Carr's Review of Felicia's Story 3/06

Felicia,

You’ve got an intriguing title and scenario here: Sean is rousted from his ordinary routine by his friend John to go and see seven midget strippers. They have a mild adventure, and something shifts in Sean’s life. Good plot and arc for a story. And there are some good lines here. I like when you get close to Sean’s POV – not when you tell us his thoughts in quotation marks necessarily, but when you tell us things like, the cigarette “felt nice in between his lips. It almost eased the pain from his head.” Or “the black tables looked like they were bought from IKEA.” Those are good because they give the reader an idea about the kind of person Sean is. They give us a sense of his character. Your story would benefit from more of that kind of writing. So when you look back over this, look for places where Sean can comment on things. For example, when John says Caesars, what does Sean think? Obviously he hasn’t heard of it. So wouldn’t it be anatural for him to mull it over, to project some kind of expectation? And in the doing, Sean might also tell us two things – first, more about himself; and second, more about his relationship with John. I mean, why does Sean hang out with John? What does he get from the relationship? I don’t know.
Try to slow down here, Felicia. This night to see the seven midget strippers is so fraught with tension, that it seems like the kind of scenario that we should wait until the very end to resolve. After all, from the get go the reader will be expecting something momentous from the show, but here it’s kind of a fizzle. It can still be a fizzle (that’s probably the most realistic situation), but the build up has to establish more tension. So give us more of the night. Try to establish a secondary plot – something that has to be done before the two guys can actually go to the club. That might be what the story is really about. But along the way, we’ll get to know Sean and John a lot better, and we’ll see at the end why they end up where they do.
Does that make sense? Think about it, and let me know if you have questions.

There is one technical question that needs to be addressed, Felicia, and that is the question of formatting dialogue. Learn that and make sure you conform to the conventions here early on. OK.

CK