The outer (present) story of “Grieving Lessons” was about three high school seniors—Lana, Sam, and Darcy—who cut class to save a squirrel, bury a fly, and drive around and the day at school that follows. The inner (mostly past) story is about how Darcy learns to grieve her grandmother. Darcy’s motivation to grieve properly seems at first to come from external pressures, like her mother sending her to an art-therapist and Lana setting this exemplary Buddhist Jew example on how to mourn even a fly’s life, but at the end the reader sees that she’s been waiting for this moment to face Coco again, for herself.
My favorite part of your story was your characters. I really liked how there was this contrast between Coco (who despite her supposed severity wants to be called Coco) the proper grandmother, Janet the artsy-creative mother (whose personality I saw mostly through her choice of therapist, which I thought was well done), and Darcy the “gamin.” That line: “I think I hoped that something of you would rub off on me in the dark; some femininity or womanly sophistication maybe” (7) really got to the heart of the story. Despite her complaints about her grandmother’s restraint (which is again in contrast to her mother’s flowing emotions and in conjunction with Darcy’s own stoicism), Darcy admired this woman and misses her. It’s difficult because I like the way the story ends a lot, with her alone in this movie theater in an echo of this fond memory and the wall-exercise, but I wondered how she could get to the same point but with more interaction with Lana and Sam, who mostly disappear once the inner story of therapy and Coco comes out. Lana and Sam have the potential to be really great characters also, but right now I think we only really get a taste of them. I know that Lana is important for Darcy’s grieving process in terms of setting this awesome example of mourning with the fly, but the problem seems to be that she was in a monastery last year while Darcy was in therapy. They are best friends, but does Lana know/really understand how Darcy felt about her grandmother’s death? Could this somehow play out in the story in a more active way? For instance, does Lana pick up on Darcy’s reflective mood on the drive back to school? Does she touch Darcy’s arm and say something about the nature of life and death when Darcy drops her off at her house that makes Darcy go to the theater? I’m not sure how to involve Lana more without messing up the flow of the story currently. I also don’t know what to make of Sam. He is the comic relief definitely and he plays an instrumental part in the beginning, but I didn’t really get a sense of a deeper meaning to why he was in the story, which you know, might not be necessary really; just something to think about. Also, while I see how the substitute teacher scene leads into the name backstory, I wondered if this scene which is humorous but really only features the one-dimensional character of Mr. Milarky could be replaced with a scene where we get more of Sam, Lana, and Darcy—all of whom I feel a lot more affection towards.
I really liked Darcy’s voice. Her humor (“I kind of think Earth gets the last laugh” and “Yeah baby”) keeps the story from becoming too weighted down in the somber topic. Caroline, too, was awesome: “Your imagination will be the paint.” Perfect. In general, I loved your dialogue, although when Coco speaks about Darcy’s name I appreciated the sentiment of her words but they were a little too much, I think, to actually be spoken aloud. One thing, though, about Darcy’s voice was I wasn’t sure when or why italics were used. At first, I thought they were used to mock what the therapist had told her, but italics are also used seriously for Darcy’s own feelings, right? Or is the “one natural cycle” thing also Darcy making fun of Lana? Whatever you decide to emphasize in the italics, you should keep it consistent otherwise people like me will read too much into it and get confused.
Thank you, Brodie, for sharing “Grieving Lessons.” I thought it was a really rich, complex story and I look forward to seeing how you add to an already strong work of writing.
Brodie: The outer story is about Darcy’s day of playing quasi-hooky: burying a fly, sneaking into a movie theatre, etc. The inner story is about Darcy finally learning to grieve for her grandmother who passed away. I think the scope of the outer story as compared to the inner story is great. You have this “one day in the life of” structure for the vast and complex emotional story of mourning. I would even think about shrinking the outer story to just that morning. I felt like when she goes to school, things get sped up and a little tangential. I’m not really sure I see the importance of her name, except that we hear the grandmother’s voice at the end of that whole section. I absolutely love the grandmother’s voice, but I don’t think we need all of that build up. I would rather see Darcy stay cutting class with Lana and Sam and then maybe she goes off on her own to the movie theater for the final scene.
I think you did a great job of slightly adjusting the voice so that she sounds cool, detached, but not as young. It allows Darcy to be incredibly observant, and describe these really vivid details (“like the sockets were filled with shaving cream”) and yet at the same time she can reflect quite maturely (“benign realist.”) I would love to hear Lana and Sam a little bit more. I think they bring out some great complexities in Darcy (her attitudes about death, sex, etc.) If not, I have to say the beginning might be a little misleading. We seem to begin with a focus on this trio, and then migrate to the grandmother, therapist, substitute teacher, etc. As a reader, I was reaching for a little more continuity.
I’m impressed with your ending. I feel like you handled it well. It feels spiritual and resolved (she sees essentially her grandmother’s ghost), but understated and subtle (she doesn’t break down and start sobbing about how much she misses her, etc.)
You have some really beautiful language in this draft, -Michelle.
To me the external story is about a girl who ditches school with her friends, sees a blind squirrel, has a “funeral” for a swatted fly, thinks about the death of her grandmother, and after school goes to an empty movie theater. The internal story is about a girl learning how to deal with grieving the death of her grandmother, through therapy, being with friends, and eventually making her own peace.
Something I love about this story is how self-aware Darcy is. Her voice is very strong yet not over-the-top, and her observations are trustworthy. I get a sense of her being in this world, but also being able to step outside of it. I love the thought progression: “I felt ridiculously young, like my feet weren’t quite reaching the pedals. It was one of those moments where you decide that everything you’ve felt and experienced is totally small and meaningless. And in the midst of thinking this, you realize that you’re a melodramatic self-absorbed teenager” (8). The tone is consistent and does sound like a high school teenager.
Another thing I love about the story is the language. Some of the descriptions are so vivid, like the eyes of the blind squirrel whose eyes looked “like the sockets were filled with shaving cream” (1), the therapist whose hair “was a bright dyed-orangey-red color, like she was forever standing under a rotisserie light” (5), and the mother’s crying that was “sobbing and bottomless and bone-shaking” (4).
Something I think should be considered is which scenes are given attention, and how much attention each part is given. The scene at the therapist is indeed important, but it takes up about a third of the story! I wonder if all of those details are so necessary, and if they are more necessary than other details or scenes that could help build the story. For example, I would have liked the story to continue a little bit at the end, to see how Darcy interacts with Coco.
Also, I think there needs to be more of a balance and flow between present and past. There is some good action in the present at the beginning, but then that flashback is so long and distracting, when it came back to the present, I had forgotten that was what the story was about. Perhaps there’s a better way to integrate the flashbacks with the present, so that we don’t get lost in one or the other.
Overall, this was a really interesting story, and I look forward to reading your revisions!
Brodie, The outer story of this piece is the day in the life of a group of high school kids. The inner story is how death and dealing with death of her grandmother in particular is difficult for Darcy, the first person narrator of the story. I think the best lines and parts of your story are the characterizations. The descriptions of your cast of characters are wonderful. I like that Lana has shaved her head, taken a vow of silence but is now talking. (And I would like this to be expanded and explored more!) I like that Sam enjoys talking about his virginity, and that Lana notes his good bone structure because she “draws charcoal portraits when she has the time” (2). Also, the scene where “eight year old me accidentally broke the finger off of one of her just-finished sculpture” tells us so much about Darcy’s mother, and provides such a vivid glimpse into that compelling scene. Perhaps my favorite line is your description of Caroline, the art therapist as having bright orange hair, “like she was forever standing under a rotisserie light” (5). It is so funny and paints such a clear picture. After you assemble this well-described cast of characters, it becomes less clear to me how they all inter-related. The friends like the most important relationship in the beginning, but they quickly fall to the wayside and don’t reappear until the very end, and even then they are silent. I thought that maybe Darcy’s relationship with her mother would become the main relationship. Although, she is overly dramatic, needlessly sobs, and doesn’t understand her daughter at all. There is no change in the mother. Your story also seems to be about Coco and how she has touched Darcy’s life, even though Darcy didn’t mourn her death in a usual way. The final scene clearly parallels the good memory Darcy recalls in art therapy about her grandmother. In the end, I wanted to know more about Coco. If the story is about Darcy understanding her relationship with her grandmother, I wanted to see more scenes with Coco, and learn more about her. Why was it so hard for Darcy to appreciate her? I thought that the tone of your piece was a little confusing. At times, Darcy seemed incredibly sarcastic, saying things like “yeah baby,” using italics, and mocking Caroline. But she also says she genuinely liked art therapy, that it was like kindergarten, and that she is ready to paint with her imagination--I felt that I couldn’t get a firm grip on what Darcy was actually thinking. Is she annoyed she is there? Does she resent it? Does she like it? I couldn’t seem to put a clear finger on her thoughts. Additionally, I am not sure how the theme of identity plays into this story. There are two sections that are dedicated to describing how Darcy is a boy’s name (and I don’t even think it is just a boy’s name…I know many girl Darcies) but I can’t seem to tie that back into the greater theme of grieving. I think you have a great start here, and you have a great sense of humor and knack for description. I look forward to seeing your revisions,
Dear Brodie, I read you outer story as a story about Darcy, an eighteen-year-old girl in high school, learning to come to terms with her grandmother’s death. I read the inner story to be about Darcy learning to find a sense of meaning and belonging, triggered by a concern that she is not emotional enough. I thought that Darcy wanted to be more emotionally responsive, and more confident in her understanding of the world. I thought that you did an excellent job developing Lana, Sam, and Darcy early in the story. Your characterizations—especially about Lana’s religious views and Sam’s tendency to talk about his virginity—really captured them as real, unique, interesting people. I thought that you did that again on page seven, when Darcy imagines what CoCo would say about her therapy. I wanted the same kinds of characterization for the other people in your story as well—for the therapist (I felt like I had a good physical description, but that I didn’t see a lot of her personality in the therapy sessions), Conner, and Darcy’s mom. The plot arc of Grieving Lessons seems to be about Darcy learning to come to terms with her grandmother’s death. You set up their relationship well, but I’m not sure what you want to convey to the reader about the process. I think you raise sets of really interesting issues—religion, grieving, disapproval, family—but at the end of the piece I still don’t think I got the full weight or meaning of Darcy’s newfound ability to speak to CoCo. I wasn’t sure whether this was a piece about forgiving CoCo, or seeing her in a new light, or learning to miss someone, or a story about Darcy reaching out now when before she didn’t. Depending on what the final draft of Grieving Lessons wants to convey, I think that you can use your characters in a very effective way. Right now they are well drawn, but as a reader I felt that they didn’t interact on the page enough. I wanted to see Darcy interact with her high school friends more, and I wanted to compare that with how she acted with the therapist, her mother, and her grandmother. I think this would also tell me something important about what Darcy is looking for. I really like the voice you use, though I would add some more clues about Darcy’s age for the reader, because although she is eighteen, sometimes when she talks it sounds younger. I’d like to see a more sophisticated voice at points in the story, especially when Darcy is working through thoughts. I don’t really mean a philosophical or epiphany voice, but more the chance to see the character working through multiple levels of implication when she views the world in different ways—what does feeling small insignificant, for example, mean for Darcy at home, in therapy, at school? I like the dialogue you used—it felt very real. I think adding more dialogue when you revise is a good thing, in conjunction with revising your scene order/structure so that you are able to make the ending scene more meaningful to the reader. Great draft! James
The outer story here is about a day in the life of Darcy Vandermeer, a high school senior. The inner story is, I think, primarily concerned with Darcy’s ruminations on mortality, and in particular on the death of grandmother. I think that Darcy, protestations aside, needs to come to some kind of resolution with her grandmother’s death, which seems to form the core of the story. I really liked the voice in this story, which came off as somewhat sarcastic and self aware, but not overly so. I felt generally the narrator was being honest, if not always entirely in command (or aware) of her own feelings. I also really liked a lot of the small, quirky details in this story, such as Lana’s Buddhist fling (“Buddhist Jew”), Sam’s awkwardness, as well as the scenes involving the blind squirrel and the fly’s funeral were all very evocative and interesting, and did a great job of establishing scene, situation, and character. I also felt like I got a good handle on Coco’s character, who comes out through just a few telling details, but who nevertheless has an important and significant presence in the story.
I thought this story’s death motif was quite intriguing, and I thought it was interesting how you kept coming back to it throughout the story, through a variety of avenues. However, I wasn’t sure how these deaths affected the narrator, or what they mean to her. In particular, I felt that the Darcy’s relationship to Coco was central to the story, but I wasn’t quite sure what it meant in the end. When the grandmother’s death is first brought up, Darcy says a very interesting thing: “…I wasn’t moved at all when it happened, or afterwards, or even now.” Indeed, Darcy seems not to be affected by any of the deaths or any of the mortality issues brought up throughout the story. And yet, we keep coming back to Coco through the narrative. Especially the final lines of the story suggested that the grandmother has touched Darcy in some deep and meaningful way, but I wasn’t quite sure what that way was. I got the sense that something had changed in Darcy by the end of the story, that perhaps even the therapy session involving her “speaking” to her grandmother had been the catalyst that prompted that change. Nevertheless, I still had a lot of questions about Darcy and her relationship to her grandmother. Is she being unreliable when she tells us she wasn’t affected by Coco’s death? Is she lying to Caroline (and herself?) when she says none of Coco’s sophistication rubbed off on her? Why does she see a vision of her grandmother in the final scene? Has something changed for her, or is this simply a manifestation of something that has been there all along? Indeed, I’m not entirely sure the story really is about Coco and Darcy, or if it’s saying something bigger about how people grieve—how does Lana’s reaction to the fly’s death differ from Darcy’s, and what is that saying about both characters? Is Darcy really as cool as she seems?
I found myself wanting to spend more time with Lana and Sam, who are such interesting characters. You do a great job of setting them up, but then we never really see much of them again. I’d like to see more of these two, and how they play off of Darcy. Perhaps in this way you could reveal more about Darcy and show us to what degree she is unreliable or not. I also really intrigued by Caroline. Maybe we could have more of her as well, and more therapy sessions. What does Caroline think of Darcy’s lack of grieving? I think you have a great cast of characters here, and I’d love to see more of them, and for them to play off against Darcy, who, as it stands in the story now, seems to be inhabiting a slightly too hermetic reality for us to really know what’s up with her character.
Hi Brodie, The outer story was about Darcy, and her day spent ditching school with her friends, recalling the death of her grandmother, and having a substitute teacher think her name's a boy's name. She ends the day watching Harold and Maude at a theater and thinking of her grandmama. The inner story is about her figuring out exactly how to deal with (and what she thinks of) her grandmother's death. I really like everything going on in your story, from characters to events, in that it all seems unique and interesting. Sam and Lana are great, well-characterized individuals who I found appealing, but not without potential flaws. The narrator speaks about then like a friend would, and they just seem like real friends who are friends and individuals for their own specific reasons. I Coco and Mr. Milarky, I thought, were also really well-done. You use the reminiscences about her grandmother and going to the movies to really make her into a character the narrator is fond of without being forceful or too obvious about it. The events of the story- finding the squirrel, the therapist, the sub- were all scenes that I liked as interesting but believeable. My one major issue with the story is that I just couldn't find a way to pull everything together. As much as I love everything going on- the name stuff, grieving, etc.- I couldn't quite see how all the stories related to one another in the greater arc of the story, and why the narrator would be telling the story like she is. I liked the stuff with the friends and the talk about her grandma- but that intial story jump she makes kind of brought me out of the story, and I wasn't ever able to really place a finger on what was going on. Is the name thing important to her identity, or just significant as an issue she agreed with her grandma about? Similarly, I didn't quite see the connection between grieving about her grandma and Lana's feelings- it seemed like a bit of a stretch to make. I really loved a lot of what went on in this story. I think that if you maybe extended the story a bit, and somehow helped the separate scenes to flow into one another a bit more naturally, then this could be an amazing story. It just seems like it needs one defining theme so that I can understand what this story is really about.
Dear Brodie, This is a story about Darcy’s struggle to locate her emotions. Most importantly the grief that she never felt at her grandmother’s death. My take on Darcy is that what she would like most is to keep herself entertained and not have to worry about finding her emotions. The conflict is that she is being forced into doing so by her therapist. World (I just made an arbitrary criticism category. Cool, huh?) Many of the details in this story lead me to believe that this world is slightly more absurd and hyperboloid than the real world. The whole idea of Lana becoming a Jewish Buddhist Monk, the fly burial and Mr. Milarky all seemed to fit in with this. I noticed that this element tends to slip away at some points of the story. The events surrounding the mother and the grandmother’s death seem to be in a more real and sad world. Maybe this is because the narrator is absent for a while (the middle paragraph on p4) all I see is the mother and the brother crying. I wanted to see some specific thing that Darcy did during the grandmother’s funeral/ mourning period, something that like the rest of the story was just out there. This would also back up the mom for sending Darcy to an art therapist. The scene with the therapist was confusing to me. I get the feeling that Darcy simultaneously dislikes her, yet finds amusement in what she does. She seems to doubt any real therapeutic benefits yet does not object to the exercises. I don’t think that any of the painting or clay modeling has affected her at all and the drastic effect that the faux conversation with Coco has on her seemed strange. One side of me believes that this girl is in denial, but from the story I don’t have anything to tell me that she just doesn’t care. On p. 7, why can’t she keep going, what emotion is at work here? I thought there could be more build up, even if it is subtle, all there is now is the physical sensations she feels. On the top of p. 8 Darcy almost tells the audience what she’s feeling, but this is wrapped up in cynicism. I wasn’t sure that the crack about being a self-absorbed and melodramatic teenager was necessary, also I thought more could be shown in this section. Also, I have the feeling that Darcy is really wealthy, by the way she notices how everyone seems to have jobs while she drives around her offhand bemusement at what I am guessing is expensive therapy and the language and mannerisms conveyed in her descriptions of Coco. If this is so, I think that it could be exploited more in the story as a means of conveying a sense of alienation. Where is her dad, by the way? I thought that you could go much deeper into the movie scene. I know why she is going there, but the action seems too realistic. I thought that it might have a more subtle, pensive quality to it. Does she remember any more details about Coco, is she mad at the therapist for indirectly making her come here? This isn’t the same theater she used to go to is it? I thought the present could be more tied in with recollection in this scene, Almost like a dream. This would build up more ambiguity to what I am guessing is a dream when Coco actually appears and speaks to her. I had a good time reading and look forward to workshopping.
I read the outer story of “Grieving Lessons” as essentially inseperable from the inner story. Not much happens in the outer story, Darcy and her friends skip class and drive around, the substitute teacher mangles her name, and then Darcy goes to a movie. The inner story is one of Darcy and her two friends, three teens who don’t really know what they think about life, trying to figure out exactly what they think about life. Much of the story takes place in Darcy’s own head and memory. She thinks about life quite a bit and flashed back to her therapy sessions in which she tries to learn how to grieve for her dead grandmother. I think that Darcy wants to have some coherent idea about what is important and meaningful about life, she is very confused and aware that she is confused. In the end, I don’t think that she makes it out of her box, but we are left with the feeling that things are headed in a hopeful direction.
Characters: I think that the supporting characters in this story are very good. Lana was especially great, as she represents the extreme in ‘confused teen desperately searching for a coherent life-philosophy’. She is a Buddhist Jew who spent the last year in the Trinity Alps and took a vow of silence. She is also a real phony. Despite this background and the fact that she cries for a dead fly, she is still just a catty teenage girl, telling Darcy that they are too nice to Sam and that “he’s probably just going to try to get with one of us one of these days”. Sam and the therapist were nice supporting characters as well. The narrator’s editorializing on these characters really livens them up from her observation that Sam finds them “too intimidating to be fuckable” to her comment that the therapist is “in every way the sort of person you’d expect to say something like, ‘Your imagination will be the paint”.
Conflict: I think that my reading of what Darcy wanted may have in part been my reading of what I wanted Darcy to want. I wanted her to want to break out of her box. However, it seems that she doesn’t really want to break out, she is in many ways very dogmatic in her lack of belief. She doesn’t take the therapist seriously, she is quite cynical and she is convince that she feels nothing for her grandmother’s death and that there is nothing wrong with this. Not that there is anything wrong with these beliefs per se, it is just that she is a little too sure of herself. I didn’t believe that she actually had it all figured out, and I wanted her to be a little more questioning. Even Holden Caulfield, cynical and bullheaded as he was, knew that he was all mixed up. The last scene seems to suggest that she may be undergoing a change, but I couldn’t figure out exactly what her vision of her grandmother in the therapist’s office and then the movie theater was supposed to mean.
The outer story is about Darcy and her two friends as they skip class and then go back to school. Darcy then goes to a movie theater and sees an image of her grandmother. The inner story is about Darcy coming to terms with her grandmother’s death. Through flashbacks, the death is detailed, along with Darcy’s interaction with her “art therapist” Caroline.
I really enjoyed the stuff happening in the present; I thought the details were great, and the characterizations of Darcy and her friends were quirky yet believable. I really like the part where they pass Tiko’s Tacos in the car, and something kind of clicks in Darcy and she says, “I felt ridiculously young, like my feet weren’t quite reaching the pedals. It was one of those moments where you decide that everything you’ve felt and experienced is totally small and meaningless. And in the midst of thinking this, you realize that you’re a melodramatic self-absorbed teenager.” This was a really powerful moment, and I think conveys something about her desire to cope with the past, and gives a reason for her to wander into the movie theater at the very end of the story.
That being said, I felt like there was just something incomplete about Darcy and her relationship with her grandmother. I never got the feeling that she actually came to terms with anything. Furthermore, while the mother was upset that Darcy didn’t cry when her grandmother died, it’s not as if Darcy felt like she should have cried, or felt guilty about not crying. Thus her going to the therapist seemed as if it was merely to appease the mother—at first, this could have been fine, but I would have liked to see some tangible change in Darcy as she saw the therapist more and more. Instead, nothing seemed to come out of talking to the white wall, or if something did come out of it, it wasn’t clear enough to the reader. I do, however, like the fact that at the end, the grandmother kind of talks back to Darcy—suggesting that something happened, although I’m not sure as to exactly what it was. One suggestion would be to elongate that final scene, to really add some weight and meaning to it, so the reader isn’t left wondering what to make of it. The framework’s there, it just needs to be properly executed.
Overall I thought this was a really interesting premise for a story, and I wish you the best of luck with your final draft.
I understood your outer story to be about a high school girl whose mother sends her to a “creative therapist” after her grandmother dies. In the other story line, taking place about a year later, she and her best friends ditch class to go to breakfast, encounter a blind squirrel, and hold a funeral for a squashed fly. I understood your inner story to be about Darcy learning to cope with loss, and specifically the loss of her grandmother.
Overall, I think the voice in this story is really wonderful. I really found myself believing that I was listening to Darcy tell a story. Her comments about her mom, her friends, and her grandmother are especially great: I really got a sense of these characters through her eyes, and I love the way her reactions to them and observations about them demonstrate so much about her character. Her voice is self-reflective and funny without ever becoming indulgent or comical. I also think you do a great job of conveying her sense of personal/philosophical/spiritual crisis, without ever over-explaining it. The way she describes her moods, especially during the scenes that take place in the present, with Lana and Sam and then back at school, is perfect.
While I love your writing during the “creative counseling” scenes, I’m not quite sold on this part of the story. First of all, it seems so weird that the mom copes with her grief by sending her daughter into therapy. This is ok with me, but only if I get more explanation, or see more of the mom’s behavior so that this action makes sense in context. It seems to me that Darcy does her real learning and discovering and healing on her own, and so I feel like you spend a little too much time with this largely ineffective counselor. Her breakthrough, when she sits facing the wall, seems a little forced. I found myself wondering why it had occurred. The ending, too, seemed a little forced to me. It struck me as both a little too neat, and a little too abstract. Two more tiny details that are largely insignificant but stood out anyway: I’ve never heard Darcy as a boy’s name, so that scene surprised me (I’m sure it is a boy’s name, but perhaps pick something even more masculine… I met a girl named Wesley once). Also, the reference to Harold and Maude (great movie!) threw me off. Does this story take place back when Harold and Maude was released, or does the theater show old films?
Great job on this, Brodie. I look forward to seeing what else you do with these great characters and moving writing.
11 comments:
Dear Brodie,
The outer (present) story of “Grieving Lessons” was about three high school seniors—Lana, Sam, and Darcy—who cut class to save a squirrel, bury a fly, and drive around and the day at school that follows. The inner (mostly past) story is about how Darcy learns to grieve her grandmother. Darcy’s motivation to grieve properly seems at first to come from external pressures, like her mother sending her to an art-therapist and Lana setting this exemplary Buddhist Jew example on how to mourn even a fly’s life, but at the end the reader sees that she’s been waiting for this moment to face Coco again, for herself.
My favorite part of your story was your characters. I really liked how there was this contrast between Coco (who despite her supposed severity wants to be called Coco) the proper grandmother, Janet the artsy-creative mother (whose personality I saw mostly through her choice of therapist, which I thought was well done), and Darcy the “gamin.” That line: “I think I hoped that something of you would rub off on me in the dark; some femininity or womanly sophistication maybe” (7) really got to the heart of the story. Despite her complaints about her grandmother’s restraint (which is again in contrast to her mother’s flowing emotions and in conjunction with Darcy’s own stoicism), Darcy admired this woman and misses her. It’s difficult because I like the way the story ends a lot, with her alone in this movie theater in an echo of this fond memory and the wall-exercise, but I wondered how she could get to the same point but with more interaction with Lana and Sam, who mostly disappear once the inner story of therapy and Coco comes out. Lana and Sam have the potential to be really great characters also, but right now I think we only really get a taste of them. I know that Lana is important for Darcy’s grieving process in terms of setting this awesome example of mourning with the fly, but the problem seems to be that she was in a monastery last year while Darcy was in therapy. They are best friends, but does Lana know/really understand how Darcy felt about her grandmother’s death? Could this somehow play out in the story in a more active way? For instance, does Lana pick up on Darcy’s reflective mood on the drive back to school? Does she touch Darcy’s arm and say something about the nature of life and death when Darcy drops her off at her house that makes Darcy go to the theater? I’m not sure how to involve Lana more without messing up the flow of the story currently. I also don’t know what to make of Sam. He is the comic relief definitely and he plays an instrumental part in the beginning, but I didn’t really get a sense of a deeper meaning to why he was in the story, which you know, might not be necessary really; just something to think about. Also, while I see how the substitute teacher scene leads into the name backstory, I wondered if this scene which is humorous but really only features the one-dimensional character of Mr. Milarky could be replaced with a scene where we get more of Sam, Lana, and Darcy—all of whom I feel a lot more affection towards.
I really liked Darcy’s voice. Her humor (“I kind of think Earth gets the last laugh” and “Yeah baby”) keeps the story from becoming too weighted down in the somber topic. Caroline, too, was awesome: “Your imagination will be the paint.” Perfect. In general, I loved your dialogue, although when Coco speaks about Darcy’s name I appreciated the sentiment of her words but they were a little too much, I think, to actually be spoken aloud. One thing, though, about Darcy’s voice was I wasn’t sure when or why italics were used. At first, I thought they were used to mock what the therapist had told her, but italics are also used seriously for Darcy’s own feelings, right? Or is the “one natural cycle” thing also Darcy making fun of Lana? Whatever you decide to emphasize in the italics, you should keep it consistent otherwise people like me will read too much into it and get confused.
Thank you, Brodie, for sharing “Grieving Lessons.” I thought it was a really rich, complex story and I look forward to seeing how you add to an already strong work of writing.
Jessamyn
Brodie:
The outer story is about Darcy’s day of playing quasi-hooky: burying a fly, sneaking into a movie theatre, etc. The inner story is about Darcy finally learning to grieve for her grandmother who passed away. I think the scope of the outer story as compared to the inner story is great. You have this “one day in the life of” structure for the vast and complex emotional story of mourning. I would even think about shrinking the outer story to just that morning. I felt like when she goes to school, things get sped up and a little tangential. I’m not really sure I see the importance of her name, except that we hear the grandmother’s voice at the end of that whole section. I absolutely love the grandmother’s voice, but I don’t think we need all of that build up. I would rather see Darcy stay cutting class with Lana and Sam and then maybe she goes off on her own to the movie theater for the final scene.
I think you did a great job of slightly adjusting the voice so that she sounds cool, detached, but not as young. It allows Darcy to be incredibly observant, and describe these really vivid details (“like the sockets were filled with shaving cream”) and yet at the same time she can reflect quite maturely (“benign realist.”) I would love to hear Lana and Sam a little bit more. I think they bring out some great complexities in Darcy (her attitudes about death, sex, etc.) If not, I have to say the beginning might be a little misleading. We seem to begin with a focus on this trio, and then migrate to the grandmother, therapist, substitute teacher, etc. As a reader, I was reaching for a little more continuity.
I’m impressed with your ending. I feel like you handled it well. It feels spiritual and resolved (she sees essentially her grandmother’s ghost), but understated and subtle (she doesn’t break down and start sobbing about how much she misses her, etc.)
You have some really beautiful language in this draft,
-Michelle.
Dear Brodie,
To me the external story is about a girl who ditches school with her friends, sees a blind squirrel, has a “funeral” for a swatted fly, thinks about the death of her grandmother, and after school goes to an empty movie theater. The internal story is about a girl learning how to deal with grieving the death of her grandmother, through therapy, being with friends, and eventually making her own peace.
Something I love about this story is how self-aware Darcy is. Her voice is very strong yet not over-the-top, and her observations are trustworthy. I get a sense of her being in this world, but also being able to step outside of it. I love the thought progression: “I felt ridiculously young, like my feet weren’t quite reaching the pedals. It was one of those moments where you decide that everything you’ve felt and experienced is totally small and meaningless. And in the midst of thinking this, you realize that you’re a melodramatic self-absorbed teenager” (8). The tone is consistent and does sound like a high school teenager.
Another thing I love about the story is the language. Some of the descriptions are so vivid, like the eyes of the blind squirrel whose eyes looked “like the sockets were filled with shaving cream” (1), the therapist whose hair “was a bright dyed-orangey-red color, like she was forever standing under a rotisserie light” (5), and the mother’s crying that was “sobbing and bottomless and bone-shaking” (4).
Something I think should be considered is which scenes are given attention, and how much attention each part is given. The scene at the therapist is indeed important, but it takes up about a third of the story! I wonder if all of those details are so necessary, and if they are more necessary than other details or scenes that could help build the story. For example, I would have liked the story to continue a little bit at the end, to see how Darcy interacts with Coco.
Also, I think there needs to be more of a balance and flow between present and past. There is some good action in the present at the beginning, but then that flashback is so long and distracting, when it came back to the present, I had forgotten that was what the story was about. Perhaps there’s a better way to integrate the flashbacks with the present, so that we don’t get lost in one or the other.
Overall, this was a really interesting story, and I look forward to reading your revisions!
-Annie
Brodie,
The outer story of this piece is the day in the life of a group of high school kids. The inner story is how death and dealing with death of her grandmother in particular is difficult for Darcy, the first person narrator of the story.
I think the best lines and parts of your story are the characterizations. The descriptions of your cast of characters are wonderful. I like that Lana has shaved her head, taken a vow of silence but is now talking. (And I would like this to be expanded and explored more!) I like that Sam enjoys talking about his virginity, and that Lana notes his good bone structure because she “draws charcoal portraits when she has the time” (2). Also, the scene where “eight year old me accidentally broke the finger off of one of her just-finished sculpture” tells us so much about Darcy’s mother, and provides such a vivid glimpse into that compelling scene. Perhaps my favorite line is your description of Caroline, the art therapist as having bright orange hair, “like she was forever standing under a rotisserie light” (5). It is so funny and paints such a clear picture.
After you assemble this well-described cast of characters, it becomes less clear to me how they all inter-related. The friends like the most important relationship in the beginning, but they quickly fall to the wayside and don’t reappear until the very end, and even then they are silent. I thought that maybe Darcy’s relationship with her mother would become the main relationship. Although, she is overly dramatic, needlessly sobs, and doesn’t understand her daughter at all. There is no change in the mother. Your story also seems to be about Coco and how she has touched Darcy’s life, even though Darcy didn’t mourn her death in a usual way. The final scene clearly parallels the good memory Darcy recalls in art therapy about her grandmother. In the end, I wanted to know more about Coco. If the story is about Darcy understanding her relationship with her grandmother, I wanted to see more scenes with Coco, and learn more about her. Why was it so hard for Darcy to appreciate her?
I thought that the tone of your piece was a little confusing. At times, Darcy seemed incredibly sarcastic, saying things like “yeah baby,” using italics, and mocking Caroline. But she also says she genuinely liked art therapy, that it was like kindergarten, and that she is ready to paint with her imagination--I felt that I couldn’t get a firm grip on what Darcy was actually thinking. Is she annoyed she is there? Does she resent it? Does she like it? I couldn’t seem to put a clear finger on her thoughts.
Additionally, I am not sure how the theme of identity plays into this story. There are two sections that are dedicated to describing how Darcy is a boy’s name (and I don’t even think it is just a boy’s name…I know many girl Darcies) but I can’t seem to tie that back into the greater theme of grieving.
I think you have a great start here, and you have a great sense of humor and knack for description. I look forward to seeing your revisions,
Katie
Dear Brodie,
I read you outer story as a story about Darcy, an eighteen-year-old girl in high school, learning to come to terms with her grandmother’s death. I read the inner story to be about Darcy learning to find a sense of meaning and belonging, triggered by a concern that she is not emotional enough. I thought that Darcy wanted to be more emotionally responsive, and more confident in her understanding of the world.
I thought that you did an excellent job developing Lana, Sam, and Darcy early in the story. Your characterizations—especially about Lana’s religious views and Sam’s tendency to talk about his virginity—really captured them as real, unique, interesting people. I thought that you did that again on page seven, when Darcy imagines what CoCo would say about her therapy. I wanted the same kinds of characterization for the other people in your story as well—for the therapist (I felt like I had a good physical description, but that I didn’t see a lot of her personality in the therapy sessions), Conner, and Darcy’s mom.
The plot arc of Grieving Lessons seems to be about Darcy learning to come to terms with her grandmother’s death. You set up their relationship well, but I’m not sure what you want to convey to the reader about the process. I think you raise sets of really interesting issues—religion, grieving, disapproval, family—but at the end of the piece I still don’t think I got the full weight or meaning of Darcy’s newfound ability to speak to CoCo. I wasn’t sure whether this was a piece about forgiving CoCo, or seeing her in a new light, or learning to miss someone, or a story about Darcy reaching out now when before she didn’t.
Depending on what the final draft of Grieving Lessons wants to convey, I think that you can use your characters in a very effective way. Right now they are well drawn, but as a reader I felt that they didn’t interact on the page enough. I wanted to see Darcy interact with her high school friends more, and I wanted to compare that with how she acted with the therapist, her mother, and her grandmother. I think this would also tell me something important about what Darcy is looking for.
I really like the voice you use, though I would add some more clues about Darcy’s age for the reader, because although she is eighteen, sometimes when she talks it sounds younger. I’d like to see a more sophisticated voice at points in the story, especially when Darcy is working through thoughts. I don’t really mean a philosophical or epiphany voice, but more the chance to see the character working through multiple levels of implication when she views the world in different ways—what does feeling small insignificant, for example, mean for Darcy at home, in therapy, at school?
I like the dialogue you used—it felt very real. I think adding more dialogue when you revise is a good thing, in conjunction with revising your scene order/structure so that you are able to make the ending scene more meaningful to the reader.
Great draft!
James
Brodie’s Grieving Lessons
The outer story here is about a day in the life of Darcy Vandermeer, a high school senior. The inner story is, I think, primarily concerned with Darcy’s ruminations on mortality, and in particular on the death of grandmother. I think that Darcy, protestations aside, needs to come to some kind of resolution with her grandmother’s death, which seems to form the core of the story.
I really liked the voice in this story, which came off as somewhat sarcastic and self aware, but not overly so. I felt generally the narrator was being honest, if not always entirely in command (or aware) of her own feelings. I also really liked a lot of the small, quirky details in this story, such as Lana’s Buddhist fling (“Buddhist Jew”), Sam’s awkwardness, as well as the scenes involving the blind squirrel and the fly’s funeral were all very evocative and interesting, and did a great job of establishing scene, situation, and character. I also felt like I got a good handle on Coco’s character, who comes out through just a few telling details, but who nevertheless has an important and significant presence in the story.
I thought this story’s death motif was quite intriguing, and I thought it was interesting how you kept coming back to it throughout the story, through a variety of avenues. However, I wasn’t sure how these deaths affected the narrator, or what they mean to her. In particular, I felt that the Darcy’s relationship to Coco was central to the story, but I wasn’t quite sure what it meant in the end. When the grandmother’s death is first brought up, Darcy says a very interesting thing: “…I wasn’t moved at all when it happened, or afterwards, or even now.” Indeed, Darcy seems not to be affected by any of the deaths or any of the mortality issues brought up throughout the story. And yet, we keep coming back to Coco through the narrative. Especially the final lines of the story suggested that the grandmother has touched Darcy in some deep and meaningful way, but I wasn’t quite sure what that way was. I got the sense that something had changed in Darcy by the end of the story, that perhaps even the therapy session involving her “speaking” to her grandmother had been the catalyst that prompted that change. Nevertheless, I still had a lot of questions about Darcy and her relationship to her grandmother. Is she being unreliable when she tells us she wasn’t affected by Coco’s death? Is she lying to Caroline (and herself?) when she says none of Coco’s sophistication rubbed off on her? Why does she see a vision of her grandmother in the final scene? Has something changed for her, or is this simply a manifestation of something that has been there all along? Indeed, I’m not entirely sure the story really is about Coco and Darcy, or if it’s saying something bigger about how people grieve—how does Lana’s reaction to the fly’s death differ from Darcy’s, and what is that saying about both characters? Is Darcy really as cool as she seems?
I found myself wanting to spend more time with Lana and Sam, who are such interesting characters. You do a great job of setting them up, but then we never really see much of them again. I’d like to see more of these two, and how they play off of Darcy. Perhaps in this way you could reveal more about Darcy and show us to what degree she is unreliable or not. I also really intrigued by Caroline. Maybe we could have more of her as well, and more therapy sessions. What does Caroline think of Darcy’s lack of grieving? I think you have a great cast of characters here, and I’d love to see more of them, and for them to play off against Darcy, who, as it stands in the story now, seems to be inhabiting a slightly too hermetic reality for us to really know what’s up with her character.
Overall, a really interesting story!
Michael Booe
Hi Brodie,
The outer story was about Darcy, and her day spent ditching school with her friends, recalling the death of her grandmother, and having a substitute teacher think her name's a boy's name. She ends the day watching Harold and Maude at a theater and thinking of her grandmama. The inner story is about her figuring out exactly how to deal with (and what she thinks of) her grandmother's death.
I really like everything going on in your story, from characters to events, in that it all seems unique and interesting. Sam and Lana are great, well-characterized individuals who I found appealing, but not without potential flaws. The narrator speaks about then like a friend would, and they just seem like real friends who are friends and individuals for their own specific reasons. I Coco and Mr. Milarky, I thought, were also really well-done. You use the reminiscences about her grandmother and going to the movies to really make her into a character the narrator is fond of without being forceful or too obvious about it. The events of the story- finding the squirrel, the therapist, the sub- were all scenes that I liked as interesting but believeable.
My one major issue with the story is that I just couldn't find a way to pull everything together. As much as I love everything going on- the name stuff, grieving, etc.- I couldn't quite see how all the stories related to one another in the greater arc of the story, and why the narrator would be telling the story like she is. I liked the stuff with the friends and the talk about her grandma- but that intial story jump she makes kind of brought me out of the story, and I wasn't ever able to really place a finger on what was going on. Is the name thing important to her identity, or just significant as an issue she agreed with her grandma about? Similarly, I didn't quite see the connection between grieving about her grandma and Lana's feelings- it seemed like a bit of a stretch to make.
I really loved a lot of what went on in this story. I think that if you maybe extended the story a bit, and somehow helped the separate scenes to flow into one another a bit more naturally, then this could be an amazing story. It just seems like it needs one defining theme so that I can understand what this story is really about.
Matty
Dear Brodie,
This is a story about Darcy’s struggle to locate her emotions. Most importantly the grief that she never felt at her grandmother’s death. My take on Darcy is that what she would like most is to keep herself entertained and not have to worry about finding her emotions. The conflict is that she is being forced into doing so by her therapist.
World (I just made an arbitrary criticism category. Cool, huh?) Many of the details in this story lead me to believe that this world is slightly more absurd and hyperboloid than the real world. The whole idea of Lana becoming a Jewish Buddhist Monk, the fly burial and Mr. Milarky all seemed to fit in with this. I noticed that this element tends to slip away at some points of the story. The events surrounding the mother and the grandmother’s death seem to be in a more real and sad world. Maybe this is because the narrator is absent for a while (the middle paragraph on p4) all I see is the mother and the brother crying. I wanted to see some specific thing that Darcy did during the grandmother’s funeral/ mourning period, something that like the rest of the story was just out there. This would also back up the mom for sending Darcy to an art therapist.
The scene with the therapist was confusing to me. I get the feeling that Darcy simultaneously dislikes her, yet finds amusement in what she does. She seems to doubt any real therapeutic benefits yet does not object to the exercises. I don’t think that any of the painting or clay modeling has affected her at all and the drastic effect that the faux conversation with Coco has on her seemed strange. One side of me believes that this girl is in denial, but from the story I don’t have anything to tell me that she just doesn’t care. On p. 7, why can’t she keep going, what emotion is at work here? I thought there could be more build up, even if it is subtle, all there is now is the physical sensations she feels.
On the top of p. 8 Darcy almost tells the audience what she’s feeling, but this is wrapped up in cynicism. I wasn’t sure that the crack about being a self-absorbed and melodramatic teenager was necessary, also I thought more could be shown in this section.
Also, I have the feeling that Darcy is really wealthy, by the way she notices how everyone seems to have jobs while she drives around her offhand bemusement at what I am guessing is expensive therapy and the language and mannerisms conveyed in her descriptions of Coco. If this is so, I think that it could be exploited more in the story as a means of conveying a sense of alienation. Where is her dad, by the way?
I thought that you could go much deeper into the movie scene. I know why she is going there, but the action seems too realistic. I thought that it might have a more subtle, pensive quality to it. Does she remember any more details about Coco, is she mad at the therapist for indirectly making her come here? This isn’t the same theater she used to go to is it? I thought the present could be more tied in with recollection in this scene, Almost like a dream. This would build up more ambiguity to what I am guessing is a dream when Coco actually appears and speaks to her.
I had a good time reading and look forward to workshopping.
Mike
Brodie,
I read the outer story of “Grieving Lessons” as essentially inseperable from the inner story. Not much happens in the outer story, Darcy and her friends skip class and drive around, the substitute teacher mangles her name, and then Darcy goes to a movie. The inner story is one of Darcy and her two friends, three teens who don’t really know what they think about life, trying to figure out exactly what they think about life. Much of the story takes place in Darcy’s own head and memory. She thinks about life quite a bit and flashed back to her therapy sessions in which she tries to learn how to grieve for her dead grandmother. I think that Darcy wants to have some coherent idea about what is important and meaningful about life, she is very confused and aware that she is confused. In the end, I don’t think that she makes it out of her box, but we are left with the feeling that things are headed in a hopeful direction.
Characters: I think that the supporting characters in this story are very good. Lana was especially great, as she represents the extreme in ‘confused teen desperately searching for a coherent life-philosophy’. She is a Buddhist Jew who spent the last year in the Trinity Alps and took a vow of silence. She is also a real phony. Despite this background and the fact that she cries for a dead fly, she is still just a catty teenage girl, telling Darcy that they are too nice to Sam and that “he’s probably just going to try to get with one of us one of these days”. Sam and the therapist were nice supporting characters as well. The narrator’s editorializing on these characters really livens them up from her observation that Sam finds them “too intimidating to be fuckable” to her comment that the therapist is “in every way the sort of person you’d expect to say something like, ‘Your imagination will be the paint”.
Conflict: I think that my reading of what Darcy wanted may have in part been my reading of what I wanted Darcy to want. I wanted her to want to break out of her box. However, it seems that she doesn’t really want to break out, she is in many ways very dogmatic in her lack of belief. She doesn’t take the therapist seriously, she is quite cynical and she is convince that she feels nothing for her grandmother’s death and that there is nothing wrong with this. Not that there is anything wrong with these beliefs per se, it is just that she is a little too sure of herself. I didn’t believe that she actually had it all figured out, and I wanted her to be a little more questioning. Even Holden Caulfield, cynical and bullheaded as he was, knew that he was all mixed up. The last scene seems to suggest that she may be undergoing a change, but I couldn’t figure out exactly what her vision of her grandmother in the therapist’s office and then the movie theater was supposed to mean.
Dear Brodie,
The outer story is about Darcy and her two friends as they skip class and then go back to school. Darcy then goes to a movie theater and sees an image of her grandmother. The inner story is about Darcy coming to terms with her grandmother’s death. Through flashbacks, the death is detailed, along with Darcy’s interaction with her “art therapist” Caroline.
I really enjoyed the stuff happening in the present; I thought the details were great, and the characterizations of Darcy and her friends were quirky yet believable. I really like the part where they pass Tiko’s Tacos in the car, and something kind of clicks in Darcy and she says, “I felt ridiculously young, like my feet weren’t quite reaching the pedals. It was one of those moments where you decide that everything you’ve felt and experienced is totally small and meaningless. And in the midst of thinking this, you realize that you’re a melodramatic self-absorbed teenager.” This was a really powerful moment, and I think conveys something about her desire to cope with the past, and gives a reason for her to wander into the movie theater at the very end of the story.
That being said, I felt like there was just something incomplete about Darcy and her relationship with her grandmother. I never got the feeling that she actually came to terms with anything. Furthermore, while the mother was upset that Darcy didn’t cry when her grandmother died, it’s not as if Darcy felt like she should have cried, or felt guilty about not crying. Thus her going to the therapist seemed as if it was merely to appease the mother—at first, this could have been fine, but I would have liked to see some tangible change in Darcy as she saw the therapist more and more. Instead, nothing seemed to come out of talking to the white wall, or if something did come out of it, it wasn’t clear enough to the reader. I do, however, like the fact that at the end, the grandmother kind of talks back to Darcy—suggesting that something happened, although I’m not sure as to exactly what it was. One suggestion would be to elongate that final scene, to really add some weight and meaning to it, so the reader isn’t left wondering what to make of it. The framework’s there, it just needs to be properly executed.
Overall I thought this was a really interesting premise for a story, and I wish you the best of luck with your final draft.
-Nick
Dear Brodie,
I understood your outer story to be about a high school girl whose mother sends her to a “creative therapist” after her grandmother dies. In the other story line, taking place about a year later, she and her best friends ditch class to go to breakfast, encounter a blind squirrel, and hold a funeral for a squashed fly.
I understood your inner story to be about Darcy learning to cope with loss, and specifically the loss of her grandmother.
Overall, I think the voice in this story is really wonderful. I really found myself believing that I was listening to Darcy tell a story. Her comments about her mom, her friends, and her grandmother are especially great: I really got a sense of these characters through her eyes, and I love the way her reactions to them and observations about them demonstrate so much about her character. Her voice is self-reflective and funny without ever becoming indulgent or comical. I also think you do a great job of conveying her sense of personal/philosophical/spiritual crisis, without ever over-explaining it. The way she describes her moods, especially during the scenes that take place in the present, with Lana and Sam and then back at school, is perfect.
While I love your writing during the “creative counseling” scenes, I’m not quite sold on this part of the story. First of all, it seems so weird that the mom copes with her grief by sending her daughter into therapy. This is ok with me, but only if I get more explanation, or see more of the mom’s behavior so that this action makes sense in context. It seems to me that Darcy does her real learning and discovering and healing on her own, and so I feel like you spend a little too much time with this largely ineffective counselor. Her breakthrough, when she sits facing the wall, seems a little forced. I found myself wondering why it had occurred. The ending, too, seemed a little forced to me. It struck me as both a little too neat, and a little too abstract. Two more tiny details that are largely insignificant but stood out anyway: I’ve never heard Darcy as a boy’s name, so that scene surprised me (I’m sure it is a boy’s name, but perhaps pick something even more masculine… I met a girl named Wesley once). Also, the reference to Harold and Maude (great movie!) threw me off. Does this story take place back when Harold and Maude was released, or does the theater show old films?
Great job on this, Brodie. I look forward to seeing what else you do with these great characters and moving writing.
Zach
Post a Comment