"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.