Zach, The outer story is about a young boy who lies to his family, saying that he has killed adults. When he and his brother chase down an adult couple, Kevin is exposed as a liar and a non-killer. His mother then makes him feel so ashamed and guilty for lying, that he wanders the street and ends up killing his own father. The inner story is about Kevin’s conflicted emotions on killing and his desire to please and be loved.
I thought it was very bold of you to attempt such a Clockwork Orange-esque story. There are some vivid moments in your world. For example, I enjoyed when “Chad had to go buy a bunch of bright orange t-shirts to wear in public so people know that he’s still a minor” (3). I also liked that “Paul is cutting the legs off a spider with a pair of nail clippers” (4), that moment is so telling of this violent world and of Paul’s personality. It is in these smaller, quiet moments that I got the fullest sense of this bloody, child-oriented society.
Overall, however, I am not sure I am ever convinced that this scenario is plausible or realistic. It is a very compelling situation, to have children kill and adults live in fear of the younger generation. I was eager to discover things about this world, but often felt that the answers you gave seemed forced and overly unlikely. Would a government try to control overpopulation by killing adults? Why have children kill, and not the army or some secret police? Why are grown-ups so safe in their homes? If the government is so dark, twisted and evil that they are murdering to keep the population in control, wouldn’t it be easier to limit food supplies at the grocery store? Or bomb cities? Or enslave geriatrics? I don’t mean to scrutinize this obviously fictional world, but I think the story would be much more convincing if I felt that these boys, and Kevin in particular, were truly culturally forced to be killers.
I enjoyed Kevin a lot, and it was a breath of fresh air to see a character that would think and feel similarly to someone of this/our world. However, I found that I wanted to know so much more about Kevin. How old is he actually? He says “Mommy” and “Daddy” and I think he is the youngest (although I am unsure on that), yet he also has rather complex and mature thoughts. For example when he is talking to his father on the phone, he imagines his father, “standing above me, looking down and giving me that not-quite-smile of approval” (3), which seems like a very mature and self-reflective thing to say. Also, what is it about Kevin that makes him unlike his brothers? Why is he the only one that doesn’t like to kill? I would love to see Kevin wonder why he is cursed with this conscious, or ask why he his brothers are so much better than he is.
The ending of your story is very Oedipus-meets-Shakespeare. I like that he kills his father, and think there is some wonderful irony in this ending, but I wanted Kevin’s motive to be clearer. Does he kill his father simply because his mother was so ashamed? Does he want to kill his father because he knows his father will harm him for lying? Does he do it because he hates the system and is somehow getting back at the government? I want to more fully understand this key act. Good luck with revisions, Katie
The external story in “April” is about a society in which the children are supposed to kill all the adults they see for the month of April, and a young boy lies that he has killed many when he really can’t kill at all. To me, the internal story is about a boy needing his mother’s love, and frustrated with the bizarre world he lives in. He seems to be willing to do a lot to win his mother’s favor, lying at first, and eventually killing his father to be her favorite.
I love the concept of this story – really creepy and really interesting. I think you do a fantastic job of combining realistic/familiar aspects with the weird/off aspects of this world. The reader can feel the constant tension and fear of this world, and yet recognize things like the smell of “chlorine and scrambled eggs” or see that Mommy “removes the tea bag from her hot water and rests it on one of the napkins on her nightstand,” and understand that “Chad is doing very well on his SAT practice tests.” And when we get sentences at the very beginning like “Paul killed a stranger on Monday and he’s been walking the dog, so he’s the favorite right now” which instantly combine the typical (dog-walking) with the bizarre (killing), we know what to expect in this world. You set it up strongly and carry it on throughout.
Another great thing about this story is how human and aware the narrator is. He serves as an important counterpoint to these new policies, showing that this entire world isn’t guiltless and moral-less. This characterization is very complex and interesting. He is torn by his obsessive need to be his mother’s favorite and his need to follow his own morals. And yet, his “morals” aren’t conventional either – lying is acceptable, and it seems like his main motivations are to be seen as better than his brothers. His voice reveals him to be both very mature (quiet rebellion) and very immature (“Mommy” and “Daddy”).
While the basic concept of the story is so compelling, I think it needs to be clarified a little bit. I am left with a lot of questions of how the killing policy works, and why it is being used. Why would any adults go outside if they are going to be killed? Is the policy only told to children, so adults don’t know about it? Is the government also run by children then? How do the narrator’s parents know about the policy? Also, why are his parents so supportive of the policy? Wouldn’t it be both dangerous to themselves and also to all their friends? Why is the government using such drastic measures? What kind of brainwashing is in place to bring the children to do such heinous crimes?
Another thing that I wonder about is if this is supposed to be based on the Cultural Revolution in China, and if so, perhaps that should be more explicit. It feels very much like the Red Guard Movement in the late 1960’s to me: kids taking over the authority, killing adults and anyone against them, government policies to separate kids from their parents, extreme violence acceptable and even encouraged, etc. If this is what you’re trying to do, it might be mentioned as background or referenced at some point. If this isn’t what you’re trying to do, then never mind. But maybe it’s something to consider?
Overall, this was really excellent writing, and brave subject matter to tackle. Great job!
“April” is about a world in which “any grownup seen in public during the month of April is supposed to be killed on the spot” as part of a government-mandated population control program and the consequences of this program on one family. At the outer story level, it is about Kevin’s move from a false killer to a real one. At the inner story level, “April” is about pre-existing family pressure and sibling rivalry that is intensified by this government program. It is about the pressure to be a certain type of man (Daddy, for instance, except for the impotence part) and how it affects Kevin, who is very much a Mommy’s boy. “April” has traces of the Oedipus myth—a young son who kills his father to please his mother—and asks interesting questions about to what extent violence is already embedded in society and how difficult it would be to gain support for this program.
Really cool premise and quite possibly one of the best first lines ever: “It’s only Wednesday, but I’ve already killed two grownups this week, and Mommy says I’m her favorite son.” Your writing is very efficient and that first paragraph set up a lot of what I needed to know: the need to please his mother, the sibling rivalry, the characters of Chad and Paul in contrast to the narrator, and this counting down of days. As with your last story, your sense of detail is right on: “I can only run my tongue over my lips again and again, thinking they must be badly chapped” (3) and “He spits again, but this time it lands on his shoe” (6). Each concrete detail said much more than any abstraction could. I like how we come to learn about Kevin and how clear a picture of him I can get in my mind: pale, sickly, tall, skinny, and with a bad right eye. I also like how each of these things are physical manifestations of his character and I especially like how his eyesight comes into play with that perfect ending of yours; very nicely done.
I was very intrigued by this crazy world you dropped us in, and I would like to see more backstory to get a clearer sense of how things work. For instance, it seems like this policy has been going on for quite some time. The story doesn’t show us any sign of mass protest and both the mother and the father seemed to believe very strongly in the program. This made me wonder what Kevin has been doing for the April’s before this one. Is this really the first time he’s been caught in a lie? Is there maybe an age when children can kill and he just turned it? There are some interesting possibilities for deepening his already multi-dimensional character by just letting us know how he’s handled things in the past. Another thing that would be easy to put in that may also add facets to the father character is what does he do for a living? I found myself wondering if he did anything at all or if maybe he was involved in public relations for this program. I also wanted to know more about the mother, who seems ill; how does her sickness play into Kevin’s strong sense of having to please her. Is she always bed-ridden? And the last things are less important, but were still questions in my mind: is there government propaganda every where proclaiming the necessity of this form of population control? How many adults are carrying guns? Was the man near the ATM in the minority?
“April” is a very entertaining story and I think this is a strong draft. As with your last story, I really enjoyed the first-person narration and your precise writing in general. I’m interested in seeing how this story develops. Awesome job, Zach!
I read the outer story of “April” as being about a very bizarre alternate reality/distopia in which an overpopulation problem has led the government to the drastic decision to arm its children to hunt down any adult they can find and eliminate them. The family that we are watching is part of some sort of ultra-patriotic anti-population movement. The father is hiding out at work, so as not to get shot and the mother is staying at home, encouraging her children to kill. Our protagonist is afraid to take part in the killing and keeps his gun unloaded, when it comes time for him to kill, he is unable and gets cast out from the family. He kills his father in order to come back into the fold. The inner story was about the protagonist’s struggle with the world around him and the tension between his wanting to be part of the family, but not wanting to be a homicidal killer. He just wanted to get along.
I had a bit of a hard time buying this world, as I think that the rules were not laid out clearly enough. At times it seems very much like our own (Chad studies for the SAT, so we can assume the university system and other institutions are still up and running), but it also seems so completely foreign that it could not possibly operate anywhere like our world. I found myself wondering how anything could function when any adult seen out in public was to be shot. In a world in which students still take the SAT, why did the government institute a program requiring children to kill adults? It seems like a massively inefficient way to overcome an over population problem. The story never really deals with any of this and I think that it needs to.
The voice of the narrator also confused me. Writing from the perspective of a child is very difficult, because you need to create a character that knows less than you do, and keep yourself from interjecting too much. I felt like this was the case here. Although the narrator’s judgments about certain events, his opinions and (at times) his voice sound child-like. I often felt like the voice slipped into a more adult sounding tone quite often. He uses words like ‘defiantly’ and describes the gun as “cold and foreign” in my back pocket. This level of description and the language that he uses didn’t seem to mesh with statements like “I decide that I can definitely hear a trombone, although I’m not actually sure I know what one sounds like” and the fact that he often doesn’t seem to know what’s going on, for example, I didn’t think we were getting the whole story about his father’s work situation.
Overall, I thought it was a very cool distopia that you created, I think that a little more description of the world and clarification of the rules will render it much more powerful.
This story explains why April is indeed the cruelest month. The story takes place in the future or maybe in an alternate now. It is about a family with three boys. Reminds me of an even darker Bradbury in its idea. Chad Paul and Kevin have, as have all other kids been given the task of shooting grownups to control the population. Kevin, the narrator is more sensitive than his brothers and will not kill. He lies about it, creating fictitious kills and eventually is found out. This is a really cool premise for a story and really grabbed me on the first page. Throughout the story I am kept moving in a series of gradual perturbations and it flows really well. Some suggestions. I really think that first person is not the way to go with this story. It seems to create more problems than it solves. I don’t know how old Kevin is, but he seems pretty young. This creates all kinds of problems with voice. I really question his understanding of certain details of the world, and especially the way he relates them. For instance his brother tells him that dad is probably impotent. He gets this and other things that I don’t think a boy, even one who grows up in a world like this would get. His childish language competes with statements like “it was the government’s plan to remedy the overpopulation crisis” What the first person adds is the horror at having scenes of violence coolly described in the language of a child. I think that by shifting to a third person, you could preserve this element while getting rid of the other problems. The narrator could know a lot more and still relate things from the kids point of view through either means of free indirect discourse or even an “uncle charles principle” I also had some plot questions in reading the story. How long has it been this way and is there an end in sight? Does the News cover it? Is there any reward for killing? As it is now, the only reward for killing seems to be that your parents will love you more. This doesn’t seem like enough motivation to make fifth graders(or younger) into killers. What is the real consequence of Kevin not killing? Will the government come after him? Even if they do, can’t he just shoot them? Paul is worried when they have the man cornered. Why were the man and the wife even out of the house, just for cash? This didn’t seem pressing enough. Does this mean that some of the adults carry weapons, too? Is this allowed? Who runs the supermarket if adults can’t? Are there some kind of safety passes or Jackets or something worn by adults who have jobs necessary for society to function. For instance if some kid gets hurt, can he shoot the ambulance drivers who come to help him? The idea of being able to shoot any adult was too open for me. I thought that there could be more discussion of the rules of this. Shooting the dad at the end didn’t seem right and this is not just my societal reservations against patricide speaking. It takes this story in a whole different direction. I would rather the scene be longer and have Kevin focus more on the act of killing an adult (not his dad) I don’t believe he will do it as calmly and detachedly as he does on this last page. I wanted to see him struggle with pulling the trigger and actually have to come to terms with taking a life.
Great idea for a story. I would love to see the final draft. Thank You. -Michael
The outer story is about a boy, Kevin, who lives in a world where the children have to kill any adults that leave their homes in order to control overpopulation. The boy, however, has never been able to kill anyone and lies to his family (who apparently supports the system). His family discovers the truth, and he is forced to go out and kill someone or else he’ll lose his family. In the end, Kevin ends up shooting his father, who has risked his life driving to come talk to him about his “not-killing”. The inner story is very linked to the outer story – Kevin is a boy trapped in this inhumane world who is unable to accept it. His entire family is brainwashed, and when his mother threatens to disown him unless he kills, you see him faced with an incredible dilemma. Him killing his father in the end is wonderfully ironic in that you see the boy obey his family’s wishes yet destroy his family at the same time. Thus, his ironic actions counter his family’s contradictory beliefs. It’s a great idea for a story.
This story is so wonderfully creepy and intriguing and totally creative. The way he calls his parents Mommy and Daddy makes my skin crawl a little in this world that has gone so utterly wrong. His voice is also so terribly innocent in the midst of all of this blackness and killing, which really makes the story interesting. You also do a great job of setting up the characters in his family and their relationships with Kevin. His mom is so Stepford-wife-meets-The-Others; she’s really wonderful in a horrible sort of way. And I love what you did with his dad’s voice on the phone and the “k’s”.
Although this is obviously a completely fantastical world, I do find it difficult to believe that it could actually exist. Wouldn’t the government come up with a much more efficient way to solve overpopulation, using soldiers or something other than children running around with guns? And if the parents can’t leave their homes, who runs the world? It seems like a sloppy system. How do businesses survive? Are they completely run by children? I feel like a lot of things need more explanation. Also, I’m a little confused as to why this is happening in April…is it every April that this happens? And does it all just stop in May and the parents can come out again, and everything’s fine? It’s all a bit vague. The parents’ attitudes towards the whole thing is also strange, and I want to understand more where this brainwashing is coming from. I can understand why the children would be brainwashed – in school or something – but how can the parents be proud of their children murdering their own generation? It’s so twisted and wonderful, but I also think it needs more background in order for it to be believable. I think the ending is great, but you could set up the irony a bit more – I didn’t know whether he shot his father out of crazed delirium or actually out of his own will. I took it that he is angry at the system and his family and is thus killing his father in order to make a point. But he could also be actually trying to impress his family. Show us more where he’s coming from and it will be more powerful.
Sorry for the lateness of these posts all--I didn't have access to my computer today.
Zach, The outer story of this piece concerns a dystopian society in which kids are allowed to kill adults during the month of April. Kevin is part of a family that seems especially interested in this “sport.” The inner story is about Kevin’s inner struggle to deal with this world that he is disgusted by and his family which is pushing him toward murder. I think Kevin simultaneously wants approval from his family and to avoid committing murder, which is pretty tough in this world.
I thought this piece had a great tone, which fit well with the dystopian nature of the story. I think in general the world you’ve created is quite eerie and disturbing. The characters did a good job of bringing out this world as well—I liked how Chad and Paul served as counterpoints to one another, but were still unmistakably part of this twisted world. The mother character was also nice and disturbing: very encouraging of her children, but in a very sick way. The father was also a great character, and I liked how you kept him physically distant from the rest of the family for the majority of the piece. His unseen presence worked well, and the detail about his tendency to enunciate hard Ks did a good job of bringing his character to life.
I thought your story was quite well paced: I liked the opening and how you sort of threw us right into the middle of the world. You did a good job handling the exposition; you gave us just enough to get a sense of this world, but not so much that it overwhelmed the story. There was a good deal of tension in this story, and I liked how it ratcheted up as it progressed. The conflict was interesting, and I liked the inner struggle Kevin experienced along with the external danger of this world. I was anxious to see how things turned out, which is always good, and I thought the conclusion of the story worked quite well.
In general, I really liked this weird dystopian alternate reality, and for the most part I bought it, although I did have some suggestions. If we accept that any adults outside in April are fair game, I would imagine that they, like the man at the end of the story, would usually be armed and willing to fight back when push came to shove. However, I didn’t get the sense of the threat of bodily harm to these boys when they were out killing. I would think that the victims would usually shoot back, and so this sport would actually be a high risk business. I think by emphasizing this physicical danger, the tension in the story would be ratcheted up. It might also be interesting to run into some other gangs of roving killers. Do they cooperate? Is there a threat of violence from other kids in this fairly lawless situation? Are kids in general as gung-ho about this as Kevin’s family is? By giving us some characters from outside the family, the world would open up a bit and become more fully realized.
Although I liked Kevin’s conflict in the story, I would have liked to have seen it elaborated upon a bit more. Where exactly is he getting the idea that killing is wrong? His whole family seems to support it pretty enthusiastically. Are there some people in this world who are against the whole system? I also wondered if this was Kevin’s first time doing this. It would seem so, but I’m not sure. I also wanted to see more of Chad. Paul is pretty straightforward, but I wanted to see how a guy liked Chad, who is apparently very intelligent and “doesn’t like to perpetuate violence” justifies what he does to himself. Maybe whatever his rationale is further complicates Paul’s non-killing stance.
April is chilling. I read the outer story to be about a government that has ordered children to shoot adults who appear in public in April, in an effort to curb over population. I read the inner story to be about Kevin being forced to do something he doesn’t want to so that he can remain a part of his family.
The voice you chose is disarming and effective. You had me hooked at the first line—the killings, clearly told from a child’s point of view, had a surreal quality to them. The first-person works especially well because it lets you show us how Kevin sees the world he’s in. The story seemed to be mainly about Kevin making sense of the strange and twisted world.
There was authority in your voice, and I believed that the world’s rules could be as they were. Still, the way Mommy, Daddy, and Kevin fit into the world didn’t feel completely real to me. Why Mommy and Daddy feel as strongly as they do, what value they see in the killings is hard to understand. I think we need to see more of the world in order to understand where they are coming from.
More importantly though, I wanted to understand their (and Chad’s and Paul’s) emotional calm. The killings don’t seem to rattle them too much. Mom and Dad seem to be okay that their sons are shooting fellow community members. Surely there are some people whom they would feel bad about having been shot? (At the end of the story I found myself wondering how Mommy will feel about Kevin’s shooting—it’s hard to tell if she’ll be proud or upset.) And from the sons’ point of view, this seems too normal—actually seeing bullets in brains, blood, all sorts of Kevin Fagan detail surely must have startled them, at least the first couple times?
They do seem to be twisted—clipping legs off spiders—but not as traumatized as I would expect. I think this tension could especially be developed in Kevin, because the story is told from his POV and because he seems to be a pacifist at heart.
I really admired your use of detail in this draft. There were fantastic images—from Mommy’s tea bag and Daddy’s office of chlorine and scrambled eggs. One thing that you do in all of your stories, which I like a lot, is the use of recurring detail. In this piece, details like Kevin’s bad sight, the indent in his butt cheek, made the entire thing feel whole—when these details showed up again I was convinced that the world was as you described it.
As I read, the question I kept asking myself was “what disaster will come of Kevin’s killing?” Better understanding what Daddy’s death means to Kevin, the family, and the world would have added a lot more punch for me. That said, thanks for a fascinating read,
The outer story is about a boy, Kevin, and his brothers, Paul and Chad, who live in a world where kids are supposed to kill adults in order to stem overpopulation. The mother supports the kids, and the father pushes them to kill, but he has holed himself up at work for a month—possibly out of a fear of getting shot or because he’s having an affair. Kevin, the narrator, cannot kill—so he lies to his parents and his brothers about having killed certain adults. At the end, an adults is about to shoot Paul, and Paul yells at Kevin to shoot the man—but Kevin doesn’t have any bullets in his gun, so he’s helpless. The inner story is about Kevin’s desire to win his parents’ and brothers’ approval, but also, at the same time, the guilt he feels over lying (“Mommy says I’m brave and Daddy says I’m just like him, and I’m glad they don’t know they’re wrong”).
I think your characterization of the dad is really great—he struck me as very evil and sadistic. I loved the way he talked—with the emphasis on the “k” sounds.
I also think there’s a very interesting dynamic between the brothers and their desire to win affection as the “favorite”—it’s both very realistic and unrealistic at the same time, and I think this adds to the strange dimension of the world that they’re inhabiting. It’s unrealistic in that you don’t normally outwardly admit that brothers are actively trying to win affection, or that the parents have rankings. However, it’s realistic in that inwardly that’s often the case, that siblings have a sort of unspoken rivalry to please the parents, who either approve or disapprove of their children’s actions.
I think the world you create is very unique and scary. One thing that confused me was the part about Chad having to wear bright orange t-shirts so people know he’s still a minor. Does this mean that when kids reach a certain age, they’ll be killed? If that’s the case, then doesn’t that defeat the purpose of kids acting as “the future” if they can’t even do anything with their lives once they’ve reached a certain age? Just something I was a bit confused about. There are also some situations in the story that just seem confusing and irrational—like the fact that parents are safe in their homes, but can’t go outside; furthermore, “overpopulation” doesn’t strike me as a good enough reason to have such a world imbued with fear, where kids are constantly trying to kill adults. There seem to be more viable ways to control this population problem—if this is government sponsored, what about mass killings? Also there’s not enough at stake in my mind to have kids readily trying to kill as many adults as possible. It’s not as if in killing other adults, their parents are safer; in fact the opposite is true (they could kill the parents of kids who then want to exact revenge). This also made me wonder why the father was so intent on his children killing—it’s not as if he’s any safer.
I also wanted to know why Kevin was so morally against killing people—especially in this world where it seems to be the norm. I think it would be great if you could illustrate a specific moment in Kevin’s life where he realized that he couldn’t kill anymore; maybe something happened where he witnessed a parent get killed in front of his or her son…something along those lines, just a suggestion.
In the end I thought this was a great, unique piece of writing. Good luck with your revisions.
Hey Zach, The outer story is about a boy living in a world where grown-ups are to be shot if they go outside in April. He lies about having killed some adults to gain favor with his parents, but they find out and after his mother forces him out until he kills an adult he goes on to kill his own father. Oh sweet irony! The inner story is about the boy's desire to not kill (that was poorly worded on my part) and the building of his conflicting feelings with those of his family yet his desire to belong and live up to their expectations.
I found the world of the story to be utterly fascinating- it kept a great balance of this disgusting brutality and compelling emotion. I found myself wanting to know more about the environment and its characters, even though so much of it was so repulsive in many ways. It found it to be really chilling, and that made all of the emotional turns you took later on all the more effective.
I think the issues I had with the story are very closely tied with the parts that I really, really liked. First, Kevin: I loved the character, that he was just this little boy who couldn't stand to murder in a world that demanded it, and found the sort of acceptance at the same time as he found a way to rebel against it (killing his father). But I wanted to see more emotion with him. I felt like I had to connect the dots a bit with his distaste with the whole killing scenario- I obviously understand that he doesn't want to kill, but I wanted to see more about him so I could understand possibly why he's the one boy who doesn't want to kill while his brothers could. Is it just because he's the youngest, and therefore more sympathetic? Or have external influences made him unique somehow? In the same way, I liked how Chad gave him a sort of sympathetic connection to the world around him, but I wanted to see more of this. Chad obviously knows Kevin hasn't actually been killing, but why does he not tell anyone? Is he protecting Kevin because he understands his aversion to killing, but has been able to force himself to? Or is it just because he's looking out for his younger bro? And when I figured out that Kevin was gonna kill his dad it created just an awesome tension that built to the end, but I thought it could have been just so much more of an emotional moment. The same thing goes with the killing of the man from the couple at the ATM, and the Dad's staying "at work"- I wish I could see more of the motivations and events revolving around these events, because it seems like there are so many compelling and complex things going on under the surface and they just need a small nudge to really explode in the story.
I guess I had a bit of the problem with the world, as much as I liked it, as it didn't seem an entirely plausible endpoint for our world as it is, and at times I saw too much evidence towards it being a future of the world I'm in right now. As its own world, however, I could totally accept it (and would love to do so), so I think maybe if you could distance it a bit more from our real world than I wouldn't have been left to push aside a couple confusions I had. I really loved (for lack of a better word) the world you created in the story, and I think it could really work with a couple tweaks. I could live with the kids being enlisted to kill and all as long as I didn't think it was a direct descendant of the real world as it is now.
I feel this story to be really awesome- if you just go a little further with what's already there, it can really be one of those effective, compelling, even gut-wrenching stories that really stays with you. It's a really difficult kind of story to pull off (the sort of story I love to hate to experience reading, if that makes sense), and I think you do so swimmingly. Awesome job!
The outer story is about a boy living in a world of such overpopulation that children are allowed to kill adults. This boy desperately wants to please his family, but he struggles to even put bullets in his gun. The inner story seems somewhat Oedipal. The boy is obsessed with his mother and being her favorite, and by ultimately killing his father, feels he will win over his mother’s complete affection. I feel like the latter could be brought out more in the piece. It’s difficult, since the narrating perspective is a young child, but I was yearning for more insight, more psyche. A lot of the action in this piece reads like a play-by-play (chad did this then mommy did this, etc.) Even the dialogue is imbedded into the exposition. While you have an interesting set of characters and premise, the voice does get a little overwhelming. This might be due to its repetition of certain vocabulary.
While reading this piece, I kept wondering what else was going on in this world. By just introducing this one facet, that children can kill adults, I understand the world only as it feeds into the boy’s primary problem. As a result, it looks a little bit like a device. I think if you included other details of the world, it wouldn’t have this same effect. Right now, it feels as though you created this problem in the story’s reality so that the character would have a problem emotionally.
I wonder what would happen if you started your story with the ending. I find the Oedipal undertones of this to be the more interesting parts of the piece, and I think the overpopulation → children killing adults scenario would be more organically introduced if the first scene were a child killing his own father.
Lastly, I felt some pulling away from the narrator’s voice in this piece would help sustain it. I wanted to see more scene and I also felt the narrator’s insights bordered on melodramatic. I’m not saying the reasoning behind them is not there, I just don’t see it. I want to come to the conclusions the narrator makes about himself without necessarily having to be told by the narrator. For example, on the bottom of page 4, “I am a liar and I can’t help it, and I know that liars deserve to suffer.” Where does this come from? In this world, is lying treated this severely? Or, conversely, is this very much only a problem of the narrator?
11 comments:
Zach,
The outer story is about a young boy who lies to his family, saying that he has killed adults. When he and his brother chase down an adult couple, Kevin is exposed as a liar and a non-killer. His mother then makes him feel so ashamed and guilty for lying, that he wanders the street and ends up killing his own father. The inner story is about Kevin’s conflicted emotions on killing and his desire to please and be loved.
I thought it was very bold of you to attempt such a Clockwork Orange-esque story. There are some vivid moments in your world. For example, I enjoyed when “Chad had to go buy a bunch of bright orange t-shirts to wear in public so people know that he’s still a minor” (3). I also liked that “Paul is cutting the legs off a spider with a pair of nail clippers” (4), that moment is so telling of this violent world and of Paul’s personality. It is in these smaller, quiet moments that I got the fullest sense of this bloody, child-oriented society.
Overall, however, I am not sure I am ever convinced that this scenario is plausible or realistic. It is a very compelling situation, to have children kill and adults live in fear of the younger generation. I was eager to discover things about this world, but often felt that the answers you gave seemed forced and overly unlikely. Would a government try to control overpopulation by killing adults? Why have children kill, and not the army or some secret police? Why are grown-ups so safe in their homes? If the government is so dark, twisted and evil that they are murdering to keep the population in control, wouldn’t it be easier to limit food supplies at the grocery store? Or bomb cities? Or enslave geriatrics? I don’t mean to scrutinize this obviously fictional world, but I think the story would be much more convincing if I felt that these boys, and Kevin in particular, were truly culturally forced to be killers.
I enjoyed Kevin a lot, and it was a breath of fresh air to see a character that would think and feel similarly to someone of this/our world. However, I found that I wanted to know so much more about Kevin. How old is he actually? He says “Mommy” and “Daddy” and I think he is the youngest (although I am unsure on that), yet he also has rather complex and mature thoughts. For example when he is talking to his father on the phone, he imagines his father, “standing above me, looking down and giving me that not-quite-smile of approval” (3), which seems like a very mature and self-reflective thing to say. Also, what is it about Kevin that makes him unlike his brothers? Why is he the only one that doesn’t like to kill? I would love to see Kevin wonder why he is cursed with this conscious, or ask why he his brothers are so much better than he is.
The ending of your story is very Oedipus-meets-Shakespeare. I like that he kills his father, and think there is some wonderful irony in this ending, but I wanted Kevin’s motive to be clearer. Does he kill his father simply because his mother was so ashamed? Does he want to kill his father because he knows his father will harm him for lying? Does he do it because he hates the system and is somehow getting back at the government? I want to more fully understand this key act.
Good luck with revisions,
Katie
Dear Zach,
The external story in “April” is about a society in which the children are supposed to kill all the adults they see for the month of April, and a young boy lies that he has killed many when he really can’t kill at all. To me, the internal story is about a boy needing his mother’s love, and frustrated with the bizarre world he lives in. He seems to be willing to do a lot to win his mother’s favor, lying at first, and eventually killing his father to be her favorite.
I love the concept of this story – really creepy and really interesting. I think you do a fantastic job of combining realistic/familiar aspects with the weird/off aspects of this world. The reader can feel the constant tension and fear of this world, and yet recognize things like the smell of “chlorine and scrambled eggs” or see that Mommy “removes the tea bag from her hot water and rests it on one of the napkins on her nightstand,” and understand that “Chad is doing very well on his SAT practice tests.” And when we get sentences at the very beginning like “Paul killed a stranger on Monday and he’s been walking the dog, so he’s the favorite right now” which instantly combine the typical (dog-walking) with the bizarre (killing), we know what to expect in this world. You set it up strongly and carry it on throughout.
Another great thing about this story is how human and aware the narrator is. He serves as an important counterpoint to these new policies, showing that this entire world isn’t guiltless and moral-less. This characterization is very complex and interesting. He is torn by his obsessive need to be his mother’s favorite and his need to follow his own morals. And yet, his “morals” aren’t conventional either – lying is acceptable, and it seems like his main motivations are to be seen as better than his brothers. His voice reveals him to be both very mature (quiet rebellion) and very immature (“Mommy” and “Daddy”).
While the basic concept of the story is so compelling, I think it needs to be clarified a little bit. I am left with a lot of questions of how the killing policy works, and why it is being used. Why would any adults go outside if they are going to be killed? Is the policy only told to children, so adults don’t know about it? Is the government also run by children then? How do the narrator’s parents know about the policy? Also, why are his parents so supportive of the policy? Wouldn’t it be both dangerous to themselves and also to all their friends? Why is the government using such drastic measures? What kind of brainwashing is in place to bring the children to do such heinous crimes?
Another thing that I wonder about is if this is supposed to be based on the Cultural Revolution in China, and if so, perhaps that should be more explicit. It feels very much like the Red Guard Movement in the late 1960’s to me: kids taking over the authority, killing adults and anyone against them, government policies to separate kids from their parents, extreme violence acceptable and even encouraged, etc. If this is what you’re trying to do, it might be mentioned as background or referenced at some point. If this isn’t what you’re trying to do, then never mind. But maybe it’s something to consider?
Overall, this was really excellent writing, and brave subject matter to tackle. Great job!
-Annie Jonas
Dear Zach,
“April” is about a world in which “any grownup seen in public during the month of April is supposed to be killed on the spot” as part of a government-mandated population control program and the consequences of this program on one family. At the outer story level, it is about Kevin’s move from a false killer to a real one. At the inner story level, “April” is about pre-existing family pressure and sibling rivalry that is intensified by this government program. It is about the pressure to be a certain type of man (Daddy, for instance, except for the impotence part) and how it affects Kevin, who is very much a Mommy’s boy. “April” has traces of the Oedipus myth—a young son who kills his father to please his mother—and asks interesting questions about to what extent violence is already embedded in society and how difficult it would be to gain support for this program.
Really cool premise and quite possibly one of the best first lines ever: “It’s only Wednesday, but I’ve already killed two grownups this week, and Mommy says I’m her favorite son.” Your writing is very efficient and that first paragraph set up a lot of what I needed to know: the need to please his mother, the sibling rivalry, the characters of Chad and Paul in contrast to the narrator, and this counting down of days. As with your last story, your sense of detail is right on: “I can only run my tongue over my lips again and again, thinking they must be badly chapped” (3) and “He spits again, but this time it lands on his shoe” (6). Each concrete detail said much more than any abstraction could. I like how we come to learn about Kevin and how clear a picture of him I can get in my mind: pale, sickly, tall, skinny, and with a bad right eye. I also like how each of these things are physical manifestations of his character and I especially like how his eyesight comes into play with that perfect ending of yours; very nicely done.
I was very intrigued by this crazy world you dropped us in, and I would like to see more backstory to get a clearer sense of how things work. For instance, it seems like this policy has been going on for quite some time. The story doesn’t show us any sign of mass protest and both the mother and the father seemed to believe very strongly in the program. This made me wonder what Kevin has been doing for the April’s before this one. Is this really the first time he’s been caught in a lie? Is there maybe an age when children can kill and he just turned it? There are some interesting possibilities for deepening his already multi-dimensional character by just letting us know how he’s handled things in the past. Another thing that would be easy to put in that may also add facets to the father character is what does he do for a living? I found myself wondering if he did anything at all or if maybe he was involved in public relations for this program. I also wanted to know more about the mother, who seems ill; how does her sickness play into Kevin’s strong sense of having to please her. Is she always bed-ridden? And the last things are less important, but were still questions in my mind: is there government propaganda every where proclaiming the necessity of this form of population control? How many adults are carrying guns? Was the man near the ATM in the minority?
“April” is a very entertaining story and I think this is a strong draft. As with your last story, I really enjoyed the first-person narration and your precise writing in general. I’m interested in seeing how this story develops. Awesome job, Zach!
Jessamyn
Zach,
I read the outer story of “April” as being about a very bizarre alternate reality/distopia in which an overpopulation problem has led the government to the drastic decision to arm its children to hunt down any adult they can find and eliminate them. The family that we are watching is part of some sort of ultra-patriotic anti-population movement. The father is hiding out at work, so as not to get shot and the mother is staying at home, encouraging her children to kill. Our protagonist is afraid to take part in the killing and keeps his gun unloaded, when it comes time for him to kill, he is unable and gets cast out from the family. He kills his father in order to come back into the fold. The inner story was about the protagonist’s struggle with the world around him and the tension between his wanting to be part of the family, but not wanting to be a homicidal killer. He just wanted to get along.
I had a bit of a hard time buying this world, as I think that the rules were not laid out clearly enough. At times it seems very much like our own (Chad studies for the SAT, so we can assume the university system and other institutions are still up and running), but it also seems so completely foreign that it could not possibly operate anywhere like our world. I found myself wondering how anything could function when any adult seen out in public was to be shot. In a world in which students still take the SAT, why did the government institute a program requiring children to kill adults? It seems like a massively inefficient way to overcome an over population problem. The story never really deals with any of this and I think that it needs to.
The voice of the narrator also confused me. Writing from the perspective of a child is very difficult, because you need to create a character that knows less than you do, and keep yourself from interjecting too much. I felt like this was the case here. Although the narrator’s judgments about certain events, his opinions and (at times) his voice sound child-like. I often felt like the voice slipped into a more adult sounding tone quite often. He uses words like ‘defiantly’ and describes the gun as “cold and foreign” in my back pocket. This level of description and the language that he uses didn’t seem to mesh with statements like “I decide that I can definitely hear a trombone, although I’m not actually sure I know what one sounds like” and the fact that he often doesn’t seem to know what’s going on, for example, I didn’t think we were getting the whole story about his father’s work situation.
Overall, I thought it was a very cool distopia that you created, I think that a little more description of the world and clarification of the rules will render it much more powerful.
Zach,
This story explains why April is indeed the cruelest month. The story takes place in the future or maybe in an alternate now. It is about a family with three boys. Reminds me of an even darker Bradbury in its idea. Chad Paul and Kevin have, as have all other kids been given the task of shooting grownups to control the population. Kevin, the narrator is more sensitive than his brothers and will not kill. He lies about it, creating fictitious kills and eventually is found out.
This is a really cool premise for a story and really grabbed me on the first page. Throughout the story I am kept moving in a series of gradual perturbations and it flows really well. Some suggestions.
I really think that first person is not the way to go with this story. It seems to create more problems than it solves. I don’t know how old Kevin is, but he seems pretty young. This creates all kinds of problems with voice. I really question his understanding of certain details of the world, and especially the way he relates them. For instance his brother tells him that dad is probably impotent. He gets this and other things that I don’t think a boy, even one who grows up in a world like this would get. His childish language competes with statements like “it was the government’s plan to remedy the overpopulation crisis” What the first person adds is the horror at having scenes of violence coolly described in the language of a child. I think that by shifting to a third person, you could preserve this element while getting rid of the other problems. The narrator could know a lot more and still relate things from the kids point of view through either means of free indirect discourse or even an “uncle charles principle”
I also had some plot questions in reading the story. How long has it been this way and is there an end in sight? Does the News cover it? Is there any reward for killing? As it is now, the only reward for killing seems to be that your parents will love you more. This doesn’t seem like enough motivation to make fifth graders(or younger) into killers. What is the real consequence of Kevin not killing? Will the government come after him? Even if they do, can’t he just shoot them?
Paul is worried when they have the man cornered. Why were the man and the wife even out of the house, just for cash? This didn’t seem pressing enough. Does this mean that some of the adults carry weapons, too? Is this allowed? Who runs the supermarket if adults can’t? Are there some kind of safety passes or Jackets or something worn by adults who have jobs necessary for society to function. For instance if some kid gets hurt, can he shoot the ambulance drivers who come to help him? The idea of being able to shoot any adult was too open for me. I thought that there could be more discussion of the rules of this.
Shooting the dad at the end didn’t seem right and this is not just my societal reservations against patricide speaking. It takes this story in a whole different direction. I would rather the scene be longer and have Kevin focus more on the act of killing an adult (not his dad) I don’t believe he will do it as calmly and detachedly as he does on this last page. I wanted to see him struggle with pulling the trigger and actually have to come to terms with taking a life.
Great idea for a story. I would love to see the final draft. Thank You.
-Michael
Zach:
The outer story is about a boy, Kevin, who lives in a world where the children have to kill any adults that leave their homes in order to control overpopulation. The boy, however, has never been able to kill anyone and lies to his family (who apparently supports the system). His family discovers the truth, and he is forced to go out and kill someone or else he’ll lose his family. In the end, Kevin ends up shooting his father, who has risked his life driving to come talk to him about his “not-killing”. The inner story is very linked to the outer story – Kevin is a boy trapped in this inhumane world who is unable to accept it. His entire family is brainwashed, and when his mother threatens to disown him unless he kills, you see him faced with an incredible dilemma. Him killing his father in the end is wonderfully ironic in that you see the boy obey his family’s wishes yet destroy his family at the same time. Thus, his ironic actions counter his family’s contradictory beliefs. It’s a great idea for a story.
This story is so wonderfully creepy and intriguing and totally creative. The way he calls his parents Mommy and Daddy makes my skin crawl a little in this world that has gone so utterly wrong. His voice is also so terribly innocent in the midst of all of this blackness and killing, which really makes the story interesting. You also do a great job of setting up the characters in his family and their relationships with Kevin. His mom is so Stepford-wife-meets-The-Others; she’s really wonderful in a horrible sort of way. And I love what you did with his dad’s voice on the phone and the “k’s”.
Although this is obviously a completely fantastical world, I do find it difficult to believe that it could actually exist. Wouldn’t the government come up with a much more efficient way to solve overpopulation, using soldiers or something other than children running around with guns? And if the parents can’t leave their homes, who runs the world? It seems like a sloppy system. How do businesses survive? Are they completely run by children? I feel like a lot of things need more explanation. Also, I’m a little confused as to why this is happening in April…is it every April that this happens? And does it all just stop in May and the parents can come out again, and everything’s fine? It’s all a bit vague. The parents’ attitudes towards the whole thing is also strange, and I want to understand more where this brainwashing is coming from. I can understand why the children would be brainwashed – in school or something – but how can the parents be proud of their children murdering their own generation? It’s so twisted and wonderful, but I also think it needs more background in order for it to be believable. I think the ending is great, but you could set up the irony a bit more – I didn’t know whether he shot his father out of crazed delirium or actually out of his own will. I took it that he is angry at the system and his family and is thus killing his father in order to make a point. But he could also be actually trying to impress his family. Show us more where he’s coming from and it will be more powerful.
Fantastic and wonderfully creative first draft.
-Brodie
Sorry for the lateness of these posts all--I didn't have access to my computer today.
Zach,
The outer story of this piece concerns a dystopian society in which kids are allowed to kill adults during the month of April. Kevin is part of a family that seems especially interested in this “sport.” The inner story is about Kevin’s inner struggle to deal with this world that he is disgusted by and his family which is pushing him toward murder. I think Kevin simultaneously wants approval from his family and to avoid committing murder, which is pretty tough in this world.
I thought this piece had a great tone, which fit well with the dystopian nature of the story. I think in general the world you’ve created is quite eerie and disturbing. The characters did a good job of bringing out this world as well—I liked how Chad and Paul served as counterpoints to one another, but were still unmistakably part of this twisted world. The mother character was also nice and disturbing: very encouraging of her children, but in a very sick way. The father was also a great character, and I liked how you kept him physically distant from the rest of the family for the majority of the piece. His unseen presence worked well, and the detail about his tendency to enunciate hard Ks did a good job of bringing his character to life.
I thought your story was quite well paced: I liked the opening and how you sort of threw us right into the middle of the world. You did a good job handling the exposition; you gave us just enough to get a sense of this world, but not so much that it overwhelmed the story. There was a good deal of tension in this story, and I liked how it ratcheted up as it progressed. The conflict was interesting, and I liked the inner struggle Kevin experienced along with the external danger of this world. I was anxious to see how things turned out, which is always good, and I thought the conclusion of the story worked quite well.
In general, I really liked this weird dystopian alternate reality, and for the most part I bought it, although I did have some suggestions. If we accept that any adults outside in April are fair game, I would imagine that they, like the man at the end of the story, would usually be armed and willing to fight back when push came to shove. However, I didn’t get the sense of the threat of bodily harm to these boys when they were out killing. I would think that the victims would usually shoot back, and so this sport would actually be a high risk business. I think by emphasizing this physicical danger, the tension in the story would be ratcheted up. It might also be interesting to run into some other gangs of roving killers. Do they cooperate? Is there a threat of violence from other kids in this fairly lawless situation? Are kids in general as gung-ho about this as Kevin’s family is? By giving us some characters from outside the family, the world would open up a bit and become more fully realized.
Although I liked Kevin’s conflict in the story, I would have liked to have seen it elaborated upon a bit more. Where exactly is he getting the idea that killing is wrong? His whole family seems to support it pretty enthusiastically. Are there some people in this world who are against the whole system? I also wondered if this was Kevin’s first time doing this. It would seem so, but I’m not sure. I also wanted to see more of Chad. Paul is pretty straightforward, but I wanted to see how a guy liked Chad, who is apparently very intelligent and “doesn’t like to perpetuate violence” justifies what he does to himself. Maybe whatever his rationale is further complicates Paul’s non-killing stance.
Really intriguing story,
Michael
Dear Zach,
April is chilling. I read the outer story to be about a government that has ordered children to shoot adults who appear in public in April, in an effort to curb over population. I read the inner story to be about Kevin being forced to do something he doesn’t want to so that he can remain a part of his family.
The voice you chose is disarming and effective. You had me hooked at the first line—the killings, clearly told from a child’s point of view, had a surreal quality to them. The first-person works especially well because it lets you show us how Kevin sees the world he’s in. The story seemed to be mainly about Kevin making sense of the strange and twisted world.
There was authority in your voice, and I believed that the world’s rules could be as they were. Still, the way Mommy, Daddy, and Kevin fit into the world didn’t feel completely real to me. Why Mommy and Daddy feel as strongly as they do, what value they see in the killings is hard to understand. I think we need to see more of the world in order to understand where they are coming from.
More importantly though, I wanted to understand their (and Chad’s and Paul’s) emotional calm. The killings don’t seem to rattle them too much. Mom and Dad seem to be okay that their sons are shooting fellow community members. Surely there are some people whom they would feel bad about having been shot? (At the end of the story I found myself wondering how Mommy will feel about Kevin’s shooting—it’s hard to tell if she’ll be proud or upset.) And from the sons’ point of view, this seems too normal—actually seeing bullets in brains, blood, all sorts of Kevin Fagan detail surely must have startled them, at least the first couple times?
They do seem to be twisted—clipping legs off spiders—but not as traumatized as I would expect. I think this tension could especially be developed in Kevin, because the story is told from his POV and because he seems to be a pacifist at heart.
I really admired your use of detail in this draft. There were fantastic images—from Mommy’s tea bag and Daddy’s office of chlorine and scrambled eggs. One thing that you do in all of your stories, which I like a lot, is the use of recurring detail. In this piece, details like Kevin’s bad sight, the indent in his butt cheek, made the entire thing feel whole—when these details showed up again I was convinced that the world was as you described it.
As I read, the question I kept asking myself was “what disaster will come of Kevin’s killing?” Better understanding what Daddy’s death means to Kevin, the family, and the world would have added a lot more punch for me. That said, thanks for a fascinating read,
James
Zach,
The outer story is about a boy, Kevin, and his brothers, Paul and Chad, who live in a world where kids are supposed to kill adults in order to stem overpopulation. The mother supports the kids, and the father pushes them to kill, but he has holed himself up at work for a month—possibly out of a fear of getting shot or because he’s having an affair. Kevin, the narrator, cannot kill—so he lies to his parents and his brothers about having killed certain adults. At the end, an adults is about to shoot Paul, and Paul yells at Kevin to shoot the man—but Kevin doesn’t have any bullets in his gun, so he’s helpless. The inner story is about Kevin’s desire to win his parents’ and brothers’ approval, but also, at the same time, the guilt he feels over lying (“Mommy says I’m brave and Daddy says I’m just like him, and I’m glad they don’t know they’re wrong”).
I think your characterization of the dad is really great—he struck me as very evil and sadistic. I loved the way he talked—with the emphasis on the “k” sounds.
I also think there’s a very interesting dynamic between the brothers and their desire to win affection as the “favorite”—it’s both very realistic and unrealistic at the same time, and I think this adds to the strange dimension of the world that they’re inhabiting. It’s unrealistic in that you don’t normally outwardly admit that brothers are actively trying to win affection, or that the parents have rankings. However, it’s realistic in that inwardly that’s often the case, that siblings have a sort of unspoken rivalry to please the parents, who either approve or disapprove of their children’s actions.
I think the world you create is very unique and scary. One thing that confused me was the part about Chad having to wear bright orange t-shirts so people know he’s still a minor. Does this mean that when kids reach a certain age, they’ll be killed? If that’s the case, then doesn’t that defeat the purpose of kids acting as “the future” if they can’t even do anything with their lives once they’ve reached a certain age? Just something I was a bit confused about. There are also some situations in the story that just seem confusing and irrational—like the fact that parents are safe in their homes, but can’t go outside; furthermore, “overpopulation” doesn’t strike me as a good enough reason to have such a world imbued with fear, where kids are constantly trying to kill adults. There seem to be more viable ways to control this population problem—if this is government sponsored, what about mass killings? Also there’s not enough at stake in my mind to have kids readily trying to kill as many adults as possible. It’s not as if in killing other adults, their parents are safer; in fact the opposite is true (they could kill the parents of kids who then want to exact revenge). This also made me wonder why the father was so intent on his children killing—it’s not as if he’s any safer.
I also wanted to know why Kevin was so morally against killing people—especially in this world where it seems to be the norm. I think it would be great if you could illustrate a specific moment in Kevin’s life where he realized that he couldn’t kill anymore; maybe something happened where he witnessed a parent get killed in front of his or her son…something along those lines, just a suggestion.
In the end I thought this was a great, unique piece of writing. Good luck with your revisions.
-Nick
Hey Zach,
The outer story is about a boy living in a world where grown-ups are to be shot if they go outside in April. He lies about having killed some adults to gain favor with his parents, but they find out and after his mother forces him out until he kills an adult he goes on to kill his own father. Oh sweet irony! The inner story is about the boy's desire to not kill (that was poorly worded on my part) and the building of his conflicting feelings with those of his family yet his desire to belong and live up to their expectations.
I found the world of the story to be utterly fascinating- it kept a great balance of this disgusting brutality and compelling emotion. I found myself wanting to know more about the environment and its characters, even though so much of it was so repulsive in many ways. It found it to be really chilling, and that made all of the emotional turns you took later on all the more effective.
I think the issues I had with the story are very closely tied with the parts that I really, really liked. First, Kevin: I loved the character, that he was just this little boy who couldn't stand to murder in a world that demanded it, and found the sort of acceptance at the same time as he found a way to rebel against it (killing his father). But I wanted to see more emotion with him. I felt like I had to connect the dots a bit with his distaste with the whole killing scenario- I obviously understand that he doesn't want to kill, but I wanted to see more about him so I could understand possibly why he's the one boy who doesn't want to kill while his brothers could. Is it just because he's the youngest, and therefore more sympathetic? Or have external influences made him unique somehow? In the same way, I liked how Chad gave him a sort of sympathetic connection to the world around him, but I wanted to see more of this. Chad obviously knows Kevin hasn't actually been killing, but why does he not tell anyone? Is he protecting Kevin because he understands his aversion to killing, but has been able to force himself to? Or is it just because he's looking out for his younger bro? And when I figured out that Kevin was gonna kill his dad it created just an awesome tension that built to the end, but I thought it could have been just so much more of an emotional moment. The same thing goes with the killing of the man from the couple at the ATM, and the Dad's staying "at work"- I wish I could see more of the motivations and events revolving around these events, because it seems like there are so many compelling and complex things going on under the surface and they just need a small nudge to really explode in the story.
I guess I had a bit of the problem with the world, as much as I liked it, as it didn't seem an entirely plausible endpoint for our world as it is, and at times I saw too much evidence towards it being a future of the world I'm in right now. As its own world, however, I could totally accept it (and would love to do so), so I think maybe if you could distance it a bit more from our real world than I wouldn't have been left to push aside a couple confusions I had. I really loved (for lack of a better word) the world you created in the story, and I think it could really work with a couple tweaks. I could live with the kids being enlisted to kill and all as long as I didn't think it was a direct descendant of the real world as it is now.
I feel this story to be really awesome- if you just go a little further with what's already there, it can really be one of those effective, compelling, even gut-wrenching stories that really stays with you. It's a really difficult kind of story to pull off (the sort of story I love to hate to experience reading, if that makes sense), and I think you do so swimmingly. Awesome job!
Zach:
The outer story is about a boy living in a world of such overpopulation that children are allowed to kill adults. This boy desperately wants to please his family, but he struggles to even put bullets in his gun. The inner story seems somewhat Oedipal. The boy is obsessed with his mother and being her favorite, and by ultimately killing his father, feels he will win over his mother’s complete affection. I feel like the latter could be brought out more in the piece. It’s difficult, since the narrating perspective is a young child, but I was yearning for more insight, more psyche. A lot of the action in this piece reads like a play-by-play (chad did this then mommy did this, etc.) Even the dialogue is imbedded into the exposition. While you have an interesting set of characters and premise, the voice does get a little overwhelming. This might be due to its repetition of certain vocabulary.
While reading this piece, I kept wondering what else was going on in this world. By just introducing this one facet, that children can kill adults, I understand the world only as it feeds into the boy’s primary problem. As a result, it looks a little bit like a device. I think if you included other details of the world, it wouldn’t have this same effect. Right now, it feels as though you created this problem in the story’s reality so that the character would have a problem emotionally.
I wonder what would happen if you started your story with the ending. I find the Oedipal undertones of this to be the more interesting parts of the piece, and I think the overpopulation → children killing adults scenario would be more organically introduced if the first scene were a child killing his own father.
Lastly, I felt some pulling away from the narrator’s voice in this piece would help sustain it. I wanted to see more scene and I also felt the narrator’s insights bordered on melodramatic. I’m not saying the reasoning behind them is not there, I just don’t see it. I want to come to the conclusions the narrator makes about himself without necessarily having to be told by the narrator. For example, on the bottom of page 4, “I am a liar and I can’t help it, and I know that liars deserve to suffer.” Where does this come from? In this world, is lying treated this severely? Or, conversely, is this very much only a problem of the narrator?
-Michelle
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