Response to Taylor

            The story was about a guy named Brad who is a supervisor at a hotel. He manages the events that go on in the hotel. He is also seeing a girl that he works with who doesn’t seem to like him very much while they are at work. That night they are hosting a sorority party with 900 guests and Brad seems to be pretty nervous about it. In the end the guests of the event turn out to be entirely too rowdy, and Brad has to shut everything down. It ends with Alyson waiting on Brad basically telling him he is a prick at work, but that he is a responsible prick. I am not exactly sure how the character changed. The entire story is about this guy being a supervisor and having all this responsibility when really he wants to be like every other college student, but in the end I am not exactly sure how he changed at all.

            I like the general idea of the story. I feel like you have a good amount of conflict in the story, just the change of the protagonist was unclear to me. Also, I liked your dialogue. While there are a few errors throughout the dialogue, I feel like it was done well and that the conversations sounded realistic. I also liked your descriptions of the people coming in for the event.

            The main thing the story needs is an obvious change in the character. I feel like you could have him quit his job and try to live like other college kids do, but that change would be expected. I am not exactly sure what you could do to make this character change in a way that the readers wouldn’t expect, but I feel like that is really what the story needs. Also, as I said I feel like your dialogue is realistic, I was confused in a few parts where I thought the same person was speaking, but a new line with a indention started which would indicate a new speaker. I could just be reading the story wrong, but there were a few places that the dialogue lost me. 

Response to Jessica

            The story was about a girl named Lindsey who has never met her dad. Her dad is a major league baseball player now, and even though she has watched one of his college games over and over, she wants to go see him play major league in person. Lindsey ends up getting tickets and going to the game, thinking she is tricking her mom into thinking she is really going to the lack with a friend. As she approaches the game she sees her dad warming up, however after that she does not see him again. At the end a security guard takes her down to wait for him outside the locker room, but she is disappointed again. When she returns to her car she sees that there is a piece of paper on it. The note is from her father. He said that Lindsey’s mother had called and told him she would be coming, but that he wanted to meet her while her mother was around. Lindsey seemed to have made the change from just wanting to see her father in person to actually being hopeful at the prospect that she might be able to meet him. In the beginning all she wants to do is see him in person, and in the end she is left with the hope that she will actually get to have a relationship with the father she never knew.

            I liked the story. I enjoyed your descriptions because they were very vivid so it was easy to imagine exactly what Lindsey was seeing. I also liked how the story went against my expectations. When I first started reading it I expected it to be a story about an athlete that maybe got hurt or something else happened and he ended up changing. I did not see the aspect of a daughter watching the father she’d never met some into play. I also liked how the mother seemed to know what the daughter was really up to. I expected the ending to be that Lindsey would finally give up hope on ever seeing her father, so the ending didn’t do what I expected either. I think you did a good job with this story.

            I really only have minor details that could be changed. There were a few grammatical errors and things of that nature, but I don’t have any huge ideas for changing the story. I enjoyed it.

Response to Cole

            The story was about a man named Skipper who appeared to be just out of college and looking for a job as a writer in New York. Skipper finds a job that he would really like to have and has an interview. Turns out that the man who interviewed him liked him a lot, so he comes back the next day to try and make the guy who runs the show laugh. As he sits in on all of the writers throwing out their ideas he realizes that his talent is meant for something better than taking cheap shots at celebrities, and he ends up getting up and walking out on the job that he wanted so bad. It seems his change is that he realizes not everything is what he thinks it will be, and that his talent could be better spent on writing about things that actually matter.

            I liked the way in which the story was written. The overall tone was nice. I could picture pretty much everything that was going on in the story. I feel like you gave just enough detail to hint at what you wanted us to see and that lead us to make our own picture up in our heads. I felt like I could see a big New York building with lots of people coming in and out, as well as young people sitting in the waiting area before they were taken back to be interviewed. I normally don’t like a cocky character but I felt like it worked with Skip. Maybe because it wasn’t so much cocky as it was confidence, but I found myself liking the character and rooting for him to succeed.

            The only part that I really feel could use work is the end. I felt like it was a bit rushed, and I wanted to know more about what was going on in Skip’s head. We are given a little about what he is thinking, but I kind of wanted more. Also, I would kind of like to see what he ends up doing. I know you set it up in a way that the character is beginning to make a change, but when it was over I was left wanting to see what Skip went on to after that interview.

Response to Kody

            The story was about a guy named Mark who seems to be in a bit of financial trouble. He is on the brink of losing his house and he is not really sure what to do about it. He seems, at first, to live a normal life with his three kids, until the kids go and stay with their mom and he goes to the bar to hang out with some of his buddies. There we find out he works at a pharmacy and may have a history of selling prescription drugs. In the end I’m not exactly sure how the character changes. At one point Mark mentions that he stays on the right side of the law, so I thought maybe his change was doing whatever it took to make ends meet. Then, I remembered the conversation he had with his friend when his friend told Mark that he probably knew what to do better than anyone else. That gave me the idea that maybe Mark had done this before, so I feel like his change was a little bit unclear.

            The story was a bit choppy. I felt like there were a lot of very short sentences, and that works sparingly. I feel like maybe there should be some longer sentences in there with the short ones. I also felt like there were a lot of fragments. I just feel like the choppy aspect works if you don’t overuse it. Also, in the section where he is at the bar talking to his friend, I feel like that should be made into dialogue instead of just “then I said, then he said” kind of stuff. I think that it would be a bit more interesting, and easier to read if you wrote it as dialogue.

            I like the general idea you have with this story. A single man has three kids and he is struggling with money. However, his change just needs to be more apparent. As I said before I couldn’t tell if he had dealt drugs before or if this was his first time, so I was confused on if the character changed at all or not. Also, like I said, I like the choppy was you wrote, I just feel like it should be cut down a little. 

Response to Lauren

            The story was about a married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Smart, who seem to be having some trouble in their marriage. Mr. Smart does not trust his wife at all, and she knows it. After reading all the way through the story I’m not exactly sure who the protagonist was or how a change was made. I felt like there should have been more to the story.

            I like the general idea of the story. A cheating wife is always an interesting read, however I wasn’t really sure if the story was about Mr. or Mrs. Smart. If the story is about the husband then I would suggest not having him die, because there would be no change in the character except for their mortality. If the story is about Mrs. Smart then we definitely need to see more in the end. We get a glimpse into her mind as she thinks about her husband not trusting her, but we never know if she is really cheating or not. Also, after she gets the call from the hospital saying her husband is dead, the story just ends. I feel like if that is the way you want the story to go then you need to put more of Mrs. Smart in after the death to show us how she has changed. If you want the wife to be the protagonist I fell like you might want to start the story off in her head rather than in the husbands head, because from the beginning of the story we are looking at him and his thoughts, but then he dies so he can’t be the protagonist.

            My suggestions would be to re-work this story. I would go back, and first off, make it clear whom the actual protagonist is. I might also take death out of the story completely because that just makes it too easy for the other character to change. I would also look at the tense in which the paper is written. I fell like you switch from present to past by using is and was in different places. I feel like you have a good idea for a story, it just needs to be re-worked and developed further.