AwkwardMD and Omenainen Review Thread

[AwkwardMD]

I probably should have done this a long time ago.

I'm Dr. Awkward. I like to give reviews. I like to be helpful. However, in the course of giving those reviews I also fire off a lot of hot takes on things, and those hot takes invariably turn into arguments with other reviewers.

So, here we are.

As a preview, a lot of what I give are probably going to boil down to structural advice (how to build tension, how to build characters, etc), storytelling advice, and how to build your own toolset as an author.

I don't pull punches. I'll criticize things, and I will praise things; high risk, high reward. I'll try to help you find your strengths to better utilize them, and help you identify your weaknesses to shore them up. I will feel like I've succeeded when people I've helped are comfortable enough to turn around and give advice to others whether or not it's advice I agree with.

I would also encourage anyone who gets advice from me, positive or negative, to sit with it for a day or two before you decide whether what I've said is fair or helpful.

As of right now, the only rule I would ask is that no one request feedback on more than a chapter or two of a multi-chapter work. Anything longer than that, or something that's more than 10 Lit pages, I'm likely to just read some and give you feedback on that. There are no restrictions on content or category. I can and will read just about anything.

 

[SeabornFare]

I enjoy reading review threads, its always interesting to see two writers discuss another person's literary work, but I have a few questions, if you don't mind.

Are you are real Dr, and if so, is it in some literary field?

What are your credentials? Are you an editor, technical writer, English teacher, a columnist, do you have degrees in creative writing, English literature, journalism, or similar fields?

Are you a self-taught writer giving advice based on your own likes and dislikes, or is writing your actual career field?

I plan on reading your reviews, but I'd like to know if I'm reading the reviews of a professional, or an enthusiast.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'd encourage people to submit themselves to AwkwardMD's reviews.

It doesn't matter to me whether she is a professional reviewer, writer or critic or not - what is guaranteed is that you will receive fearless, opinionated yet thoughtful advice/commentary (call it what you will). You might not agree with everything MD has to say - but if you want some deep attention, with MD you'll get it.

I comment as someone who sought out and received an MD review (posted in full under one of my stories, if anyone is interested) - I agreed with some of her comments completely and disagreed with others just as completely, but I had no issues seeing her points at all.

If you've got the courage of your own convictions as a writer, submit something to MD. If nothing else, you'll know you were read closely by someone with very strong views, and there's always value in that.

 

[SimonDoom]

I enjoy reading review threads, its always interesting to see two writers discuss another person's literary work, but I have a few questions, if you don't mind.

Are you are real Dr, and if so, is it in some literary field?

What are your credentials? Are you an editor, technical writer, English teacher, a columnist, do you have degrees in creative writing, English literature, journalism, or similar fields?

Are you a self-taught writer giving advice based on your own likes and dislikes, or is writing your actual career field?

I plan on reading your reviews, but I'd like to know if I'm reading the reviews of a professional, or an enthusiast.

I want, respectfully, to offer an alternative perspective to the assumptions in your question.

I don't think credentials matter much in online discussions, especially in an online forum where everyone is anonymous. AwkwardMD could give you a long list of impressive credentials, and for all you know the whole thing could be bullshit.

I'm very much of the opinion that an argument or position stands or falls on its merits, not on the credentials of the person. Many highly intelligent, educated, well-credentialed people are full of crap or have no judgment.

My impression of AwkwardMD, for instance, is that this is not her day job, or the result of long years of earning degrees, but that she nonetheless takes care with her writing (you can tell from reading her stuff, which you should do if you are interested in asking her to critique your stuff) and is an intelligent and observant, if sometimes very biased and opinionated, reviewer. It's worthwhile to get her critique on a piece of writing even if you totally disagree with her about some things.

Good readers and writers can come from all walks of life, from all sorts of working and educational backgrounds.

Good writing is good writing. If you've been reading books carefully and voraciously from childhood, like some people here obviously have, you're going to know something about what's good and bad even if you don't have anything to do with writing as a job.

As a critic, I think one should try to concentrate on the text rather than trot out credentials, or, if one has some special experience that's useful to an issue, cite the outside source that backs up one's opinion rather than falling back on general statements about authority, so the author can look up the source. In discussions I've had with KeithD at this forum, for example, he's cited the Chicago Manual of Style, which I knew little about before but which is recognized as the preeminent guide for published writing in the US. I have a copy of it now near my desk at all times. It's extremely helpful, and it's easy to cite on questions of style.

As a reader, I think one should focus on the reviewer's criticism and the reasons given for the criticism rather than the reviewer's credentials, because one will never really know whether the credentials are legit.

 

[KeithD]

I don't think credentials matter much in online discussions, especially in an online forum where everyone is anonymous. AwkwardMD could give you a long list of impressive credentials, and for all you know the whole thing could be bullshit.

I think training and experience (credentials) are quite important to be in a position to be constructively critiquing someone else's work (and that SeabornFare asked "spot on" questions of someone hanging a critiquer's shingle out here). Here, this could be demonstrated by a read of the critiquer's own writing file (not the best, because writing skills aren't quite the same as teaching skills) and checking how well their comments on the discussion board on writing have held up over the years, or someone hanging out an editor's shingle could vet their background with the Web site's editorial board moderator, as I did years ago.

AwkwardMD has an extensive story file here and a discussion board history of critiquing, so those considering putting a work up for critique by AwkwardMD could do a search of this site and come up with a general idea on expertise on guiding anyone else in writing.

 

[NotWise]

I've read enough to know what I expect from Awkward's review and to respect Awkward's response.

I have goals for this story. Tell me what you think of Love is Enough.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

I probably should have done this a long time ago.

I'm Dr. Awkward. I like to give reviews. I like to be helpful. However, in the course of giving those reviews I also fire off a lot of hot takes on things, and those hot takes invariably turn into arguments with other reviewers.

So, here we are.

Do you only review stories after they're published, or would you be willing to read through a work that's essentially finished but hasn't been submitted yet?

 

[AwkwardMD]

Love is Enough by Notwise

Link

To start, I just want to get a pet peeve out of the way. This is me criticism (I can’t stress that enough), and maybe not the most fair point to pick on. I’ve argued before, in other reviews I’ve given elsewhere, about how difficult it is to write gods, demigods, AI, and aliens. Now I get to add ghosts to that list.

It is Hard (with a capital H) to write about an experience that is wholly different from your own. Most writers can’t or don’t, for varying reasons. When characters appear in stories that could or should be different, they invent reasons why those characters can and should act just like humans. In isolation none of these are egregious. Gabby and Hannah act like human beings. Fine... but when you step back and look at how often these types of characters are given a distinctly human experience, it starts to look like some kind of flaw.

Gabby and Hannah act like human beings. They breathe, and they sigh, and they walk around, and they sleep (sleeping made my eyebrows try to hide behind my hairline). You gave them mountains of subconscious, passive indicators of run-of-the-mill human behavior. By themselves, it’s easy to handwave that away because they were human once. Maybe these actions are just the actions of a spirit remembering how it was when it was alive and had these limitations (like the need to rest), but I wanted more. I wanted to see characters that are awake constantly and are more jaded. They find no rest, and it wears on them. I wanted Hannah’s tantrum to turn into a realization about how far she has drifted from her humanity, and her ability to empathize with others. That could have been a really powerful moment of emotional growth for her (that led to her *ascension* or whatever), but it fell by the wayside.

I see the appeal of including non-human characters, as it adds a kind of exoticness to the premise, but you have only paid lip service to that end. You threw a white sheet with eye holes over two otherwise-human characters, and I think you could do a LOT more if you wanted to.

***

Now that that’s out of the way…

I felt like the pacing was a little rushed, especially at the beginning. The story introduces Gabby and Hannah to TJ and reveals that they’re ghosts and works a handjob into the mix within… I want to say the first 1500 words? It felt fast, and all the more so because TJ accepted it easily (more on that later). Bad pacing works against a story when you don’t give the reader time to adjust to what you’re throwing at them. Most people, I think, upon finding out that ghosts are real, and that there are two sitting on either side of you, would have a more complicated reaction than TJ does, and shortcutting that for the sake of getting to the handjob and the next scene is… easy.

I think I understand why you shortcutted it. You wanted to get to the handjob because there is a perception that the average Literotica reader is only going to give you so many words before they want something to spank to. I think your intention, to write a story about two ghosts with fun dialog, was undercut here by letting your understanding of the readers expectations dictate the pacing. There are a lot of scenes in the first few pages that seem to only be present because they serve as the lead-up to sex. The scenes themselves don’t seem to add anything to the plot, nor does the sex, and that makes them seem superfluous when, later, you are clearly going somewhere with the story.

The reading of the romance novel was the most blatently problematic, from my perspective. There are nearly 1000 words of some other story, and dialog between characters we don’t care about, that seem to be present simply to serve up a “let’s rewrite this romance novel to add sex. I’ll be her and you be him. Fuck me, Antoine” moment. If these scenes with Antoine and Emily served as foreshadowing for the larger plot, I think they would work better, but I didn’t get that. If Antoine, Victor, and Emily’s complicated love triangle had been a signal that later on, Hannah and Gabby would NOT have been okay sharing TJ, I think that would have worked too, but I didn’t get that either.

Some stories ask the reader to go on a journey with them, to accept that we’re going to take a narrative detour and please keep reading my story, and that’s okay, but the unspoken part of that compact is “I swear I’m going somewhere with all of this.” I didn’t feel like that was the case in hindsight.

***

In the movie White Men Can’t Jump, Wesley Snipes’ and Woody Harrelson’s characters have a repeated conversation about the idea that Harrelson can “listen to Jimmy Hendrix, but can’t hear Jimmy Hendrix,” with the distinction being that Hendrix has layered some part of his life experience into his music that Woody Harrelson is patently unable to appreciate.

For a short section here, I’m going to make an arbitrary distinction between the concept of Story and Plot. Love is Enough is chocka with story. Lots of things are happening. Lots of scenes. Lots of dialog. TJ goes all over the theater and does many important tasks for a theater. Events are occuring, but that’s not the same as having a plot. A plot is a structure where characters learn things, and grow, and come to understand themselves in a new light. In the course of a plot, characters have goals and needs and weigh those against each other to sort out what it is they really have to have in their lives to feel whole. They face fears.

I feel like you could cut out 15k words from the beginning, and your ending would just feel a bit rushed. The only reason you can do that is because there aren’t extra layers in those early scenes. There isn’t foreshadowing. There isn’t a ton of depth to the characters (at least, not with TJ), so we can’t spend time exploring those idiosyncracies and conflicts.

It feels like we’re listening, but that there’s nothing to hear.

If I had to guess, I would say that this story got away from you in the planning stage. You had an idea, and where you wanted to go with it, and you added more and more and more and more and and and and and…

In my opinion, this would have been a great premise for a short story, where the entire thing happens in the course of one magical night and TJ thinks to himself that no one will believe what just happened, but the scope of it is larger than the ideas you explore, and the characters you placed within it, and the meat of the subtext.

***

In movies and television, it is usually easy to spot props. Characters that run around with prop guns or prop swords move differently. It’s too light when they swing their arms around. Their feet aren’t planted right to handle shifts in momentum that would otherwise blow them over. Sometimes it’s the other way around. A character who is supposed to be an amazing swordsman is being portrayed by an actor who has no idea what they’re doing, and you have to cover it up later with jump cuts to hide the fact that his arms are watery and he’s a greater danger to himself than anyone else.

In this story, Hannah’s trauma is a prop. She has had, by far, the most horrifying experiences, but as soon as she tells TJ about them the first thing he does is reach up under her shirt and touch her scars. I was stunned. I know everyone deals with trauma differently, but it seems like that is asking a lot of someone with deep emotional scars, and it is resolved with near-zero followup. Either ‘the trauma was bad in which case the easy resolution paid it a disservice’, or ‘the trauma was light in which case her tantrum was overblown.’ Can’t have it both ways.

At the end of the fifth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy dies (sorry not sorry for spoilers). In the opening episode of the sixth season, she is ressurected, and for the rest of the season, the show is dour, and melancholy, and absolutely fucking depressing because it took the time to deal with character death. While it is an absolute slog to get through it’s also fucking brilliant. It is my gold standard for having serious consequences to serious happenings.

Death is a huge thing to deal with. Physical and sexual abuse is a huge thing to deal with. It should have been harder for Hannah to let down her walls.

The handling of Hannah’s trauma isn’t an outlier. TJ accepts that there are ghosts, and that they want him. Mack immediately accepts that there are ghosts. Joan sees ghosts, and has what I felt was an appropriate reaction, but then she never appears again. There’s no consequences. There’s no shift in momentum. The trauma is play trauma, and Hannah and Gabby are pretend ghosts.

If it doesn’t look like it’s hard for characters to deal with a thing, then it probably wasn’t hard for the characters to deal with the thing. That makes the thing look unimportant or, worse, common.

***

The dialog in this was a delight. A real highlight. This is what any period piece story should aspire to.

Gabby and Hannah's interpersonal relationship was mesmerizing. I wanted so much more of them lying to themselves, each other, and TJ. It was awesome, and almost served as comic relief. They steal the show.

TJ is… present. He's a perfect gentleman and a nice dude and forgiving and infinitely understanding and always cums twice… and there's nothing under the hood that you don't spot at first glance. This would have been fine in a shorter story, but in a longer story he felt exposed.

The big moment for Gabby was pretty powerful. The message you gave that felt pitch perfect for the romance readers out there. I felt like she earned her *ascension* or whatever... but Hannah didn't. She was just sort of along for the ride even though I thought she and TJ had the deeper connection.

***

I thought this was easily an eight out of ten for me. I was entertained. I liked the sex. I liked the premise. I liked the girls a lot. I think it could have been tighter, but that suggestion is only that you keep all the things that are currently working (and, to be clear, there are a lot of things that work here) and wear out a red pen in the editing.

Well done!

 

[AwkwardMD]

Do you only review stories after they're published, or would you be willing to read through a work that's essentially finished but hasn't been submitted yet?

I beta read for several other Lit authors. PM me if you'd like me to take a look at something.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

I beta read for several other Lit authors. PM me if you'd like me to take a look at something.

Thx. I'll keep that in mind. I'm working on something, but I want to re-edit it and re-write some of it first.

Are you ok with sending your critiques as a PM or email? Or do you prefer to keep them to this forum?

 

[NotWise]

I thought this was easily an eight out of ten for me. I was entertained. I liked the sex. I liked the premise. I liked the girls a lot. I think it could have been tighter, but that suggestion is only that you keep all the things that are currently working (and, to be clear, there are a lot of things that work here) and wear out a red pen in the editing.

Well done!

Thanks for your review. You've added diversity to the comments from my beta readers, and reinforced some of their other ideas. If I do more with the story, then I'll factor your thoughts into the my decisions.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Thanks for your review. You've added diversity to the comments from my beta readers, and reinforced some of their other ideas. If I do more with the story, then I'll factor your thoughts into the my decisions.

Thank you for sharing this! It's clear you put a lot of work into this, and you should be proud!

 

[CoffeeWithMonkeys]

I wish I still posted stuff here, I always loved your reviews.
One day again maybe.

 

[Liethra]

Count me as a new fan as well, really enjoyed reading your analysis!

 

[Polyacrylate]

I had to debate about whether I wanted to ask for a review... My story Snowed In is the only thing I've written in the past few years that I'm remotely pleased with, but I'm still certain I could have done better. I normally write slowly, and this story was at about 80-90% of what it is now when I decided I needed to submit it for a contest, and rushed out the remaining sections over a day or two, which I think hurt it as a finished product.

A few months after posting, I cleaned up a bit of the grammar and added a paragraph or two. Really it was the idea for the additional paragraphs that inspired me to do it in the first place. Unfortunately, there were grammatical and even a few spelling errors that survived that quick scrub, and I keep thinking about going back and giving this one a proper edit. I've resisted the urge to play Spielberg/Lucas so far, but if I ever succumb, I'd like to at least have the right guidance. If nothing else, some detailed direction on what I did and didn't do well here may get me out of a rut on some of my other projects.

Known issues:
-Previously mentioned grammar and spelling errors
-My prose is kinda clunky in parts and I overuse "I" as the opening of paragraphs, especially when things get physical.
-My (re?)introduction of the character Lizzie in the flashback is a little out of nowhere. This was part of that section that I rushed out.
-My treatment of Kayla may come across as slut-shaming? I have a partially written story about her. She's not supposed to be a nice person, but I'm not sure if I, as an author, gave her a fair chance.
-The sex parts are probably too long for some tastes, making up 30-40% of a 5 page story.
-I like my leads as characters, but wouldn't want to be friends with either of them. I consider them too selfish. I'm thinking I may have been too subtle with that.

I'll accept feedback in the spirit in which it is given, so thanks for your time.

Unrelated: I was never huge into Buffy, so I'm not really up on the legacy of season 6. But at the time it was airing, I didn't feel like that season was given its due, so I'm glad somebody else also sees it as an overall success.

 

[SimonDoom]

I had to debate about whether I wanted to ask for a review... My story Snowed In is the only thing I've written in the past few years that I'm remotely pleased with, but I'm still certain I could have done better. I normally write slowly, and this story was at about 80-90% of what it is now when I decided I needed to submit it for a contest, and rushed out the remaining sections over a day or two, which I think hurt it as a finished product.

A few months after posting, I cleaned up a bit of the grammar and added a paragraph or two. Really it was the idea for the additional paragraphs that inspired me to do it in the first place. Unfortunately, there were grammatical and even a few spelling errors that survived that quick scrub, and I keep thinking about going back and giving this one a proper edit. I've resisted the urge to play Spielberg/Lucas so far, but if I ever succumb, I'd like to at least have the right guidance. If nothing else, some detailed direction on what I did and didn't do well here may get me out of a rut on some of my other projects.

Known issues:
-Previously mentioned grammar and spelling errors
-My prose is kinda clunky in parts and I overuse "I" as the opening of paragraphs, especially when things get physical.
-My (re?)introduction of the character Lizzie in the flashback is a little out of nowhere. This was part of that section that I rushed out.
-My treatment of Kayla may come across as slut-shaming? I have a partially written story about her. She's not supposed to be a nice person, but I'm not sure if I, as an author, gave her a fair chance.
-The sex parts are probably too long for some tastes, making up 30-40% of a 5 page story.
-I like my leads as characters, but wouldn't want to be friends with either of them. I consider them too selfish. I'm thinking I may have been too subtle with that.

I'll accept feedback in the spirit in which it is given, so thanks for your time.

Unrelated: I was never huge into Buffy, so I'm not really up on the legacy of season 6. But at the time it was airing, I didn't feel like that season was given its due, so I'm glad somebody else also sees it as an overall success.

A piece of advice: To get the most out of a reviewer, I think you should do everything you can by yourself to get the story in what you regard as its best shape. That way the reviewer will focus on the areas he/she can really help you rather than the areas you already know need to be improved. Personally, I insist that someone who wants me to review their work must give it to me in what they regard as finished, ready-to-publish condition.

 

[Polyacrylate]

A piece of advice: To get the most out of a reviewer, I think you should do everything you can by yourself to get the story in what you regard as its best shape. That way the reviewer will focus on the areas he/she can really help you rather than the areas you already know need to be improved. Personally, I insist that someone who wants me to review their work must give it to me in what they regard as finished, ready-to-publish condition.

That's absolutely fair, and I had similar thoughts after making my post. AMD, I would certainly not hold it against you if you told me to come back when I was prepared to put my best foot forward.

 

[AwkwardMD]

That's absolutely fair, and I had similar thoughts after making my post. AMD, I would certainly not hold it against you if you told me to come back when I was prepared to put my best foot forward.

No worries. I should have something for you today or tomorrow.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Snowed In by Polyacrylate

Link

First, I’ll address the points you mentioned:
- Grammar/Spelling - Bear two things in mind as you progress with your writing. 1, always be trying to improve. Try to absorb something from each story you write, and use that lesson to make your next story just a little bit more accurate/grammatically correct. 2, there are diminishing returns on grammar. Once you get to a certain point, functionally* no one is going to notice mistakes. Appreciation of your continued efforts to improve and be ‘perfect’ will not be commensurate with the effort you put into continuing to improve and be ‘perfect’.

In summation, it’s worth the effort to improve, but only up to a certain point.

Grammar, spelling, and punctuation are the delivery vehicles for a story. A shitty delivery vehicle can ruin a story, but it can’t make it better. All they do is get your ideas across, and that’s important, but a piping hot pizza delivered by a solid, reliable Toyota Camry and a piping hot pizza delivered by a McLaren F1 are still going to taste the same. The story ultimately matters more.

- Clunky Prose - I was subconsciously aware of a few times throughout the story where the narration was maybe not as smooth as it could have been. The fix for this is practice, with a dollop of reading other people’s material critically. Read someone’s story not for content, but with questions in mind like “how do they describe rooms”, “what do they think is the right amount of character description”, or “how much dialog is too much dialog”. You may find that a story you’re reading doesn’t succeed, and dissecting why that is will help you with your own writing.

This is the one of the biggest reasons I give feedback like I do. This is me practicing what I preach. I read other people’s stories and decide for myself what I think works and doesn’t, and then I apply those lessons to my own writing.

- Reintroduction of Lizzie - This was fine for me. I didn’t think it was bad, or worth warning me in advance about. I do have tangential concerns here, but I’ll get to those later.

- Slutshaming Kayla - I didn’t read it that way. Aaron has a complicated reaction to seeing Kayla blowing another dude. Yes, he was initially very upset, and that’s a perfectly human reaction. There’s nothing wrong with this.

On a broader level, I think it is important to approach sensitive topics with care. Calling someone out on bad behavior is subjective to everyone’s interpretation of bad. Personally, I would have been on Aaron’s side, and that sending him a ‘Wish you were here’ text like that was kind of a bitch move.

The real test is how other characters react. Take the N word, for example. A character in a story calls another black character by the N word. A story is not racist or ‘bad’ simply for having that happen. If, for example, another character then reacts like a normal person and says “Whoa, my dude. Not cool,” and then things happen as a result of that? You are now using that controversial subject to move your plot forward. It’s fine to explore tough subjects, and I would encourage it. This is, after all, what you did. Kudos. I think most readers of this site are mature enough to hear you out. They might chime in in the comments afterwards to tell you what they thought, but provoking conversation can be a good thing.

Short story long, it’s okay to have a slut in your story. It’s okay to have a character call that slut a slut. It’s okay to have the characters talk about whether or not slutty behavior is a good thing. It’s not okay to have the story tell you she is a slut, because now you’re preaching.

- Sex too long - Matter of preference. Some characters and settings lend themselves to a real fuckfest, and that’s fine. Whether or not people like it is their business. Whether or not you want to cater to the indulgent or minimalist crowd is your business.

- Likeable Characters - There have been many threads on this subject in the AH over the years that I’ve been here. Where you land on this topic is a matter of personal taste.

If what you’re telling me is that these characters are supposed to be shitty people but that you didn’t do a good job conveying that, then I might agree that you didn’t do a good job of that, but no battle plan survives first contact. If you tried to write about two assholes and they came out nicer than you expected, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I liked them, and that’s not a bad thing.

***

I am going to guess that this story really happened to you, or some version of it. Or that it’s based on real events. There are a lot of details that inform the characters, or the settings, or the events, that don’t strictly matter. I see this often in stories based on real life events because the author feels like they owe it to the memory of the thing to share all of the bits they can remember. Little asides that aren’t important. I couldn’t put my finger on any one detail that highlights this for me, but there were enough little things going on that I feel pretty confident in my guess.

If I am right, then what you’ve written here is non-fiction and that’s an important distinction. It kind of reads like a documentary and not a story. The first half of the story painstakingly lays out each of the building blocks that leads to the titular conditions of the plot, and that’s a function of the way human memory works. We look back at an event, and with hindsight we can see all the little steps along the way that got us there. Then, in trying to write about that memory, what you’ve done is less writing and more transcribing.

Some human health problems are best treated by attacking the thing that causes them. Anti-biotics treat bacterial infections directly. You don’t, however, treat Autism; you treat the symptoms. Some stories are bacterial infections. This story is Autism.

“We’re stuck,” I said, as I stumped back into the lobby and kicked the snow off of my boots.

I have now, in one sentence, gotten you to the point in the story that matters. All of that backstory can be jettisoned. It doesn’t really matter how you got here, just that you’re here now. You ended up rehashing most of what mattered in conversation after this point anyway. A few minor dialog changes, and suddenly this story is much snappier.

If I am wrong, and this is not a true story, then you have gone above and beyond in terms of thinking through the supporting details that enable the meat of your story. There’s a trope in sitcoms where a character who is lying will continue to add unimportant details as a cover for the fact that the thing didn’t happen. It’s not just that a bird flew into Bob Belcher’s car while he was driving and caused him to hit a parked car, it was a cormorant. And a butterfly. Both. And the sun was in his eyes.

It’s funny in a sitcom in a meta sense, but it’s bloat here. Embrace Chekhov’s Gun. Sleep with it at night. Get comfortable with it.

Either way, whether I’m right or wrong, I think one of the biggest lessons you can take from this story is that it misses the mark in its scope. Spend some time in the early planning stages of your next project thinking about the kind of story you want to tell, and really think about “what matters”. Where is the heart of this story? Where can I best show that off?

In the book American Gods by Neil Gaiman, there is a great conversation about maps that I think is applicable. You can draw a map of the world on a postage stamp, and it’ll be geographically accurate to a point. You can tell where all the land is, and where all the oceans are. If you want the map to be more accurate, you have to make the map bigger. Once you make it the size of an 8x11 sheet of paper, you can add countries and borders. If you quadruple that size, you can start adding in major rivers and lakes. Capital cities. If you quadruple that size, you can start adding in cities with a population of over 500,000. Elevation. Tributaries to major rivers. Eventually, what you will end up with is a map that is perfectly accurate in every detail, and is the exact same size as the surface of the world thereby rendering it completely useless as a map.

Every story is a map that leads somewhere. Figure out what you really want to show, and then adjust the scope to best highlight that. This takes some practice. I wrote some stories where I was like “I’m gonna try to tell a big story in, like, 7k words”. I don’t think I necessarily succeeded, but I learned from the experiment and enjoyed the process.

***

I have a personal writing theory. I developed this on my own. I am probably not the first person to think this way, but I didn’t copy anyone else when I got there. My theory is that “Everything is a tool.” Word choice, grammar, sentence structure, character design, plot. Racist characters. Slutshaming. Second person narrative. All tools. No tool is useless, but some of them are less universally applicable than others. Some are extremely nuanced. Some tools work better in a given circumstance than other, similar tools. Learning how to use a tool is just as important as learning when to use a tool.

Framing devices are a tool. They have their place. Your framing device is well used here, in that you wrote it well, but the deciding factor, as with most tools, is “Does this add anything?” In this instance, I don’t think the framing device added anything. Aaron’s friends playing a drinking game didn’t inform the story, nor the story really change anything at the landing point. I wasn’t invested in whether or not the other characters thought Aaron was lying, and whether they did or not didn’t change anything.

Just to be clear, the epilogue with Maya is a separate tool. That was extremely well placed, and served a really awesome purpose. I loved the name choice of Erin. It wrapped everything up nicely. You didn’t need the Framing Device to wrap things up in a bow when the Epilogue does that so much more elegantly.

 

[Polyacrylate]

I am, in an odd way, pleased that you thought the story may be true. It's not. The most truth in this story is that I'm a sometimes melancholy engineer who once got stuck at work overnight when a train derailed during a storm. I had some goals for laying the story out in the manner that I did, but I can see that I missed the mark a bit.

I'll take some time to think about your comments. I may respond further, or I may not. Either way, your constructive criticism is appreciated and certainly helpful. I appreciate your taking the time. Thanks!

 

[OneAuthor]

I like the idea of Dr. Awkward reviewing my prose and giving honest feedback that can improve my writing.

Although 13 chapters have been written and published, I wish to submit only the first 2 of my series. This is a total of 7 Lit pages.

The Teacher's Pet Ch. 01
The Teacher's Pet Ch. 02

Since there are more Teacher's Pet chapters in the works - and outlines prepared for additional stories - I would be very happy to receive any suggestions that Dr. Awkward could graciously provide.

Thanks in advance.

 

[AwkwardMD]

I like the idea of Dr. Awkward reviewing my prose and giving honest feedback that can improve my writing.

Although 13 chapters have been written and published, I wish to submit only the first 2 of my series. This is a total of 7 Lit pages.

The Teacher's Pet Ch. 01
The Teacher's Pet Ch. 02

Since there are more Teacher's Pet chapters in the works - and outlines prepared for additional stories - I would be very happy to receive any suggestions that Dr. Awkward could graciously provide.

Thanks in advance.

I will get to this as soon as I can. However, I will be having minor surgery in about 36 hours and I don't know what my focus will be like after that. Just try to be patient with me.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

I will be having minor surgery in about 36 hours

Be well. Wishing you a quick recovery!

 

[Polyacrylate]

I will get to this as soon as I can. However, I will be having minor surgery in about 36 hours and I don't know what my focus will be like after that. Just try to be patient with me.

Be well and best wishes!

 

[OneAuthor]

I will get to this as soon as I can. However, I will be having minor surgery in about 36 hours and I don't know what my focus will be like after that. Just try to be patient with me.

Thank you, and I wish you the best re: the minor surgery. Your health and well-being are far more important than providing story reviews.