The outer story of “Low Time” is about five friends and housemates—Calvin, DJ, Casey, Nick, and the narrator—and how they all deal with having just been dumped. Specifically, it is about one particular Friday night in which the narrator wants to watch “Monster Squad” with his friends but comes home to find Calvin already with a lady friend and DJ, Casey, and Nick watching a romantic comedy with three girls from the local community college. The inner story is about the narrator’s need to reconnect with something real after his girlfriend dumps him. He turns to his youth, and movies like “Monster Squad,” “The Neverending Story,” and “Beauty and the Beast,” are all mentioned. He is really looking forward to this evening, to bonding with his roommates instead of just getting completely trashed as they have done earlier in the week, but in the end, he is let down in a big way.
I think you did a really good job with making the emotion in this story understated, but visible. While we never hear the narrator say, “I miss her,” his actions speak for themselves. He spends time alone asking a Jack Daniels bottle questions about his failed relationship. He associates certain songs with her. He notices “old couples”—the one at Hofbrau and the other that runs the video store. He doesn’t flirt back with the girl at the register. While it is always better to have something understated rather than overstated (at least in my opinion), I think I wanted more from the narrator. I liked all of the things he does in the story and his actions really do say a lot, but I think they could say even more with some stronger description that helps us get inside the narrator’s head. For instance, I really liked when the narrator says, “There’s an old couple ahead of me and they are debating whether or not the meatloaf looks soft enough for their dentures,” but I wanted just a bit more focus—are they holding hands as they shuffle down the buffet line? does something specific about them trigger a memory for the narrator? do they look happy? This is a story about loss and it’s told in present-tense so the loss feels that much more immediate, so in some ways it’s appropriate that the narrator’s ex-girlfriend never really appears as a character, but it was hard for me to understand what this loss meant for the narrator without having at least some idea about what he had with this girl. In general, I did not feel like I knew the narrator very well. You start the story off in an interesting way, with the reasons that each character gets dumped. I am intrigued, especially by the reason that the narrator gets dumped: being “too perfect.” Is this the narrator’s way of rationalizing the break-up to himself? Or do the quotation marks illustrate something she’s said to him? I wanted to see this play out in the story. Conversely, if I am reading the intent of the story wrong and it is really about the failed brotherhood, then I want to know more about the other characters and their relationship to the narrator. You have a bunch of possibilities on how to add dimension to people like Calvin who can’t communicate but seems to have the most luck with the ladies and so forth. You might want to consider cutting out a housemate or so just so you have room to fully develop the ones you are left with.
In general, I liked your story, “Low Time.” It’s filled with a lot of really tense moments and while the events are somewhat everyday, the emotions behind them—the loneliness, the nostalgia for childhood, the need for loyalty—are complex. I think you’re off to a great start; it’s just a matter of filling in what you have with more description, more explication of the telling details already in the work, like the disaster movies and the hippie-owned video place.
Mike: The outer story is about the narrator unsuccessfully trying to organize a movie night with his buddies. The inner story is the narrator’s struggle to get over his ex-girlfriend. The narrator seems to yearn for the reassurance of nostalgia: “The Monster Squad,” his father, etc.
I really loved the voice of this piece. I totally felt like a buddy of the narrator’s. You’re incredibly successful at effortlessly introducing the reader to this world (grabbing limes from the tree across the street, the sneeze guard at the buffet, etc.) The casual, likeable voice makes me ready to accept anything. This is especially apparent when the narrator talks about Vicodin or cluing us into his drunken state (“There was a movie about a tidal wave on for a while and then I wasn’t.”) These parts really remind me of Denis Johnson. In addition, you never go over the top. It’s all very cool, if that makes sense. This same technique is applied to the narrator’s sentimentality. We’re only allowed glimpses. We know he’s hurting about this break-up, but it’s very much on a back burner. He drunkenly talks about it to an empty bottle. He overhears his friends making excuses. This subtlety was really excellent. My only suggestion for the voice would be to edit it a little bit. I think there is a conciseness imperative even to a stream of consciousness narrative. By cutting a few words in each paragraph, I think you’ll find your language even stronger.
While I understand the emphasis on “home” for the narrator, especially in this time of loneliness, I feel like the story gets a little sidetracked by the father. I think the movie store alone is a great artifact of the narrator’s childhood. I’m not sure the father needs to play any role at all, in fact.
I perceived the outer story as being about a guy that lives with some friends (who have all recently broken up with their girlfriends), drinks a decent amount and is currently trying to rent a movie to watch with his friends. The inner story is about the narrator's frustration over being dumped by his girlfriend, and his frustrated needs to spend time with his bros, only to have them abandon him for girls from the local junior college. I get the impression that the narrator is striving for some sort of re-connect, whether it is with his father, his friends, his childhood or a new girl.
I thought you did a really great job with the voice--it's very realistic in that you can tell exactly the type of person it's coming from: a college-aged, beer drinking guy. The voice has the kind of subdued--even intentionally stifled--emotions of someone that's too insecure or unable to express them. And that's often the case with guys. But even though it's subdued, it's still there, the reader just has to work a little bit harder to interpret them, and that's a good thing.
Further along these lines, I also enjoyed your characterization of the narrator--I can definitely relate to a bunch of his actions; the emphasis on food, working out, the simple pleasure of drinking and watching movies with your friends, the frustration of being abandoned for the other sex (breaking the code of bros before hos) is unique to the persona of the college-aged male.
Some things I think you could work on: I'd really like to see more of the place where these guys live--is it a trashed, run down apartment with beer cans all over the place? Or do the guys keep in pretty good condition? I think this could add some things to the underlying themes of the piece, especially for someone that is a bit out of touch with the lifestyle of the narrator and his friends. That being said, I do like details that you intersperse throughout the piece, such as the hot dogs, Eggo's and Spaghetti, the Coors Light, the Jack Daniels, the locked door with the music blasting, etc.
Also, I came away from the story liking the premise, the voice, etc. but it just didn't feel resolved in my mind. The narrator listlessly retreating upstairs to drink and watch the movie by himself just seemed to be a continuation of the cycle of depression/disappointment he had been feeling earlier. I wanted a true conflict, whether it was with his friends or someone or something else, and a complete arc to the story. Maybe you could have some sort of conflict arise that isn't directly related to his feelings of frustration, but it could be implied that the conflict resulted from his inability to cope with his frustrations. I know I'm being vague, but I'm just trying to suggest more ways to add a little more depth to what's going on.
Overall I think you're off to a good start. The "unspoken" emotion is clearly palpable, and your main character is very believeable.
Michael, The outer story of this piece is one day in a life of a college student who has recently lost his girlfriend. He gets works out, has dinner alone, gets beer and rents a movie was his childhood. When he comes home, though, his friends are all with new girls and watching a different movie. The inner story of this piece is how the narrator no longer wants the college lives of his friends, and instead wants to grow up and move on. I think a strong aspect of your story is the first person narration. The voice is very clear. It is very simplistic and uses simple sentences and descriptions. For example, when describing the Hof Brau, the narrator says, “You just tell them what you want. I brought my roommates here one time. There’s pictures and souvenir beer steins all over the walls. They got a kick out of it…” (2). The narration is bordering on stream of consciousness--our college protagonists tells us exactly what he is thinking and remembering as he thinks and remembers it. I think the spontaneous style creates a very candid and frank voice for the narrator, and his plain speech makes him sound very honest and direct. I trust this narrator. As much as I think his voice is the strongest part of your piece, there are some points where I felt his voice didn’t seem natural. Towards the end, he says things like “reclaim my gin and tonic” and “I force a smile as I introduce myself.” These lines seem very writerly to me, and don’t have the same realism that the rest of your story has. I think this narration works well because it is so real, and breaks in the voice become jarring. I felt like there was an abrupt change in the narrator’s life choices on the second page of the story, and I was unsure why he decided to change his life so drastically all of a sudden. After he gets drunk, takes vicodin and wakes up with a roaring hangover, he decides, “I’m not going to do that shit again. It is unhealthy and I’m going to enjoy myself.” He then later says, “I don’t feel like doing this anymore.” Why does this happen now, though? Why is it this hangover and this night that urge the narrator to so drastically change his life? Does it have to do with his ex-girlfriend? His friends? This seems like the key change to the entire story, yet I don’t fully understand why or how this was happened. There is a second key change when the narrator stands up to his friends and decides to watch a movie upstairs by himself. I really enjoyed the flashbacks to the movie store and the narrator’s father. It made me understand why this movie was special. I am still unsure if this act, leaving his friends, is unusual. His friends seems pushy and rude, and standing up to them seems like something the narrator would have to have done before. I guess I wanted to know how the narrator was feeling when he did this. Is this the first time he has challenged them? Is this the first time he saw them in a different light? I want to know why this moment of conflict is so significant.
In “Low Time” the external story follows a guy who plans for a “guys night in” with beer and a movie. The internal story is about a guy battling the pain (and alcoholism) after breaking up with his girlfriend, and feeling betrayed by his friends.
This is an interesting slice of life type story. I love the voice of the narrator. He tells the story in a very matter-of-fact kind of way, listing emotionless details that reveal how much he is actually in pain. I like that we understand him through his actions instead of hearing his thoughts explaining flat-out how he feels; it is realistic and also more sympathetic in a way. The fact that he doesn’t flirt back with the salesgirl, even though she’s cute, or that he can’t stand watching the romantic comedy while his friends all have girls with them, shows that he hasn’t moved on from his relationship.
Another thing I really like in this story is the relationship between the narrator and his friends. He seems to really need them in this transition, and enjoys the fact that they “all get dumped around the same time” – like they are in it together. I like that each friend has a specific thing he’s known for, and that the narrator enjoys pointing these details out. It makes it more powerful at the end that he can always count on his friends until now. He builds it up what the night will be, the four dumped guys together, and they all ditch him and end up with girls, doing an activity he doesn’t want to be a part of.
Something I’d like to see developed is the narrator’s relationship with his father. While we get a tiny taste of it when he remembers the trips to the mini-mart, it just leaves me wondering why it is mentioned at all. Why does he think about this? Why does he think it now? What is his relationship with his dad like now? Has it been effected by the break-up?
Another thing I’m confused about is why his girlfriend broke up with him. Like I said before, I like that the narrator doesn’t get all emotional and mushy, but I would like to know a little bit more how he is dealing with it, considering all the other guys had good reasons for being dumped and the narrator doesn’t. What does it mean that he is “too perfect”? If that’s all he believes, how and why does he accept that? Does he think about his ex-girlfriend sometimes? I’d like to know a little bit more information about her.
Overall, this is a cool story, and I really enjoyed reading it! Great work!
I understood your outer story to be about a college student who gets dumped around the same time as his four roommates, rents a movie to watch with his roommates, and then discovers that they have already met new girls and are otherwise occupied.
I understood your inner story to be about the narrator’s efforts to cope with being dumped, his desperate reversion to fond childhood memories, and his frustration when he realizes that his roommates have moved on in a way that he has not.
I love the initial premise of your story, and the first two paragraphs are a terrific opening. You do a great job of efficiently characterizing each of the roommates, both in the reasons they’ve been dumped and the way they react. The line, “I start to drink a lot and my roommates help,” is a great one: I can really sense the miserable camaraderie emerging between these five guys. The voice and first person narration throughout this piece are very strong. You do a good job of showing rather than telling, indicating your narrator’s feelings through the actions and behavior he ascribes to himself.
Although I liked the way you described your narrator’s mood through his actions, it seemed a little inconsistent to me that he could be so sentimental about his childhood, and yet at the same time seem so ignorant or uncomfortable with expressing emotion. I also wanted to know more about his relationships to the other characters: to his roommates, to his parents, and especially to the girl who dumped him. My big question is: why, if they all got dumped around the same time, is he taking it so much harder than his roommates? There’s nothing said about the girl who dumped him, which is an intriguing choice, but it seems strange given the premise of the story. I’d also love to see more of his interactions with his roommates, and a little more differentiation in the way he relates to each of them. Do they all really get girls the same night? Did they pick up these girls together? Why did they leave him out?
You’ve got a really great start here, and I think there are lots of exciting places you can go with this story. Good work!
Hey Mike, I saw your outer story as about the narrator going out for dinner, coming back to his house with a rented video tape, and trying to get his fellow housemates to watch the movie with him- and he is unsuccessful. I saw the inner story as about how the narrator is dealing with having recently broken up with his girlfriend, and his frustrations with his housemates’ abilities to cope with their past breakups so easily (he sees them all as “dumped”, but they don’t seem to have that on their minds). I think you set up a really good laid-back feel for the story that suits the events really well. You set up the environment by using quick introductions to the characters that in few words do a lot to explain who they are and what they’re like. The voice of the narrator has an appropriately passive-aggressive bent to it that showcases his feelings of lost and hopelessness while also doing just enough to make clear his frustration with his roommates (especially that they’re enjoying the romantic comedy instead of his movie). The casual-ness of hanging around with friends, renting a movie, and eating at the Hofbrau again just work together with the narrator’s situation well. It is possibly a situation that he’s made worse than it needs to be, and he’s let it infiltrate even the most trivial parts of his life as though he’ll never recover. I also liked how subtle the bits about the girlfriend were- just mentioning the dumpings early on, and asking questions “about her” were enough to make it clear without being forceful what problems the narrator was having. That said, I do think that the conflict itself- the narrator dealing with loss- could have been emphasized much more in the story. I got the vibe that this was very much just a “day in the life” of the narrator and I wanted to see some sort of change or big event that makes it seem like this is more than just one run-through of a never-ending cycle. I also think that, while the subtlety was good, the way the narrator is affected makes me think he’d talk a good deal more about his girlfriend than he does. The story didn’t feel like it was working towards any sort of conclusion, and so as a reader I was left with a lot of questions about why everything in the story was the way it was (the narrator’s inability to let go, for instance) and what was going to (or even could) happen. I really like the environment and situation you have set up in the story. All I think it needs is a bit more of a conflict, or at least the narrator’s confrontation with his own feelings and situation. All the plot needs is a bit more of a spark, and I think it could be a really good story.
The outer story here concerns a day in the life of the narrator as he goes about his day not long after a breakup with his girlfriend. The inner story is, I think, about the narrator’s attempt to deal with his emotional pain. This is the narrator’s goal throughout the story—through his routine he’s trying, in a roundabout way, to overcome his hurt. His friends are trying to do the same thing, but they go about it in a very different way.
I think this story has a lot going for it, especially the voice, which was wonderfully restrained and modulated. You managed to reveal a lot about this character, despite the fact that he is unwilling or unable to reveal too much about himself, particularly with respect to his emotional state. You did this quite ingeniously, by letting us see details of his life and his reaction to them in ways that were quite telling. His turning off of the Dave Matthews Band and his decision not to play back to the Hofbrau girl’s flirting said a lot about how the character is feeling. I also really liked the contrast between the narrator and his band of friends (who I never managed to differentiate, which I think was your intention). Casey, Nick, DJ, and Calvin are clearly different from the narrator; the narrator’s girlfriend broke up with him because he was “too perfect,” and the friends deal with their breakups by immediately finding new girls. I thought this contrast did a fine job of further bringing out the narrator’s character. Finally, I was quite tickled by the girls’ names at the end of the story; a nice bit of humor and perhaps also telling.
I also liked the nostalgic quality the narrator’s voice had, and I really enjoyed his description of the slightly off kilter video rental store he used to frequent with his dad. However, I wasn’t quite sure how this nostalgic quality tied into the overall issue of the breakup, which I felt was the major driving force of the piece, especially given how the story begins, as well as the title. I don’t think this has to be spelled out too explicitly, especially given the narrator’s penchant for not telling us how’s he’s feeling, but, particularly because this is such a short focused story, this felt a little bit like a digression. Why did the narrator retreat to his past to deal with the breakup? More, why is it important to him that he watch it with his friends? Is it that important? What does their rejection of “Monster Squad” mean to the narrator?
This is a minor point, but I wanted to get a slightly better sense of where the narrator stands in relation to his friends, with whom he seems to have a good deal in common, but at the same time cannot full identify. I got the sense that the narrator is somewhat more mature than his friends, or perhaps simply more closed off. His reaction to the breakup is much more introspective and internalized than his friends’, which is very outward looking. I wanted to get a slightly better sense of how the narrator feels about his friends. His reaction to the breakup isn’t necessarily to spend time with them. Why? He’s obviously not the kind of guy to talk about his feelings with his fellows, but he goes beyond that and actively tries to spend time apart from them, despite their all having gone through a similar trauma. Why does he do this? Does he think he’s more mature than his friends? Does he feel like they can’t really relate? Again, this isn’t something the narrator would necessarily tell us, but perhaps you could give us more interaction between him and his friends. I thought the dialogue in the final scene worked quite well in bringing out character, and more of it might help clarify these questions.
Finally, and I want to tread lightly here because I think one of the story’s main strengths is that the narrator doesn’t spell out his feelings for us, I wanted to get a sense of what this girl meant to the narrator and why he’s taking this so hard. One telling detail I wanted to know was how long does the story take place after the breakup? A week? A month? Maybe you could give us just a sentence or two more at the beginning when the narrator is telling us about the breakup to flesh this out just a little more.
Dear Mike, I read the outer story of Low Time to be about the narrator going through a low time because he’s just been dumped, and because he remains alone even though all of his friends have found girls to be with after their breakups. I read your inner story to be about your narrator feeling lonely and dissatisfied with the purposelessness of his daily routines. I think that the narrator wants someone to be truly close to, and something to believe in. I really like the earnestness and simplicity of the voice you’ve chosen. Your narrator conveys a lot through tone. By page three I felt that there was a pervasive sense of exhaustion, that the narrator was tired of the grind—drink, wake up late, workout. I think you do a great job conveying this in a subtle way: the only time his roommates help, they help with drinking (1), the narrator feels he is “losing pretty bad” (1), the narrator’s “got plans…[and] doesn’t feel like doing this anymore.” (2) And yet, by the end of the story, that’s exactly where we find the narrator: alone, drinking, losing pretty bad. There’s consistency here, and a strong sense of loneliness and discontent. I think you can make your story even stronger if you leverage this into some sort of an arc. For example, I’d like to see the narrator try to break out of this cycle and make good on his plans. Whether he is successful and has a small triumph, or fails and returns to his daily way, doesn’t matter so much as the process of effort. I’d really like to see him tackle some of the emotional fatigue he’s conveying. Another way to do this might be to play up the potential for a new relationship. I think that there are a couple things that need to happen for this to work. I didn’t understand why his breakup happened in the first place (being too perfect?) and we never get to see what the narrator’s girlfriend meant to him. The narrator then has two chances to interact with potential dates: he chooses not to flirt with the girl at Hofbrau, and he doesn’t do anything with the girl at the video store, even though she’s “really nice”. I thought that developing a relationship there, or suggesting that that could become something would lead to a more satisfying ending. Depending on the broader arc of the story, the flashback about renting movies with Dad might be reworked. I read its importance as showing why the movie was important to the narrator, but this is hard to grasp without a clearer sense of the narrator’s relationship to Dad. I think you do an excellent job capturing elements of aimless living that, at times, I’ve known myself. The feeling of inertia, the seemingly unending hangover, the partying without purpose and desire—all of these things feel real and true. Taking this setting and having something unique happen to/with your narrator would be really interesting. Best, James
I read the outer story of ‘Low Time’ as being about one particularly depressing night for the narrator. He has been drinking a lot lately, he wants to watch a movie that reminds him of his childhood, and when he returns home, all of his roommates are with new girls and nobody wants to watch his movie, so he watches it by himself. The inner story is about how the narrator is going through this particularly low time in his life and the way that he reaches back to his past and other comfortable things in order to feel better. I thought that the narrator wanted some kind of grounding or meaning in his life. We never see his family or what he does for a living, or he says that he goes to school, but it seems like he really has nothing going on.
Tone: The story is told from a first person perspective as the events occur. While I think that this style is effective at times, after some thinking, I think that the story might work better if told in the past tense and from a future perspective. As told in the present tense, the narrator is very limited in the things that he can talk about, because he has no perspective. If he were telling the story from a future point, e.g. “It was Friday and I didn’t feel well”, instead of “It’s a Friday and I don’t feel well”, it would give some temporal distance and an opportunity for reflection. As is, we are left with the narrator in a depressed state, and unable to communicate with us. What I really wanted to get from the story is how this particularly low time in the narrator’s life affected him. It doesn’t have to be the narrator 20 years later, living a happy life. It could easily be the narrator two days later, reflecting on how he is still in a rut. However, I think the nature of the story is such that some introspection on the narrator’s part is necessary and I think that the present-tense narration is acting as a barrier to that.
Details: I thought that the parts of the story that related to the past (the movie store, the movies he liked, his dad) were great, and were the parts of the story that really drew me in. In order for me to really care about this character’s life, I had to know who he was, where he came from and get some clue as to why he is in such a bad state, or how far he has fallen. A depressed character in a vacuum is neither sympathetic nor interesting. I was craving more details like those. I thought the part about the Hofbrau was well done also. Showing me the place where he habitually goes to feel comfortable did a lot for his character. What you have here is really good, and when you make this a final draft I think that you should just add more to flesh out the character
The outer story is about how five guy friends cope with getting dumped and one ending up being left out. The inner story is about one guy’s inner search following his own break-up, going through a day-to-day routine while finding meaning in the normalcy.
I really liked the voice in this piece. Simply from that you can guess the protagonist’s age and quite a lot about his personality. His actions, his relationship with his friends, and his contemplations all feel very real to the reader. You do a great job of picking out small details that are actually quite interesting and tell us a lot about the speaker’s state of mind…like when Dave Matthews comes on in his headphones and that isn’t what he wants to listen to. There’s a really gritty modern quality to this story that I like a lot. It’s very simply through the speaker’s eyes.
You use a lot of summary in this piece, which eventually bothers me…I want to see things more, and I think you could easily pull this off while maintaining the speaker’s understated voice. It’s also so chronological in the way that it moves from the beginning to the end. I’d like so see you bump around a bit, go back in time to make the characters less 2-dimensional. Show us the girlfriends, what they meant to the characters. As it is, there doesn’t seem to be much of an emotional response at all to the break-ups other than drinking and being lazy. The speaker seems slightly bummed, but I want to know how much this girl meant to him, how much having someone meant to him. Is it hard being alone? I don’t feel enough from him or know him well enough to really get a handle on things. I don’t get enough of a sense of a closeness between the friends either in order to feel the weight of the ending. Give us more depth, more richness to the characters…are they funny, is one closer to the speaker than others, etc? This will help the reader get more into the story and inside the speaker’s head. The part when he talks about going to the movie store with his father and describes the couple that worked there is, in my opinion, the strongest point in the story. We get to know something more about the speaker and get a strong sense of the couple and how the speaker feels towards them. I want to understand why this is—where is the speaker’s father, and why is he having such an intimate memory on his way to the movie story. The nostalgia really gives the story more depth, and I think you could really do something powerful with the speaker’s yearning for his childhood as opposed to this slump that he currently is as a young adult. Also, take this kind of description and apply it to his friends. By building all of the characters up more, I think you will really be able to strengthen the ending and better express the meaning within the story.
11 comments:
Dear Mike,
The outer story of “Low Time” is about five friends and housemates—Calvin, DJ, Casey, Nick, and the narrator—and how they all deal with having just been dumped. Specifically, it is about one particular Friday night in which the narrator wants to watch “Monster Squad” with his friends but comes home to find Calvin already with a lady friend and DJ, Casey, and Nick watching a romantic comedy with three girls from the local community college. The inner story is about the narrator’s need to reconnect with something real after his girlfriend dumps him. He turns to his youth, and movies like “Monster Squad,” “The Neverending Story,” and “Beauty and the Beast,” are all mentioned. He is really looking forward to this evening, to bonding with his roommates instead of just getting completely trashed as they have done earlier in the week, but in the end, he is let down in a big way.
I think you did a really good job with making the emotion in this story understated, but visible. While we never hear the narrator say, “I miss her,” his actions speak for themselves. He spends time alone asking a Jack Daniels bottle questions about his failed relationship. He associates certain songs with her. He notices “old couples”—the one at Hofbrau and the other that runs the video store. He doesn’t flirt back with the girl at the register. While it is always better to have something understated rather than overstated (at least in my opinion), I think I wanted more from the narrator. I liked all of the things he does in the story and his actions really do say a lot, but I think they could say even more with some stronger description that helps us get inside the narrator’s head. For instance, I really liked when the narrator says, “There’s an old couple ahead of me and they are debating whether or not the meatloaf looks soft enough for their dentures,” but I wanted just a bit more focus—are they holding hands as they shuffle down the buffet line? does something specific about them trigger a memory for the narrator? do they look happy? This is a story about loss and it’s told in present-tense so the loss feels that much more immediate, so in some ways it’s appropriate that the narrator’s ex-girlfriend never really appears as a character, but it was hard for me to understand what this loss meant for the narrator without having at least some idea about what he had with this girl. In general, I did not feel like I knew the narrator very well. You start the story off in an interesting way, with the reasons that each character gets dumped. I am intrigued, especially by the reason that the narrator gets dumped: being “too perfect.” Is this the narrator’s way of rationalizing the break-up to himself? Or do the quotation marks illustrate something she’s said to him? I wanted to see this play out in the story. Conversely, if I am reading the intent of the story wrong and it is really about the failed brotherhood, then I want to know more about the other characters and their relationship to the narrator. You have a bunch of possibilities on how to add dimension to people like Calvin who can’t communicate but seems to have the most luck with the ladies and so forth. You might want to consider cutting out a housemate or so just so you have room to fully develop the ones you are left with.
In general, I liked your story, “Low Time.” It’s filled with a lot of really tense moments and while the events are somewhat everyday, the emotions behind them—the loneliness, the nostalgia for childhood, the need for loyalty—are complex. I think you’re off to a great start; it’s just a matter of filling in what you have with more description, more explication of the telling details already in the work, like the disaster movies and the hippie-owned video place.
Thanks for sharing, Mike!
Jessamyn
Mike:
The outer story is about the narrator unsuccessfully trying to organize a movie night with his buddies. The inner story is the narrator’s struggle to get over his ex-girlfriend. The narrator seems to yearn for the reassurance of nostalgia: “The Monster Squad,” his father, etc.
I really loved the voice of this piece. I totally felt like a buddy of the narrator’s. You’re incredibly successful at effortlessly introducing the reader to this world (grabbing limes from the tree across the street, the sneeze guard at the buffet, etc.) The casual, likeable voice makes me ready to accept anything. This is especially apparent when the narrator talks about Vicodin or cluing us into his drunken state (“There was a movie about a tidal wave on for a while and then I wasn’t.”) These parts really remind me of Denis Johnson. In addition, you never go over the top. It’s all very cool, if that makes sense. This same technique is applied to the narrator’s sentimentality. We’re only allowed glimpses. We know he’s hurting about this break-up, but it’s very much on a back burner. He drunkenly talks about it to an empty bottle. He overhears his friends making excuses. This subtlety was really excellent. My only suggestion for the voice would be to edit it a little bit. I think there is a conciseness imperative even to a stream of consciousness narrative. By cutting a few words in each paragraph, I think you’ll find your language even stronger.
While I understand the emphasis on “home” for the narrator, especially in this time of loneliness, I feel like the story gets a little sidetracked by the father. I think the movie store alone is a great artifact of the narrator’s childhood. I’m not sure the father needs to play any role at all, in fact.
I really enjoyed this piece,
-Michelle
Dear Mike,
I perceived the outer story as being about a guy that lives with some friends (who have all recently broken up with their girlfriends), drinks a decent amount and is currently trying to rent a movie to watch with his friends. The inner story is about the narrator's frustration over being dumped by his girlfriend, and his frustrated needs to spend time with his bros, only to have them abandon him for girls from the local junior college. I get the impression that the narrator is striving for some sort of re-connect, whether it is with his father, his friends, his childhood or a new girl.
I thought you did a really great job with the voice--it's very realistic in that you can tell exactly the type of person it's coming from: a college-aged, beer drinking guy. The voice has the kind of subdued--even intentionally stifled--emotions of someone that's too insecure or unable to express them. And that's often the case with guys. But even though it's subdued, it's still there, the reader just has to work a little bit harder to interpret them, and that's a good thing.
Further along these lines, I also enjoyed your characterization of the narrator--I can definitely relate to a bunch of his actions; the emphasis on food, working out, the simple pleasure of drinking and watching movies with your friends, the frustration of being abandoned for the other sex (breaking the code of bros before hos) is unique to the persona of the college-aged male.
Some things I think you could work on: I'd really like to see more of the place where these guys live--is it a trashed, run down apartment with beer cans all over the place? Or do the guys keep in pretty good condition? I think this could add some things to the underlying themes of the piece, especially for someone that is a bit out of touch with the lifestyle of the narrator and his friends. That being said, I do like details that you intersperse throughout the piece, such as the hot dogs, Eggo's and Spaghetti, the Coors Light, the Jack Daniels, the locked door with the music blasting, etc.
Also, I came away from the story liking the premise, the voice, etc. but it just didn't feel resolved in my mind. The narrator listlessly retreating upstairs to drink and watch the movie by himself just seemed to be a continuation of the cycle of depression/disappointment he had been feeling earlier. I wanted a true conflict, whether it was with his friends or someone or something else, and a complete arc to the story. Maybe you could have some sort of conflict arise that isn't directly related to his feelings of frustration, but it could be implied that the conflict resulted from his inability to cope with his frustrations. I know I'm being vague, but I'm just trying to suggest more ways to add a little more depth to what's going on.
Overall I think you're off to a good start. The "unspoken" emotion is clearly palpable, and your main character is very believeable.
-Nick
Michael,
The outer story of this piece is one day in a life of a college student who has recently lost his girlfriend. He gets works out, has dinner alone, gets beer and rents a movie was his childhood. When he comes home, though, his friends are all with new girls and watching a different movie. The inner story of this piece is how the narrator no longer wants the college lives of his friends, and instead wants to grow up and move on.
I think a strong aspect of your story is the first person narration. The voice is very clear. It is very simplistic and uses simple sentences and descriptions. For example, when describing the Hof Brau, the narrator says, “You just tell them what you want. I brought my roommates here one time. There’s pictures and souvenir beer steins all over the walls. They got a kick out of it…” (2). The narration is bordering on stream of consciousness--our college protagonists tells us exactly what he is thinking and remembering as he thinks and remembers it. I think the spontaneous style creates a very candid and frank voice for the narrator, and his plain speech makes him sound very honest and direct. I trust this narrator.
As much as I think his voice is the strongest part of your piece, there are some points where I felt his voice didn’t seem natural. Towards the end, he says things like “reclaim my gin and tonic” and “I force a smile as I introduce myself.” These lines seem very writerly to me, and don’t have the same realism that the rest of your story has. I think this narration works well because it is so real, and breaks in the voice become jarring.
I felt like there was an abrupt change in the narrator’s life choices on the second page of the story, and I was unsure why he decided to change his life so drastically all of a sudden. After he gets drunk, takes vicodin and wakes up with a roaring hangover, he decides, “I’m not going to do that shit again. It is unhealthy and I’m going to enjoy myself.” He then later says, “I don’t feel like doing this anymore.” Why does this happen now, though? Why is it this hangover and this night that urge the narrator to so drastically change his life? Does it have to do with his ex-girlfriend? His friends? This seems like the key change to the entire story, yet I don’t fully understand why or how this was happened.
There is a second key change when the narrator stands up to his friends and decides to watch a movie upstairs by himself. I really enjoyed the flashbacks to the movie store and the narrator’s father. It made me understand why this movie was special. I am still unsure if this act, leaving his friends, is unusual. His friends seems pushy and rude, and standing up to them seems like something the narrator would have to have done before. I guess I wanted to know how the narrator was feeling when he did this. Is this the first time he has challenged them? Is this the first time he saw them in a different light? I want to know why this moment of conflict is so significant.
Best of luck with revisions,
Katie
Dear Michael,
In “Low Time” the external story follows a guy who plans for a “guys night in” with beer and a movie. The internal story is about a guy battling the pain (and alcoholism) after breaking up with his girlfriend, and feeling betrayed by his friends.
This is an interesting slice of life type story. I love the voice of the narrator. He tells the story in a very matter-of-fact kind of way, listing emotionless details that reveal how much he is actually in pain. I like that we understand him through his actions instead of hearing his thoughts explaining flat-out how he feels; it is realistic and also more sympathetic in a way. The fact that he doesn’t flirt back with the salesgirl, even though she’s cute, or that he can’t stand watching the romantic comedy while his friends all have girls with them, shows that he hasn’t moved on from his relationship.
Another thing I really like in this story is the relationship between the narrator and his friends. He seems to really need them in this transition, and enjoys the fact that they “all get dumped around the same time” – like they are in it together. I like that each friend has a specific thing he’s known for, and that the narrator enjoys pointing these details out. It makes it more powerful at the end that he can always count on his friends until now. He builds it up what the night will be, the four dumped guys together, and they all ditch him and end up with girls, doing an activity he doesn’t want to be a part of.
Something I’d like to see developed is the narrator’s relationship with his father. While we get a tiny taste of it when he remembers the trips to the mini-mart, it just leaves me wondering why it is mentioned at all. Why does he think about this? Why does he think it now? What is his relationship with his dad like now? Has it been effected by the break-up?
Another thing I’m confused about is why his girlfriend broke up with him. Like I said before, I like that the narrator doesn’t get all emotional and mushy, but I would like to know a little bit more how he is dealing with it, considering all the other guys had good reasons for being dumped and the narrator doesn’t. What does it mean that he is “too perfect”? If that’s all he believes, how and why does he accept that? Does he think about his ex-girlfriend sometimes? I’d like to know a little bit more information about her.
Overall, this is a cool story, and I really enjoyed reading it! Great work!
-Annie
Dear Michael,
I understood your outer story to be about a college student who gets dumped around the same time as his four roommates, rents a movie to watch with his roommates, and then discovers that they have already met new girls and are otherwise occupied.
I understood your inner story to be about the narrator’s efforts to cope with being dumped, his desperate reversion to fond childhood memories, and his frustration when he realizes that his roommates have moved on in a way that he has not.
I love the initial premise of your story, and the first two paragraphs are a terrific opening. You do a great job of efficiently characterizing each of the roommates, both in the reasons they’ve been dumped and the way they react. The line, “I start to drink a lot and my roommates help,” is a great one: I can really sense the miserable camaraderie emerging between these five guys. The voice and first person narration throughout this piece are very strong. You do a good job of showing rather than telling, indicating your narrator’s feelings through the actions and behavior he ascribes to himself.
Although I liked the way you described your narrator’s mood through his actions, it seemed a little inconsistent to me that he could be so sentimental about his childhood, and yet at the same time seem so ignorant or uncomfortable with expressing emotion. I also wanted to know more about his relationships to the other characters: to his roommates, to his parents, and especially to the girl who dumped him. My big question is: why, if they all got dumped around the same time, is he taking it so much harder than his roommates? There’s nothing said about the girl who dumped him, which is an intriguing choice, but it seems strange given the premise of the story. I’d also love to see more of his interactions with his roommates, and a little more differentiation in the way he relates to each of them. Do they all really get girls the same night? Did they pick up these girls together? Why did they leave him out?
You’ve got a really great start here, and I think there are lots of exciting places you can go with this story. Good work!
Zach
Hey Mike,
I saw your outer story as about the narrator going out for dinner, coming back to his house with a rented video tape, and trying to get his fellow housemates to watch the movie with him- and he is unsuccessful. I saw the inner story as about how the narrator is dealing with having recently broken up with his girlfriend, and his frustrations with his housemates’ abilities to cope with their past breakups so easily (he sees them all as “dumped”, but they don’t seem to have that on their minds).
I think you set up a really good laid-back feel for the story that suits the events really well. You set up the environment by using quick introductions to the characters that in few words do a lot to explain who they are and what they’re like. The voice of the narrator has an appropriately passive-aggressive bent to it that showcases his feelings of lost and hopelessness while also doing just enough to make clear his frustration with his roommates (especially that they’re enjoying the romantic comedy instead of his movie). The casual-ness of hanging around with friends, renting a movie, and eating at the Hofbrau again just work together with the narrator’s situation well. It is possibly a situation that he’s made worse than it needs to be, and he’s let it infiltrate even the most trivial parts of his life as though he’ll never recover. I also liked how subtle the bits about the girlfriend were- just mentioning the dumpings early on, and asking questions “about her” were enough to make it clear without being forceful what problems the narrator was having.
That said, I do think that the conflict itself- the narrator dealing with loss- could have been emphasized much more in the story. I got the vibe that this was very much just a “day in the life” of the narrator and I wanted to see some sort of change or big event that makes it seem like this is more than just one run-through of a never-ending cycle. I also think that, while the subtlety was good, the way the narrator is affected makes me think he’d talk a good deal more about his girlfriend than he does. The story didn’t feel like it was working towards any sort of conclusion, and so as a reader I was left with a lot of questions about why everything in the story was the way it was (the narrator’s inability to let go, for instance) and what was going to (or even could) happen.
I really like the environment and situation you have set up in the story. All I think it needs is a bit more of a conflict, or at least the narrator’s confrontation with his own feelings and situation. All the plot needs is a bit more of a spark, and I think it could be a really good story.
Matty
The outer story here concerns a day in the life of the narrator as he goes about his day not long after a breakup with his girlfriend. The inner story is, I think, about the narrator’s attempt to deal with his emotional pain. This is the narrator’s goal throughout the story—through his routine he’s trying, in a roundabout way, to overcome his hurt. His friends are trying to do the same thing, but they go about it in a very different way.
I think this story has a lot going for it, especially the voice, which was wonderfully restrained and modulated. You managed to reveal a lot about this character, despite the fact that he is unwilling or unable to reveal too much about himself, particularly with respect to his emotional state. You did this quite ingeniously, by letting us see details of his life and his reaction to them in ways that were quite telling. His turning off of the Dave Matthews Band and his decision not to play back to the Hofbrau girl’s flirting said a lot about how the character is feeling. I also really liked the contrast between the narrator and his band of friends (who I never managed to differentiate, which I think was your intention). Casey, Nick, DJ, and Calvin are clearly different from the narrator; the narrator’s girlfriend broke up with him because he was “too perfect,” and the friends deal with their breakups by immediately finding new girls. I thought this contrast did a fine job of further bringing out the narrator’s character. Finally, I was quite tickled by the girls’ names at the end of the story; a nice bit of humor and perhaps also telling.
I also liked the nostalgic quality the narrator’s voice had, and I really enjoyed his description of the slightly off kilter video rental store he used to frequent with his dad. However, I wasn’t quite sure how this nostalgic quality tied into the overall issue of the breakup, which I felt was the major driving force of the piece, especially given how the story begins, as well as the title. I don’t think this has to be spelled out too explicitly, especially given the narrator’s penchant for not telling us how’s he’s feeling, but, particularly because this is such a short focused story, this felt a little bit like a digression. Why did the narrator retreat to his past to deal with the breakup? More, why is it important to him that he watch it with his friends? Is it that important? What does their rejection of “Monster Squad” mean to the narrator?
This is a minor point, but I wanted to get a slightly better sense of where the narrator stands in relation to his friends, with whom he seems to have a good deal in common, but at the same time cannot full identify. I got the sense that the narrator is somewhat more mature than his friends, or perhaps simply more closed off. His reaction to the breakup is much more introspective and internalized than his friends’, which is very outward looking. I wanted to get a slightly better sense of how the narrator feels about his friends. His reaction to the breakup isn’t necessarily to spend time with them. Why? He’s obviously not the kind of guy to talk about his feelings with his fellows, but he goes beyond that and actively tries to spend time apart from them, despite their all having gone through a similar trauma. Why does he do this? Does he think he’s more mature than his friends? Does he feel like they can’t really relate? Again, this isn’t something the narrator would necessarily tell us, but perhaps you could give us more interaction between him and his friends. I thought the dialogue in the final scene worked quite well in bringing out character, and more of it might help clarify these questions.
Finally, and I want to tread lightly here because I think one of the story’s main strengths is that the narrator doesn’t spell out his feelings for us, I wanted to get a sense of what this girl meant to the narrator and why he’s taking this so hard. One telling detail I wanted to know was how long does the story take place after the breakup? A week? A month? Maybe you could give us just a sentence or two more at the beginning when the narrator is telling us about the breakup to flesh this out just a little more.
Great story!
Michael Booe
Dear Mike,
I read the outer story of Low Time to be about the narrator going through a low time because he’s just been dumped, and because he remains alone even though all of his friends have found girls to be with after their breakups. I read your inner story to be about your narrator feeling lonely and dissatisfied with the purposelessness of his daily routines. I think that the narrator wants someone to be truly close to, and something to believe in.
I really like the earnestness and simplicity of the voice you’ve chosen. Your narrator conveys a lot through tone. By page three I felt that there was a pervasive sense of exhaustion, that the narrator was tired of the grind—drink, wake up late, workout. I think you do a great job conveying this in a subtle way: the only time his roommates help, they help with drinking (1), the narrator feels he is “losing pretty bad” (1), the narrator’s “got plans…[and] doesn’t feel like doing this anymore.” (2) And yet, by the end of the story, that’s exactly where we find the narrator: alone, drinking, losing pretty bad.
There’s consistency here, and a strong sense of loneliness and discontent. I think you can make your story even stronger if you leverage this into some sort of an arc. For example, I’d like to see the narrator try to break out of this cycle and make good on his plans. Whether he is successful and has a small triumph, or fails and returns to his daily way, doesn’t matter so much as the process of effort. I’d really like to see him tackle some of the emotional fatigue he’s conveying.
Another way to do this might be to play up the potential for a new relationship. I think that there are a couple things that need to happen for this to work. I didn’t understand why his breakup happened in the first place (being too perfect?) and we never get to see what the narrator’s girlfriend meant to him. The narrator then has two chances to interact with potential dates: he chooses not to flirt with the girl at Hofbrau, and he doesn’t do anything with the girl at the video store, even though she’s “really nice”. I thought that developing a relationship there, or suggesting that that could become something would lead to a more satisfying ending.
Depending on the broader arc of the story, the flashback about renting movies with Dad might be reworked. I read its importance as showing why the movie was important to the narrator, but this is hard to grasp without a clearer sense of the narrator’s relationship to Dad.
I think you do an excellent job capturing elements of aimless living that, at times, I’ve known myself. The feeling of inertia, the seemingly unending hangover, the partying without purpose and desire—all of these things feel real and true. Taking this setting and having something unique happen to/with your narrator would be really interesting.
Best,
James
Mike,
I read the outer story of ‘Low Time’ as being about one particularly depressing night for the narrator. He has been drinking a lot lately, he wants to watch a movie that reminds him of his childhood, and when he returns home, all of his roommates are with new girls and nobody wants to watch his movie, so he watches it by himself. The inner story is about how the narrator is going through this particularly low time in his life and the way that he reaches back to his past and other comfortable things in order to feel better. I thought that the narrator wanted some kind of grounding or meaning in his life. We never see his family or what he does for a living, or he says that he goes to school, but it seems like he really has nothing going on.
Tone: The story is told from a first person perspective as the events occur. While I think that this style is effective at times, after some thinking, I think that the story might work better if told in the past tense and from a future perspective. As told in the present tense, the narrator is very limited in the things that he can talk about, because he has no perspective. If he were telling the story from a future point, e.g. “It was Friday and I didn’t feel well”, instead of “It’s a Friday and I don’t feel well”, it would give some temporal distance and an opportunity for reflection. As is, we are left with the narrator in a depressed state, and unable to communicate with us. What I really wanted to get from the story is how this particularly low time in the narrator’s life affected him. It doesn’t have to be the narrator 20 years later, living a happy life. It could easily be the narrator two days later, reflecting on how he is still in a rut. However, I think the nature of the story is such that some introspection on the narrator’s part is necessary and I think that the present-tense narration is acting as a barrier to that.
Details: I thought that the parts of the story that related to the past (the movie store, the movies he liked, his dad) were great, and were the parts of the story that really drew me in. In order for me to really care about this character’s life, I had to know who he was, where he came from and get some clue as to why he is in such a bad state, or how far he has fallen. A depressed character in a vacuum is neither sympathetic nor interesting. I was craving more details like those. I thought the part about the Hofbrau was well done also. Showing me the place where he habitually goes to feel comfortable did a lot for his character. What you have here is really good, and when you make this a final draft I think that you should just add more to flesh out the character
Michael:
The outer story is about how five guy friends cope with getting dumped and one ending up being left out. The inner story is about one guy’s inner search following his own break-up, going through a day-to-day routine while finding meaning in the normalcy.
I really liked the voice in this piece. Simply from that you can guess the protagonist’s age and quite a lot about his personality. His actions, his relationship with his friends, and his contemplations all feel very real to the reader. You do a great job of picking out small details that are actually quite interesting and tell us a lot about the speaker’s state of mind…like when Dave Matthews comes on in his headphones and that isn’t what he wants to listen to. There’s a really gritty modern quality to this story that I like a lot. It’s very simply through the speaker’s eyes.
You use a lot of summary in this piece, which eventually bothers me…I want to see things more, and I think you could easily pull this off while maintaining the speaker’s understated voice. It’s also so chronological in the way that it moves from the beginning to the end. I’d like so see you bump around a bit, go back in time to make the characters less 2-dimensional. Show us the girlfriends, what they meant to the characters. As it is, there doesn’t seem to be much of an emotional response at all to the break-ups other than drinking and being lazy. The speaker seems slightly bummed, but I want to know how much this girl meant to him, how much having someone meant to him. Is it hard being alone? I don’t feel enough from him or know him well enough to really get a handle on things. I don’t get enough of a sense of a closeness between the friends either in order to feel the weight of the ending. Give us more depth, more richness to the characters…are they funny, is one closer to the speaker than others, etc? This will help the reader get more into the story and inside the speaker’s head. The part when he talks about going to the movie store with his father and describes the couple that worked there is, in my opinion, the strongest point in the story. We get to know something more about the speaker and get a strong sense of the couple and how the speaker feels towards them. I want to understand why this is—where is the speaker’s father, and why is he having such an intimate memory on his way to the movie story. The nostalgia really gives the story more depth, and I think you could really do something powerful with the speaker’s yearning for his childhood as opposed to this slump that he currently is as a young adult. Also, take this kind of description and apply it to his friends. By building all of the characters up more, I think you will really be able to strengthen the ending and better express the meaning within the story.
Great job! I really enjoyed this draft.
-Brodie
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