"Untitled" by Jessica Mullino

Jessica Mullino's story, "Untitled," is about a young woman, Andy, who needs to write a story with a fast-approaching deadline. She is aware that she needs to finish her story for class at noon, but she feels uninspired and unable to write. Her conflict is that she finds other things to occupy her time and attention instead of her assignment, from idle thoughts to groceries to television. Though she stays up all night to finish, she writes the story in the last sixty minutes she has.

The description of the procrastination-to-panic mood that plagues students everywhere was very well done. Andy's struggle and means of putting off her work are things that are easy for a reader to relate to. Particular to readers who are also writers, the details of trying to create a story and characters on the spot are particularly easy to relate to. The use of time stamps, such as "11:23 PM" to separate different sections from one another was also a great way of conveying a sense of time without drawing out the story with meaningless details and clutter.

This story was a good comedy piece, to me, but there didn't seem to be a climax. The tension rose a little bit as the piece moved on, but I didn't feel there was any point of the story where the tension broke into something really important. Instead, we seemed to skip over the climax and right into the end of the story (there's also no time stamp here, which confused me as a reader and jostled me from the story). Another thing that might make this story stronger would be to switch the point of view to first person. Though third person limited can be a good medium and works fine, I think that, for conveying a feeling of panic and distress as well as the calm "I have plenty of time" mood of procrastination, first person in Andy's point of view would be stronger. I think that fleshing out characters mentioned, such as Andy's visiting friend and "high maintenance" room mate would add dimension to the piece. As a reader, I want to know why the friend is visiting and what makes the room mate so high maintenance and not just whiny.

"Secret Park" by Cole Eady

Cole Eady's "Secret Park" is about a man looking to get his body to a more fit state. His two friends from high school have kept themselves healthy and fit, and are willing to help him, but the narrator feels inadequate in comparison to them. The apparent conflict is, therefore, the narrator's struggle with exercises he thinks are simple and the eyes of the people around him watching him fail. The real conflict, however, is something that the narrator isn't even aware of and creates an interesting story arc.

The attention to detail in this piece is very good. I, as a reader, was able to understand the narrator's distress while comparing his life to those of his old high school friends - body and lifestyle wise. Particular details, such as the fact that James arrives in a Mercedes Benz and is a doctor, show that the narrator associates having a fit, well muscled, and ideal body with being successful in a monetary sense. It's also easy to see that the narrator considers Sean and James to be living seemingly perfect lives - it never occurs to him that something like an allergic reaction can take down a man like James, who seems to have everything. Other details, such as those describing the setting of the Secret Park, make the story very strong. It's easy to see exactly where the story is taking place, but Cole used minimal exposition. We catch glimpses of the lives surrounding the main story, preventing the piece from feeling isolated from the world.

One thing that would make the story stronger, I think, would be to have more detail about Sean. James has a nice car and a job as a doctor, but the reader never finds out about Sean's "perfect life." The set up of these two strong, healthy men is a large part of the story, so setting up Sean as a strong character is important. As a reader, I also would like to know about what happened after James went into anaphylactic shock. Did the narrator go to see him in the hospital? Did James live? What is he allergic to? The climax of the story seems to be when James has his episode, and I'd like to see this climax reach a resolution.

Response to "Once in a Lifetime" by Jhumpa Lahiri

The short story "Once in a Lifetime" is the story of a young girl and her experience as her home is invaded by near strangers. She does not understand them or why they are in her house, and barely remembers them from childhood. She is addressing the reader as "You," referring to the 16 year old son of Dr. Choudhuri and his wife. The story seems to be a simple case of one family taking advantage of another - the Choudhuri's are spoiled compared to Heme's family. They are rich and have no problems with spending their money on frivolous things, yet they take up space in Heme's house, eat their food, and continuously don't help out with any kind of household chores. But then the "You" character (I cannot, for the life of me, remember his name) explains to Heme that his mother has cancer - she only has about a year to live.

The "you" aspect of this story was very interesting to me. The story wasn't "second person," but instead was a third person limited view focused on Heme's experience. Though she said "you" throughout the piece, the story was about her and her experiences, not the intended reader. It's an interesting dynamic that I don't think would have been conveyed if the story had just been a traditional third person telling. Another interesting aspect was the juxtaposition of Heme's family and the Choudhuri's in terms of their "American-ness." Heme's family "stuck it out" as immigrants and kept to the old ways, while You's family returned to India and became more American.

I thought this was a very interesting story, especially with Heme's change from hate to infatuation. I think that maybe the story might have been enhanced by emphasizing the infatuation a bit. We hear a lot about Heme's feelings about everything in the beginning, but by the middle, I didn't really know Heme's character at all. Was that the point?

"Meow" by Cary Bayless

In Cary Bayless' "Meow," the narrator, Cyril, is a mentally challenged young man looking for connection. He has three friends - Earl, the owner of the Captain D's down the road, Cyril's father, and Jimmy-Cat, a stray living behind the Captain D's. The overarching conflict is Cyril's lack of understanding about social interactions and the world and manifests itself in two separate instances. The first is when Cyril breaks into Kelly's room and reads her diary - we hear Annie, another girl, talking about how she and Kelly are getting the locks changed and she shouts at him that he can't keep breaking in, implying that Cyril has broken in many times before. Later, Cyril panics when he sees Jimmy-Cat and her new litter of kittens - the blood and smell scares him enough that, without prompting, he cannot understand what he is seeing. But understanding comes when Earl gently shows him what he didn't see before.

The voice of the narrator was well written. It was easy as a reader to understand Cyril's character and sympathize with him. The detail, as well as syntax, made the mood of the narrator easy to identify without coming right out and naming the emotion. In the last conflict, when Cyril finds Jimmy-Cat, I was very impressed with the way the kittens were first described. I'm not sure that Bayless meant to do this, but when Cyril described the scene with so little detail about the "white things" that were "eating [Jimmy-Cat's] stomach," I, as a reader, was confused and disgusted as well. My first thought was that the cat had died and was covered in maggots - something I can understand; Cyril has no idea what he is seeing, making it just as upsetting.

I think that the story could be enhanced if Cyril's father made an appearance. The reader hears through the characters that the man is important, but he never shows up at any point. Kelly never appears either. Another part of the story that seemed a bit off to me was the two very separate conflicts. The conflict with Annie and the diary does not tie in with the rest of the story, or the title, yet it opens the story and takes up half of the text. I think that incident can be cut down and the scene with Jimmy-Cat can be extended.

"Perfect" by Laurel Kostakis

Laurel Kostakis' "Perfect" is the story of a young woman who changed herself upon entering college, and not for the better as she would assume. Her personality in high school, the reader is led to believe, was meek, school focused, practical, and friendly; she changes herself to be what she believes is beautiful and enticing. The  overarching conflict of the story is that she cannot make connections with anyone anymore. Carly, her "best friend," wants nothing to do with her, and neither do any of the boys she flirts with.

The third person limited perspective of this piece works well. I'd say that it was better than using third person omniscient or even first person. The details the readers are privy to with this point of view keep the story going around this character who is so essentially unlikable. The unnamed narrator's character - shallow, oblivious, and  all together unpleasant - also gives the story an interesting dimension. It's easy to write a main character that the reader can relate to and like, but a more interesting perspective to see the reactions of those likable characters to a less personable character from the outside.

I think a good enhancement to the story would be to give us more background on the narrator's past - her mother and sister, her relationship with them and her father, for example. I would also like to know more about Darcy and how the two of them became friends. Another thing I would like to see explained/reworked is the narrator's lack of emotional depth. She hasn't always been shallow and vapid, so how can she just disregard her family and old friends without feeling any kind of remorse? Her character is too one dimensional to hold the reader's attention. To counter this without changing the narrator, I think more detail could go into the interactions between the narrator and those surrounding her, especially focusing on the reactions of the other characters to her.

With the formatting, I don't really know how I feel about the italics. In many instances where they were used, I was pulled out of the story. Italics are usually (in my experience) used in a first person thought bubble, and having them be third person like the rest of the story made me regard the story as a text instead of a story in and of itself.

David Foster Wallace - "Incarnations of Burned Children"

"Incarnations of Burned Children," by David Foster Wallace, is moving in a way that makes the reader's stomach clench and roll. The subject matter itself is mentally interesting and unique -- there are not many stories that one would read on a regular basis where the biggest, most obvious conflict is the physical pain of a child. At the same time, the story is about states of being and change; the Daddy changes from relaxed to panicked control, the mother from hysterics to helpful urgency. Most of all, there is a change in the state of the child from trusting and hopeful to disenchanted with life, even as early as toddler-hood.

The concrete imagery and syntax was very interesting to read in this piece. The simple diction and run on sentence structure pulls the reader along, creating a sense of urgency that the reader cannot pull out of and then come back to with ease. The story is written in such a way that it must be followed from beginning to end to be understood properly and to catch all details (this style also lends itself to the brevity of the piece). The persistent image of the door of the tenant and the bird on the tree outside also helped to foster a sense of panic within the story -- the human mind, like the eye, rarely ever rests on one thing for an extended period of time; there is a constant shifting and taking in of (seemingly irrelevant) information about what is going on around us, even in a state of emotional upheaval.

I would like to emulate this method of conveying emotion. There is very little "telling" in this piece about the emotional states of the characters, and a lot of "showing" through setting, background and flashback, as well as the actions of the characters.

"For the Love of the Game" by Jessica Mullino

Jessica Mullino's "For the Love of the Game" is a story about a young woman who wants to meet the father who was never in her life. The major conflict of the story comes when she attends a baseball game in order to try to meet him, but doesn't see him during the game or after. The conflict is quickly resolved, however, when the narrator finds a note from her father on her car, promising to meet in the near future.

The detail and imagery in this piece was very strong, especially in the opening scene with the baseball game. The level of attention to little pieces of imagery, such as the way the red dirt clung to the umpire's clothes, the hole in Joel Johnson's shoe, and the way the scouts sat behind home plate with their "guns" and their expectations all worked together to set up the scene and mood. There was no need to tell the reader what was going on, because there was enough detail to show  what was important instead.

There were a few inconsistencies that I thought could be fixed to make the story stronger. First, how did the narrator's mother get in contact with Johnson to let him know that Lindsey was coming? The note Johnson left his daughter suggest familiarity with Lindsey's mother; sure they had been in a relationship at one point, but that had been sixteen years prior. If she was in contact with him while their daughter was growing up, would he not have come to meet her at some point? He said that he loved her without knowing her, so I feel like he would have at least wanted to see his child at some point during her life. Another thing I thought was inconsistent was the fact that Lindsey didn't know that Johnson's shoulder was bad -- she watches an old tape of her father almost religiously, and plays softball herself. If she was going to make an effort to see him, I feel like Lindsey would have done her research and known her father wasn't playing due to his "situation."

"Losing Sincerity" by Taylor Hardy

Taylor Hardy's piece, "Losing Serenity" is about a young event supervisor who is faced with a nightmare situation of a concert. He wants to make the entire event run smoothly and is willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen. There seem to be two external conflicts: the concert situation turns out to be worse than the narrator, Brad, had anticipated and his new girlfriend and supervisee finds his business manner to be cold and aloof.

I found the subject matter of this piece to be interesting, as well as the combination of external conflict. In real life, conflicts rarely ever turn up in single file. I found the way Hardy made the two conflicts intertwine to give credit to the piece.

I think something that would make the piece stronger would be a bit more attention to syntax. I was very aware that I was reading a story -- sometimes the dialogue seemed stilted because contractions were not utilized. Another thing that would help the story along is more detail. For example, at one point the staff "started to panic." What does that mean? How does the narrator know that they are panicking, and how does he calm them down? The reader is also told that Brad is cold and business like at work before we get any evidence of it. I think that cutting that out and showing the narrator's work personality instead would enhance the conflict between he and Alyson.

Something else that would enhance the story, in my opinion, would be to flesh out the characters that are introduced. Stephen is supposed to be a slacker, but all we as readers see is that he wants to take off early and hates his job. The narrator apparently hates his job, too, and sends everyone home instead of polishing silverware -- does that make him lazy? The reader is also told that Connor is the narrator's best friend at work, but we don't get much in the way of proof besides the little bit of comfort he tries to give Brad after overhearing Alyson commenting on his business manner.