Nov. 15th, 2002
Assignment #2
Nov. 15th, 2002 07:02 pmTaffy says:
I was enormously impressed by the depth and content of "Birth," a story that I found extremely disturbing. Your writing is technically flawless and you do an excellent job of placing us inside your nameless protagonist's mind. What you don't do, however, is provide quite enough information to the reader. You are dropping us briefly into this young woman's life, but not providing enough landmarks to know who she is and where she's going. How did she end up lying on the ground originally? Who picks her up and takes her away to such shocking abuse? Why does she tolerate it?
She made some minor corrections, things I would have changed myself had I come back to it after a month or so, nothing I minded being changed, nothing that disturbed my perceptions of the story. And that's important to me; I'm pleased. Except -- how do I explain to her now that the things she's seeing as defects are the things that I felt made the story disturbing, and that they weren't entirely unintended? Sure, she could have had a name. But she didn't "tell" me her name, and I let it lie because I felt it irrelevant. The rest is, well... half the reason the story is disturbing is because it does leave you with questions you can't answer. I know a mystery writer is accustomed to having the ends neatly tied up at the end of a story, conflicts all resolved and packed away -- but I have real trouble writing like that and preserving the feel of my work at the same time. This was not supposed to be a fairy tale. Sometimes it just doesn't all go away by the end of the time allotted, you know? So -- what do I do? Do I write two versions of the work, one to satisfy her and one for myself? Do I explain and hope she changes her mind? I have about a month to figure it out, so I'm not truly worried, just vaguely dissatisfied.
I was enormously impressed by the depth and content of "Birth," a story that I found extremely disturbing. Your writing is technically flawless and you do an excellent job of placing us inside your nameless protagonist's mind. What you don't do, however, is provide quite enough information to the reader. You are dropping us briefly into this young woman's life, but not providing enough landmarks to know who she is and where she's going. How did she end up lying on the ground originally? Who picks her up and takes her away to such shocking abuse? Why does she tolerate it?
She made some minor corrections, things I would have changed myself had I come back to it after a month or so, nothing I minded being changed, nothing that disturbed my perceptions of the story. And that's important to me; I'm pleased. Except -- how do I explain to her now that the things she's seeing as defects are the things that I felt made the story disturbing, and that they weren't entirely unintended? Sure, she could have had a name. But she didn't "tell" me her name, and I let it lie because I felt it irrelevant. The rest is, well... half the reason the story is disturbing is because it does leave you with questions you can't answer. I know a mystery writer is accustomed to having the ends neatly tied up at the end of a story, conflicts all resolved and packed away -- but I have real trouble writing like that and preserving the feel of my work at the same time. This was not supposed to be a fairy tale. Sometimes it just doesn't all go away by the end of the time allotted, you know? So -- what do I do? Do I write two versions of the work, one to satisfy her and one for myself? Do I explain and hope she changes her mind? I have about a month to figure it out, so I'm not truly worried, just vaguely dissatisfied.
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