lot of the furniture in the settings of a divorce. But I just imagine John sitting on the floor with various food containers and a little beaten up, hence being thrown down a flight of stairs as he mentioned in the text. As for Sharon, she is in a cubical. All throughout the story she is hesitant to say anything against her jobs protocol.

  I feel as though this story is trying to show the reader that people really sometimes just want to talk. That talking is enough to fill all pleasures a person desires. John and his wife got a divorce mainly because they couldn't talk to each other and Bausch is also stating that have a conversation has become "unconventional". Bausch wants us as a reader to try and get us to break that comfort zone and be unconvention and talk to some people or someone.