- I believe the best feedback I received was from Riley, when she said she needed more dialogue. She wrote this in her Journal #11 letter to her peer reviewers. I appreciated the context of her advice, by saying, “I love when [stories] make me think about life and I just really loved your story. I don’t have many suggestions, but maybe just add some more dialogue to the story so we can get some more information about the character.” I often get lost in descriptive language and forget that the character also needs to be developed, especially in this story, where I wanted a little more anonymity. I think that this was a great piece of advice that reminded me to create a story, not just a rambling.
- The peer review I took part in was extremely fun and enjoyable, and I loved hearing what other people were coming up with. In Riley’s story, the advice I gave her was to not to rely too much on a cliffhanger, but that it was an interesting idea. I believe this helped her shape her story and work on the growth of the character Lia. I wanted her to include some more description so that the reader could feel the story more, and be able to enjoy the cliffhanger she left it at during the peer review without feeling like they knew nothing about the story and that the cliffhanger was more of an annoyance. I hope, and choose to believe that my advice was useful to Riley and that it helped her create a fully functioning story.
- One element of craft I appreciate in my own skills as a writer, as well as in my story is my descriptive language. I believe I am able to do well in that, although I often become too reliant on the use of descriptions and imagery. Dialogue doesn’t come naturally to me, and I often overcompensate by using lengthy tags or too many words that don’t quite fit the character. Because of this, I believe that the descriptive language is working best, and is evoking the emotion most clearly. I see this in phrases such as “I cut myself open and stitch myself back together every night, hoping against all previous experience that something would change. You can’t stitch yourself back together, I’ve noticed. It never quite works.” This is where I received the most appreciation during class, and from other people who have read the story. I think this line resonates with me very personally, and so this is biased, but I do believe this is reflective of my descriptive writing talent. I hope to continue to hone this ability outside of poetry, and perhaps even continue the story in a new way.
- I am very curious about how I might revise this story. I believe I would try to pare down the overly descriptive parts and add in more dialogue. I would spend less time following the narrative of getting up in the morning and work more on the character development as a whole, including the addition of dialogue. I believe that the ability to create meaningful conversations is incredibly important for a writer, and to add in dialogue and relationships with other characters would make the story more interesting. In paring down the descriptive language, I would attempt to keep the most important parts, but to determine the importance is the issue. I am very sentimentally attached to my writing, and cutting out extensive metaphors that are largely unnecessary is hard for me. I would work on changing this, however, because it is important for the reader to feel engaged and excited about the work, and not bogged down by verbiage and excessive language. I would add in more interactions with the woman at the end of the story, and create a more meaningful bond between the two characters that gives the reader a better view of the glimpse of hope I showed at the end.
