Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24486291-20140531045834/@comment-24077689-20140601035625

You start this off very well, the first sentence kind of throws me off in that you state “I loved watching her… Now? Now it was annoying” as much finesse as you seem to have in the writing here, that seems sloppy. You could set that up with so much more eloquence.

That also extends to some of the diction in the story, in that you have weird word choices such as “sending dozens of shreds of wood…” words like “shreds” and “shavings” aren’t really just descriptions of pine chips. They’re far larger than that, shavings and shreds seems to imply something far more fine than that.

The dialogue could use some work as well, particularly the short exchange that begins the conversation.

Why would the school be shut down simply because of a thunderstorm?

I really love the attention to detail, how the man adjusts his pants, but I have another gripe in that you specify that he’s wearing Windsor glasses. That’s oddly specific, not a lot of people are just outright familiar with Windsor glasses, it might be better to simply say something like “rounded eyeglasses”.

This is alarmingly vague. When I say “alarmingly” I mean that it’s so fucking vague it’s almost indeterminable. The line where you describe his eyes piercing into the narrator’s soul is also kind of tired. Again, with as much finesse as you put into this, that just seems a bit silly. That description is almost as cliché as the “dark and stormy night” set up.

I’m a sucker for realism; everybody knows that about me, this story definitely gets me because I can feel what the narrator feels. I know what he’s feeling, why he’s feeling it, etc. I think you could take more care in how he’s affected by his guilt from his annoyance.

I get vagueness for the sake of interpretation, but you have to still kind of throw us a bit of a fucking bone every now and then, you know? There’s vague, then there’s too vague.

