Carr's Review of Dan's Story 2/27

Dan,

When I first started reading “see No Evil,” I thought, ‘ Well, he doesn’t quite have the blind thing down.’ I mean, missing the cake? That’s a bit much to swallow. Then I got to p. 2 where the mother says, “If you are real good, do everything that you are told, stay out of trouble, and pray really hard, then on your sixteenth birthday, God will let you see.” And I thought, ‘Here it is. This is the creepshow.’ And I liked that. I liked the idea that this was going to be some freaky mom who basically is whacked and taking it out on her son. Yikes. That has a bunch of potential, a la Stephen King. Then I get to the end, and I discover that this isn’t a story, but the set up for a joke, and I was truly disappointed, Dan. I mean, the joke isn’t even funny.

So anyhow, if you want to keep working on this, I have a couple of suggestions. The first is to ramp up the creep. Make the mom truly weird. My wife suggested having her sleep with him under the guise of being his girlfriend or a prostitute. Now, that’s sick. Something like that, though, is what this story needs if it’s going to appeal. But then you’re going to have to make a choice about POV. Of course you’d probably want to go with Billy’s. But then you’ve got to do some serious research about blind people – which it doesn’t seem like you’ve done here.

Mechanically you need to watch that your verb tense is consistent in your work. You shift here on p. 3 and it really drags the story down. So pay closer attention.

All right. You’ve got some things to work with. See me with questions.