Katie, the outer story is about a group of friends—Janie, Tiff and Kimmi—who are getting ready for a dance. As Tiff tries on one of Janie’s dresses, Kimmi comments that Tiff looks better in the dress than Janie did. This causes Janie to break down and lock herself in the bathroom. Tiff tells Kimmi that she was being mean, which upsets Kimmi. The two try to console Janie, but eventually end up leaving because Janie’s mom interferes. Tiff then scolds Kimmi in the car. The inner story is about teenage girl angst—something that I think you capture really well. Worrying about boys, being fat, being popular, the crushing weight of pleasing friends, family and personal goals—all are topics you touch upon during this piece.
I think the format of the piece is very interesting. It’s always intriguing to have the same story told from two different points of view—that way, each perspective can be deemed unreliable and biased, and the reader can make a judgment himself. That being said, it took me way too long (up until the top of page six) to realize that this was the format of the story. I thought it was the same point of view all along (even though I had detected a change in the voice) from section to section. Thus I was considerably confused about who was who, why Janie was crying twice, etc. I think you need to make it very, very clear to the reader that after your first section break, it is Tiff speaking. I think one of the problems is that you don’t mention the name “Kimmi” at all in your first section (being told from Kimmi’s POV), thus I thought Kimmi was a new character being introduced in your second section.
I think you pull off the voices of each character; through the way Kimmi speaks, I can tell she is very arrogant and self-centered, and is obsessed with image and clothing. But I also think it’s important that she attempts to justify her actions (“I said what was on my mind, let’s be honest, what was on everyone’s mind, even Janie’s”). This shows that she realizes what she did was wrong, even though she may not outwardly admit it. Tiff, on the other hand, is the more rational and sympathetic of the two; she is also more insightful about the world she lives in.
I thought the end dialogue was great between the two—how you rapidly jump back and forth. I think it’s also very interesting that you summarize all your dialogue—it’s almost as if each character is pleading to the reader—“I’m right, the other is wrong.” I felt like I was caught in the middle of a huge argument. Nice work.
One thing I think you can do is to make Kimmi more sympathetic. As things stand, Tiff is the one that that the reader sympathizes with the most. I wanted this to be less one-sided. I want there to be some hidden reason as to why Kimmi made those comments about Janie; does she have some deep seeded insecurities of her own? Is her life or her popularity not as great as she and Tiff portray it to be? She needs to be made to look more desperate, so her comments seem more justifiable.
What Up Katie, The outer story is about the bickery melodrama-packed relationships between three supposed "friends," revolving around issues like body image and how good they look in each other's dressed. The inner story is about how the friends deal with issues of body image and jealousy, and how each of them deals with those issues (anger, sadness, etc.)
I think the present tense, coupled with the tone of the narrators, work really well for this story. It has the feel of a teenage girl telling the story out loud on the spot, which lends it a real personality that makes it entertaining and works to enrich the events of the story. I like the way the narrators have little asides that address the reader directly- it feels involving, and very appropriate for how the story is told. I also think you did a good job (from what I know) of capturing the sort of on-agani-off-again love/hate relationships between the girls, showing how even little offhand comments can be blown way out of proportion into relationship-threatening situations that may dissipate just as easily.
While I like the structure and style of your story, I have to admit I got very confused. It may have been because I was reading it off a computer screen (which is always worse than paper), but I read through the story and posted comments (that's why they're deleted) thinking that there were actually four characters, with one narrator (Nick's comments set me straight). I think that more can be done to emphasis this change in perspective- maybe more names used directly to the narrator, or a more drastic change in voice, or mention of something like family members so it's clearer that they're in a different family. Towards the end especially, when they got really short, I got rather confused and lost what was going on. I couldn't really picture what was happening with who, and it all sort of blurred together. The quick-scene thing is cool, and I think could work, but there needs to be a bit more definition between voices.
I think that the story also could have benefitted from a bit more of a sympathetic character. Tiff is obviously much more sympathetic than Kimmi, but even then I still would have liked to see more between these characters indicating at least some measure of affinity for each other. I think Kimmi was good, but then I think there needs to be revealed a more active reason on Tiff's part for actually wanting to be around her as much as she does. While I understand the love/hate relationship, I would've liked to see a little more love, if that makes sense.
Last, I got the feeling that this sort of thing happens often for the characters- they're going to make up soon and be doing it all over again in a week or so. I'd like to see something more of a change, though, in any of the characters or relationships, to signify the importance of these particular instances. If they were different than usual or the characters did change more than usual, I'd like to see that elaborated on a bit more.
This story flowed really well, and was very enjoyable to read- I think it's at its best when it goes into the strange methhods of this clique of friends with an insider perspective that's honest and critical enough to make them funny and quirky. I think with a little tinkering with the structure (especially at the end) and a more sympathetic Tiff this could be a really great story. Good job!
“A Dress,” on the surface, is about Kimmi’s comment that Tiff looks better in the dress than Janie does. Janie is self-conscious about her body image, in part because of her supermodel mom, and locks herself in the bathroom, crying. At the outer level, the story is about the typical concerns of the high school girl: popularity, especially popularity with boys, body image, and so forth. At the inner story level, however, “A Dress” is about the politics of bringing a new friend into what was once a duo and how competition for the central friend enacts itself. It is also about jealousy and class conflict.
The strongest part of your story was the voice of your characters. I think one of the challenges with writing about these almost stereotypical high school girls is how to make them present in a real way for the reader and the voice really helps make that happen. Kimmi, especially, is awesome—she’s just cutting from the very beginning, “It is not like you are the one running around and having to fly over stuff. It is the horse, am I right?” I love it. Tiff really comes off as that admiring follower girl who at the end is finally forced to be a little more than the sweet one in the group. Your details here are great and including things like the oriental rug and the smooth gold bathroom door handle really gave me a sense of scene and also adds this tension about wealth (Janie is the richest, Kimmi next, Tiff middle-class) that deepened this piece. I liked the shifting point of views because it made each character sympathetic in her own way. I felt for Kimmi because she’s obviously worried about her place as best friend being usurped. I felt for Tiff because she didn’t do anything but that sympathy is tempered by how her side of the story doesn’t mention that she called Kimmi mean when they were at Janie’s house. I especially admire the ending in which the point of view shifts rapidly and how that jumpiness in the narrative—like the quick cuts of a camera in a film—reflects the conflict and how fast things are changing.
One thing, however, that I think could be improved upon was how quickly the reader is attuned to the real conflict of the story (at least what I saw as the real conflict) which is the dynamic between Kimmi and Tiff and how they vie for the position of Janie’s friendship. The real battle, by the end of the story, isn’t about body-image at all, but between your two point of view characters—which I think is really smart but at the beginning of the story I was definitely more invested in Janie than maybe I should’ve been. When Tiff’s point of view is over the first time, I expected Janie’s. Looking back, I can definitely see hints of it in Kimmi’s point of view, but I think I need to see it more in Tiff’s point of view. Has Janie been confiding in Tiff more one-on-one, which is why maybe Tiff is more sympathetic, angrier at the end? Have Tiff and Janie been growing closer and is Kimmi’s statement motivated more by jealousy (which it seems to me) than by her spoiled character? In general, for the shifting point of view, while I think it’s a cool choice, I’m sure exactly how much more it adds to the story in terms of deeper meaning—I feel like you could be using it more significantly. Also, I’d like to be able to see the characters visually and because you have two first-person narrators who are looking at each other most of the time, I think it would be fairly easy to slip in some physical description of Kimmi, Tiff, and maybe a little bit more on Janie. Overall, very cool story. Thanks for sharing and good luck with revisions!
I read the outer story of “The Dress” as being about two fights that happened between a group of friends. Both fights involve Janie, an insecure rich girl, and the narrator. However, in one fight the third party is Kimmie, while in the other it is Tiff. In both fights one of the girls is too loose with her tongue and hurts Janie’s feelings, in the first fight it is Kimmie, while in the second it is the narrator. We get the two fights juxtaposed against each other and see how the narrator is so blind to seeing that her own actions are the same as the ones that she thoroughly criticizes in Kimmie. The inner story is about this: the narrator’s own self-centeredness and blindness to her own actions. She is very judgmental about other characters, but fails to see these same qualities in herself. She seems to want all of the typical, shallow, teen girls wants, popularity, nice things, a boyfriend, etc.
I felt like the voice was very vivid and effective…and annoying. Through the first 6-7 pages I was thinking, “Boy, this first person voice is really great”. And it is very authentic. Throughout the story, I could absolutely hear a whiny, bratty, 15 year old girl ranting to me about her friends and her problems. It was like listening to my little sister on a bad day. So in this sense it was extremely effective. However, by about page seven I pretty much started hating this voice that I felt like was screaming at me, especially as I began to realize how hypocritical she was. By the end of the story, I felt very little sympathy or connection with the narrator. She was just a spoiled and kind of petty little girl to me. Since this story is so much about the voice and all of the events come so filtered through it, I think that the story cannot afford to have the narrator come off this way. As I left the story, I essentially didn’t care what happened to any of these girls, I just wanted to get away from them.
I had a hard time picking out what the conflict in the story was, and where a change in the state of affairs was supposed to happen. It is essentially the narrator telling us about two different fights, but she never comes to any realization. The only change that occurs is that us, as readers, realize that these two fights are really just opposite sides of the same fight. And my realizing that these two petty fights were mirror images of each other didn’t carry that much weight for me. I needed something to happen that would shake the narrator up. To make her realize what was going on, or at least something to come out of the two fights.
Katie: The outer story is about Kimmi telling Tiff that she looks better in a dress than Janie does. Janie gets hysterically upset, and drama ensues. The inner story seems to be about power relationships in high school cliques. I have to say, while I really enjoyed the voices of this piece, I was hoping it would transcend into something deeper, even if unbeknownst to the narrators. On the other hand, maybe it is, and I’m missing something. I just feel like while this superficial world is very fun to inhabit, I wanted something more from the story so that it would not feel stereotypical. You do a great job of creating these very real characters and they feel successfully familiar, but I guess I wanted some of the unfamiliar, if that makes sense.
I think one of the obstacles you set up for yourself is the self-consciousness of the narrators. While one is occupied with bitchiness, the other is occupied with timidity. Both are focused on the surface, on the appearance of things. As a result, it’s not too surprising that these narrators do not delve into the uncomfortable or the complex. One of the lines I really loved was on your first page, “Your grandma says you are big-boned, that means that even your grandma knows you are fat.” This line is not only funny, it also reveals some vulnerability, of which I’m not sure the narrators could express if told in first person. I almost wonder if you would want to add a third narrating section in the second person, to draw out some of that repressed introspection and vulnerability.
I really liked how the last scene escalated to essentially direct dialogue. By switching quickly between the perspectives, I lose track of who’s talking, and this is a great effect. Their personalities bleed into each other, and it feels almost as if they are feeding off of one another. Once it ended, however, I wondered how much had changed. I found it hard to believe that this really would be the end of their friendship, especially since their friendships seem based on such superficiality. This entire scenario, in fact, seems likely for the trio, as if it’s happened before, and I’m sure it will happen again. I’m not sure anyone has actually learned anything. I finish the piece wanting to know what is special about this time. Why should we care?
What an interesting story! I read the outer story of A Dress to be about Kimmie and Tiff fighting because Tiff has told their third friend, Janie, that she’s fat. I read the inner story to be about three self-absorbed pseudo-friends who are each selfish in their own way.
It took me a while to understand that the breaks were differentiating narrators. I would have liked either a heading, or more distinct voices in order to make the shifts clearer. At first I thought that there were four characters: the narrator, Kimmie, Tiff, and Janie. This is all a prelude to saying that I really like the structure of your piece. It’s very ambitious, and by the end of the piece, I got it. I think what you are doing would have been even stronger, though, if I had been able to get it sooner.
One way to do this may be to characterize Kimmie and Tiff earlier, with very distinct features. These can play into the voices of your characters too. For example, perhaps Kimmie is a total valley girl, who always says totally, like, and whatever. You might show how Janie feels about this, while narrating Kimmie’s part in this voice. You might also show their respective social standing more clearly—who gets boys and who doesn’t—so that we can see who is whom in the context of the upcoming dance.
I wondered why you didn’t also try to show the story from Janie’s point of view. I never quite grasped her relationship with Tiff. You say a couple times that they are better friends, but I wanted to know more about why, and how that dynamic looked. One element that seemed to play out was a socio-economic one—one girl has all the fancy clothes and that the other has to borrow. I think you could expand this so that it is even clearer and more powerful.
My reading of your story saw each character as using the others for a selfish reason. I thought Janie wanted people to tell her she was beautiful, Tiff wanted Janie’s fashion, and Kimmie wanted to have a group to hang out with. But again, these dynamics seemed a little hazy to me. I think with more characterization this too will clear up and strengthen the story.
I really liked the voice you establish. There are parts that are pitch perfect and exactly how I would imagine some of the girls I know to talk, think, and act. The mother was great too, and if you throw in some botox you’ve got the real thing. Southern California, scary place, eh? I also thought you had a great sense of humor throughout the piece, and there were sections with nice repetition and rhythm.
The piece seems to speed up a lot at the end. I think that more even chunks (shorter in the beginning and longer in the end) would be beneficial to the reader. I also wanted to see some more of the setting—are they near the beach, what kind of mansions are people living in (is this Rancho Santa Fe or Del Mar or Malibu or Brentwood money, etc.)
All in all a I really enjoyed your piece—a sort of satirical OC with a lot more brains,
The external story “A Dress” is about Kimmi telling her friend Janie that the other friend Tiff looks better in a dress, which sends Janie into hysterics and calls all of their friendships with each other into question. To me, the external story is about dealing with self-confidence issues in high school, and how that relates to both appearance and friendships.
First of all, I like that you told this story from multiple points of view. It was a cool way to tell a story, and to give each person’s experience firsthand. While the two perspectives are somewhat similar in voice – reflecting their similar age and reason for being friends – they are also unique, shown in their attitudes and actions. It’s interesting to see how they view each other, and how that affects how the reader views them. I gradually learned what to expect from them and how to picture them, and how to view their perspective. Neither of them is objective or really reliable, but combining the two points of view allows the reader to make more educated inferences of what these people are like. Also, it is interesting to see how they describe the same events in different ways.
Also, this story is clearly in the minds of catty high school girls. The way they see the world is (sadly) somewhat familiar to me as how my friends and I viewed some things. The emphasis on being skinny and cute, on defining who your best friends are, on wanting to go to an older boy’s prom… these are universal teenage girl things. I like specific and realistic details like: “every time we get out of the pool Janie waits so long, and then gets her towel so fast you would think she is allergic to the sun” (2) and “one of those jokes that is 80% truth, 10% joke, 10% habit” (6). The language you use is very appropriate to these girls, and helps us understand the magnitude of a seemingly tiny event.
Something that could be developed in this story is a little more separation between the two voices. That could start with a simple fix: put their names by their sections! I got so confused, I had to go through and write my own headings to figure out whose perspective I was reading at what point. (And for the first few pages I had no idea what was going on). But also, I think they could be separated more if they have different interests, and if their family backgrounds have more of an effect on them. At this point, while there are some key differences that make them unique, they still blur together to me a bit and I forget which girl has which qualities.
Another thing I have a slight problem with is the dynamic of their friendship. A lot of the moments you describe are so true and so real, but then other times they seem too extreme. It’s actually hard for me to believe that Kimmi would tell something that offensive to Janie – I don’t understand her motivation, and I don’t really believe that she sees it as beneficial “truth from her real friends.” And if she is so negative towards Janie, why does she assert that they are so much closer than Tiff is to them? If she is so angry at Tiff, why are they even friends with her in the first place? Is she jealous of Tiff? Of Janie?
Overall, this was an amusing and fun story, (and hurt me a little bit at times in its familiarity!) and I respect your creative approach. Great work!
I understood your outer story to be about a high school girl who banishes another girl from her social clique, and recalls a previous situation in which something similar happened. I understood your inner story to be the narrator’s deluded belief that her cliquish behavior is justified.
I love the way you’ve immersed yourself in the voice of this piece, and you’ve done a great job of creating a very believable narrator who thinks of herself in a totally different way from that in which the reader probably does. It really sounds as though this girl is telling us a story, and the voice is clear, entertaining, and pretty consistent. I think it’s great the way your focus upon the things that are important in your characters’ lives, and treat them with enough seriousness that the world of the characters becomes real and funny. The language and rhythm of this story are great, and they really help me buy your premise and your characters.
I did have a few issues with the plot, and I felt like this story would have been more effective if you’d taken it further, or in a different direction. While I understand the use of the parallel storylines, and I like the way you use these to show that your narrator has not changed at all, the similarities between the two situations and the way you jumped back and forth was often confusing. I think you need, at the very least, more variation between the two circumstances, even if the way that the narrator behaves is similar. I’m also not sure why the narrator is telling the story about Kimmi, since she has no regrets or revelations about it, and still believes that her behavior is justified. There needs to be a reason for her to recount this story at her point her life, and I don’t see that coming through here. I’m also unsure about how much time has passed between these two storylines, which added to my confusion. What I’d really like to see is you take the storyline with Tiff, Janie, and the narrator, and take it further. What happens after the narrator ends her friendship with Tiff? Does she feel remorse? How does Janie respond? What happens if one of them gets a boyfriend? I think you’ve got a great exploration of the pettiness of young teenage girls, and I think that you can do more with it.
I think this story is about a group of friends in high school dealing with all the drama involved around getting a date to the Sadie Hawkins Dance. One of them is a rich chubby girl, one is pretty and the other has no car. They all have their problems.
I really struggled with this story. I could not understand what is going on at all. The language is extremely broken and the ideas are not coherent at all. I took this to be some kind of stream of consciousness writing that maybe the character is thinking really fast and is frustrated. But then I get sudden shifts of narrator, even before the breaks. It really made me want to put the story down. I am trying to find some common string to hold onto, but I can’t get it. I think that some of the stream of consciousness writing can stay but most of the rest of the story needs to be in some kind of more general narrative so that I can see what is going on.
Also, there needs to be some kind of driving force in the story, some kind of ticking clock I think that this dance is trying to do this. Janie’s situation could also be this. She seems to be breaking down, but why is never explored. One or more of these two things can help to explain why their relationship is so strained or why there has never even been a relationship.
The Dress is the title, but it doesn’t seem to be the real reason for this. It is just the event that catalyses things and brings everything to a head. I wanted more of the character’s backstories to flow through the narrative so that I can tell what is going on in the now.
I think that the broken sections at the end where multiple points of view would benefit from actual demarcations of who is speaking. I think it could be like a screenplay here and this would add to it.
The outer story here is about Tiff(any?), Janie, and Kimmi, and the awful and unexpected consequences that arise from Kimmi telling Tiff that Tiff looks better in Janie’s dress than Janie does. The inner story seems to be about superficiality in teenage relationships, and the incongruities between how people view their own friendships with one another.
The voices in this piece were great and did a good job of capturing the backbiting, bickering, and politicking of high school girls. The language felt appropriate, and the syntax did a great job of evoking these personalities (although I felt it lessened somewhat as the story progressed). I also thought that the conflict between the three girls was absolutely hilarious in its superficiality, but of course it also felt frighteningly real. Although I was initially confused by the structure of the story, Kimmi and Tiff did have distinct voices and personalities, and I liked how you brought out Kimmi’s hyper self-involvement and Tiff’s more thoughtful type of introspection and analysis. In general, this is a really fun way to tell a story, and it was great seeing the contrasts in how the two narrators perceived their world and reacted to it.
Although I did feel that the two voices were ultimately distinct, as others have already mentioned, it took me a while to realize that there were in fact two different narrators. I initially thought that Kimmi was a fourth character, and that Janie running into bathrooms crying because people had implied that she was fat was a common occurrence. There are lots of ways to alleviate this problem. One approach would just be to match up the opening actions of the first two sections very clearly— “I picked up Tiff in my brand new silver beemer right after school on Wednesday,” and then, “Kimmi picked me up in her brand new silver beemer on Wednesday.” Or something like that. It doesn’t have to be that boring. My point is it’s not a big deal.
I really liked how this piece ended, and it was great that the sections began shortening as the action intensified and the conversation grew more heated. By the end of the story, the two voices were in dialogue with one another, which was wonderful. However, I think the climax would have a greater impact if there were more at stake in the story. Although Kimmi’s ruminations about three being a crowd were incisive, mean, and true to life, I felt that they jarred a bit with the previous action (if Kimmi sees herself and Janie as true friends and Tiff as something of an outsider, why does she put Janie down in front of Tiff?) and made the story less important. Kimmi doesn’t seem to care whether or not she stays friends with Tiff. And neither does Tiff, really. Why are these two together? I think we need some back story here, which would go a long way toward answering these questions and making the story more important. I feel like the “friendship breakup” at the end has the potential to have a lot of impact, but it’s not quite there yet. Why is this particular fight so important? Do they fight like this all the time? How long have Tiff and Kimmi been friends? We need to know these things to know how to take the ending.
I really like this story and I think there’s a ton of potential here!
11 comments:
Katie, the outer story is about a group of friends—Janie, Tiff and Kimmi—who are getting ready for a dance. As Tiff tries on one of Janie’s dresses, Kimmi comments that Tiff looks better in the dress than Janie did. This causes Janie to break down and lock herself in the bathroom. Tiff tells Kimmi that she was being mean, which upsets Kimmi. The two try to console Janie, but eventually end up leaving because Janie’s mom interferes. Tiff then scolds Kimmi in the car. The inner story is about teenage girl angst—something that I think you capture really well. Worrying about boys, being fat, being popular, the crushing weight of pleasing friends, family and personal goals—all are topics you touch upon during this piece.
I think the format of the piece is very interesting. It’s always intriguing to have the same story told from two different points of view—that way, each perspective can be deemed unreliable and biased, and the reader can make a judgment himself. That being said, it took me way too long (up until the top of page six) to realize that this was the format of the story. I thought it was the same point of view all along (even though I had detected a change in the voice) from section to section. Thus I was considerably confused about who was who, why Janie was crying twice, etc. I think you need to make it very, very clear to the reader that after your first section break, it is Tiff speaking. I think one of the problems is that you don’t mention the name “Kimmi” at all in your first section (being told from Kimmi’s POV), thus I thought Kimmi was a new character being introduced in your second section.
I think you pull off the voices of each character; through the way Kimmi speaks, I can tell she is very arrogant and self-centered, and is obsessed with image and clothing. But I also think it’s important that she attempts to justify her actions (“I said what was on my mind, let’s be honest, what was on everyone’s mind, even Janie’s”). This shows that she realizes what she did was wrong, even though she may not outwardly admit it. Tiff, on the other hand, is the more rational and sympathetic of the two; she is also more insightful about the world she lives in.
I thought the end dialogue was great between the two—how you rapidly jump back and forth. I think it’s also very interesting that you summarize all your dialogue—it’s almost as if each character is pleading to the reader—“I’m right, the other is wrong.” I felt like I was caught in the middle of a huge argument. Nice work.
One thing I think you can do is to make Kimmi more sympathetic. As things stand, Tiff is the one that that the reader sympathizes with the most. I wanted this to be less one-sided. I want there to be some hidden reason as to why Kimmi made those comments about Janie; does she have some deep seeded insecurities of her own? Is her life or her popularity not as great as she and Tiff portray it to be? She needs to be made to look more desperate, so her comments seem more justifiable.
You’re off to a great start.
-Nick
What Up Katie,
The outer story is about the bickery melodrama-packed relationships between three supposed "friends," revolving around issues like body image and how good they look in each other's dressed. The inner story is about how the friends deal with issues of body image and jealousy, and how each of them deals with those issues (anger, sadness, etc.)
I think the present tense, coupled with the tone of the narrators, work really well for this story. It has the feel of a teenage girl telling the story out loud on the spot, which lends it a real personality that makes it entertaining and works to enrich the events of the story. I like the way the narrators have little asides that address the reader directly- it feels involving, and very appropriate for how the story is told. I also think you did a good job (from what I know) of capturing the sort of on-agani-off-again love/hate relationships between the girls, showing how even little offhand comments can be blown way out of proportion into relationship-threatening situations that may dissipate just as easily.
While I like the structure and style of your story, I have to admit I got very confused. It may have been because I was reading it off a computer screen (which is always worse than paper), but I read through the story and posted comments (that's why they're deleted) thinking that there were actually four characters, with one narrator (Nick's comments set me straight). I think that more can be done to emphasis this change in perspective- maybe more names used directly to the narrator, or a more drastic change in voice, or mention of something like family members so it's clearer that they're in a different family. Towards the end especially, when they got really short, I got rather confused and lost what was going on. I couldn't really picture what was happening with who, and it all sort of blurred together. The quick-scene thing is cool, and I think could work, but there needs to be a bit more definition between voices.
I think that the story also could have benefitted from a bit more of a sympathetic character. Tiff is obviously much more sympathetic than Kimmi, but even then I still would have liked to see more between these characters indicating at least some measure of affinity for each other. I think Kimmi was good, but then I think there needs to be revealed a more active reason on Tiff's part for actually wanting to be around her as much as she does. While I understand the love/hate relationship, I would've liked to see a little more love, if that makes sense.
Last, I got the feeling that this sort of thing happens often for the characters- they're going to make up soon and be doing it all over again in a week or so. I'd like to see something more of a change, though, in any of the characters or relationships, to signify the importance of these particular instances. If they were different than usual or the characters did change more than usual, I'd like to see that elaborated on a bit more.
This story flowed really well, and was very enjoyable to read- I think it's at its best when it goes into the strange methhods of this clique of friends with an insider perspective that's honest and critical enough to make them funny and quirky. I think with a little tinkering with the structure (especially at the end) and a more sympathetic Tiff this could be a really great story. Good job!
Dear Katie,
“A Dress,” on the surface, is about Kimmi’s comment that Tiff looks better in the dress than Janie does. Janie is self-conscious about her body image, in part because of her supermodel mom, and locks herself in the bathroom, crying. At the outer level, the story is about the typical concerns of the high school girl: popularity, especially popularity with boys, body image, and so forth. At the inner story level, however, “A Dress” is about the politics of bringing a new friend into what was once a duo and how competition for the central friend enacts itself. It is also about jealousy and class conflict.
The strongest part of your story was the voice of your characters. I think one of the challenges with writing about these almost stereotypical high school girls is how to make them present in a real way for the reader and the voice really helps make that happen. Kimmi, especially, is awesome—she’s just cutting from the very beginning, “It is not like you are the one running around and having to fly over stuff. It is the horse, am I right?” I love it. Tiff really comes off as that admiring follower girl who at the end is finally forced to be a little more than the sweet one in the group. Your details here are great and including things like the oriental rug and the smooth gold bathroom door handle really gave me a sense of scene and also adds this tension about wealth (Janie is the richest, Kimmi next, Tiff middle-class) that deepened this piece. I liked the shifting point of views because it made each character sympathetic in her own way. I felt for Kimmi because she’s obviously worried about her place as best friend being usurped. I felt for Tiff because she didn’t do anything but that sympathy is tempered by how her side of the story doesn’t mention that she called Kimmi mean when they were at Janie’s house. I especially admire the ending in which the point of view shifts rapidly and how that jumpiness in the narrative—like the quick cuts of a camera in a film—reflects the conflict and how fast things are changing.
One thing, however, that I think could be improved upon was how quickly the reader is attuned to the real conflict of the story (at least what I saw as the real conflict) which is the dynamic between Kimmi and Tiff and how they vie for the position of Janie’s friendship. The real battle, by the end of the story, isn’t about body-image at all, but between your two point of view characters—which I think is really smart but at the beginning of the story I was definitely more invested in Janie than maybe I should’ve been. When Tiff’s point of view is over the first time, I expected Janie’s. Looking back, I can definitely see hints of it in Kimmi’s point of view, but I think I need to see it more in Tiff’s point of view. Has Janie been confiding in Tiff more one-on-one, which is why maybe Tiff is more sympathetic, angrier at the end? Have Tiff and Janie been growing closer and is Kimmi’s statement motivated more by jealousy (which it seems to me) than by her spoiled character? In general, for the shifting point of view, while I think it’s a cool choice, I’m sure exactly how much more it adds to the story in terms of deeper meaning—I feel like you could be using it more significantly. Also, I’d like to be able to see the characters visually and because you have two first-person narrators who are looking at each other most of the time, I think it would be fairly easy to slip in some physical description of Kimmi, Tiff, and maybe a little bit more on Janie. Overall, very cool story. Thanks for sharing and good luck with revisions!
Jessamyn
Katie,
I read the outer story of “The Dress” as being about two fights that happened between a group of friends. Both fights involve Janie, an insecure rich girl, and the narrator. However, in one fight the third party is Kimmie, while in the other it is Tiff. In both fights one of the girls is too loose with her tongue and hurts Janie’s feelings, in the first fight it is Kimmie, while in the second it is the narrator. We get the two fights juxtaposed against each other and see how the narrator is so blind to seeing that her own actions are the same as the ones that she thoroughly criticizes in Kimmie. The inner story is about this: the narrator’s own self-centeredness and blindness to her own actions. She is very judgmental about other characters, but fails to see these same qualities in herself. She seems to want all of the typical, shallow, teen girls wants, popularity, nice things, a boyfriend, etc.
I felt like the voice was very vivid and effective…and annoying. Through the first 6-7 pages I was thinking, “Boy, this first person voice is really great”. And it is very authentic. Throughout the story, I could absolutely hear a whiny, bratty, 15 year old girl ranting to me about her friends and her problems. It was like listening to my little sister on a bad day. So in this sense it was extremely effective. However, by about page seven I pretty much started hating this voice that I felt like was screaming at me, especially as I began to realize how hypocritical she was. By the end of the story, I felt very little sympathy or connection with the narrator. She was just a spoiled and kind of petty little girl to me. Since this story is so much about the voice and all of the events come so filtered through it, I think that the story cannot afford to have the narrator come off this way. As I left the story, I essentially didn’t care what happened to any of these girls, I just wanted to get away from them.
I had a hard time picking out what the conflict in the story was, and where a change in the state of affairs was supposed to happen. It is essentially the narrator telling us about two different fights, but she never comes to any realization. The only change that occurs is that us, as readers, realize that these two fights are really just opposite sides of the same fight. And my realizing that these two petty fights were mirror images of each other didn’t carry that much weight for me. I needed something to happen that would shake the narrator up. To make her realize what was going on, or at least something to come out of the two fights.
Katie:
The outer story is about Kimmi telling Tiff that she looks better in a dress than Janie does. Janie gets hysterically upset, and drama ensues. The inner story seems to be about power relationships in high school cliques. I have to say, while I really enjoyed the voices of this piece, I was hoping it would transcend into something deeper, even if unbeknownst to the narrators. On the other hand, maybe it is, and I’m missing something. I just feel like while this superficial world is very fun to inhabit, I wanted something more from the story so that it would not feel stereotypical. You do a great job of creating these very real characters and they feel successfully familiar, but I guess I wanted some of the unfamiliar, if that makes sense.
I think one of the obstacles you set up for yourself is the self-consciousness of the narrators. While one is occupied with bitchiness, the other is occupied with timidity. Both are focused on the surface, on the appearance of things. As a result, it’s not too surprising that these narrators do not delve into the uncomfortable or the complex. One of the lines I really loved was on your first page, “Your grandma says you are big-boned, that means that even your grandma knows you are fat.” This line is not only funny, it also reveals some vulnerability, of which I’m not sure the narrators could express if told in first person. I almost wonder if you would want to add a third narrating section in the second person, to draw out some of that repressed introspection and vulnerability.
I really liked how the last scene escalated to essentially direct dialogue. By switching quickly between the perspectives, I lose track of who’s talking, and this is a great effect. Their personalities bleed into each other, and it feels almost as if they are feeding off of one another. Once it ended, however, I wondered how much had changed. I found it hard to believe that this really would be the end of their friendship, especially since their friendships seem based on such superficiality. This entire scenario, in fact, seems likely for the trio, as if it’s happened before, and I’m sure it will happen again. I’m not sure anyone has actually learned anything. I finish the piece wanting to know what is special about this time. Why should we care?
-Michelle
Dear Katie,
What an interesting story! I read the outer story of A Dress to be about Kimmie and Tiff fighting because Tiff has told their third friend, Janie, that she’s fat. I read the inner story to be about three self-absorbed pseudo-friends who are each selfish in their own way.
It took me a while to understand that the breaks were differentiating narrators. I would have liked either a heading, or more distinct voices in order to make the shifts clearer. At first I thought that there were four characters: the narrator, Kimmie, Tiff, and Janie. This is all a prelude to saying that I really like the structure of your piece. It’s very ambitious, and by the end of the piece, I got it. I think what you are doing would have been even stronger, though, if I had been able to get it sooner.
One way to do this may be to characterize Kimmie and Tiff earlier, with very distinct features. These can play into the voices of your characters too. For example, perhaps Kimmie is a total valley girl, who always says totally, like, and whatever. You might show how Janie feels about this, while narrating Kimmie’s part in this voice. You might also show their respective social standing more clearly—who gets boys and who doesn’t—so that we can see who is whom in the context of the upcoming dance.
I wondered why you didn’t also try to show the story from Janie’s point of view. I never quite grasped her relationship with Tiff. You say a couple times that they are better friends, but I wanted to know more about why, and how that dynamic looked. One element that seemed to play out was a socio-economic one—one girl has all the fancy clothes and that the other has to borrow. I think you could expand this so that it is even clearer and more powerful.
My reading of your story saw each character as using the others for a selfish reason. I thought Janie wanted people to tell her she was beautiful, Tiff wanted Janie’s fashion, and Kimmie wanted to have a group to hang out with. But again, these dynamics seemed a little hazy to me. I think with more characterization this too will clear up and strengthen the story.
I really liked the voice you establish. There are parts that are pitch perfect and exactly how I would imagine some of the girls I know to talk, think, and act. The mother was great too, and if you throw in some botox you’ve got the real thing. Southern California, scary place, eh? I also thought you had a great sense of humor throughout the piece, and there were sections with nice repetition and rhythm.
The piece seems to speed up a lot at the end. I think that more even chunks (shorter in the beginning and longer in the end) would be beneficial to the reader. I also wanted to see some more of the setting—are they near the beach, what kind of mansions are people living in (is this Rancho Santa Fe or Del Mar or Malibu or Brentwood money, etc.)
All in all a I really enjoyed your piece—a sort of satirical OC with a lot more brains,
James
Dear Katie,
The external story “A Dress” is about Kimmi telling her friend Janie that the other friend Tiff looks better in a dress, which sends Janie into hysterics and calls all of their friendships with each other into question. To me, the external story is about dealing with self-confidence issues in high school, and how that relates to both appearance and friendships.
First of all, I like that you told this story from multiple points of view. It was a cool way to tell a story, and to give each person’s experience firsthand. While the two perspectives are somewhat similar in voice – reflecting their similar age and reason for being friends – they are also unique, shown in their attitudes and actions. It’s interesting to see how they view each other, and how that affects how the reader views them. I gradually learned what to expect from them and how to picture them, and how to view their perspective. Neither of them is objective or really reliable, but combining the two points of view allows the reader to make more educated inferences of what these people are like. Also, it is interesting to see how they describe the same events in different ways.
Also, this story is clearly in the minds of catty high school girls. The way they see the world is (sadly) somewhat familiar to me as how my friends and I viewed some things. The emphasis on being skinny and cute, on defining who your best friends are, on wanting to go to an older boy’s prom… these are universal teenage girl things. I like specific and realistic details like: “every time we get out of the pool Janie waits so long, and then gets her towel so fast you would think she is allergic to the sun” (2) and “one of those jokes that is 80% truth, 10% joke, 10% habit” (6). The language you use is very appropriate to these girls, and helps us understand the magnitude of a seemingly tiny event.
Something that could be developed in this story is a little more separation between the two voices. That could start with a simple fix: put their names by their sections! I got so confused, I had to go through and write my own headings to figure out whose perspective I was reading at what point. (And for the first few pages I had no idea what was going on). But also, I think they could be separated more if they have different interests, and if their family backgrounds have more of an effect on them. At this point, while there are some key differences that make them unique, they still blur together to me a bit and I forget which girl has which qualities.
Another thing I have a slight problem with is the dynamic of their friendship. A lot of the moments you describe are so true and so real, but then other times they seem too extreme. It’s actually hard for me to believe that Kimmi would tell something that offensive to Janie – I don’t understand her motivation, and I don’t really believe that she sees it as beneficial “truth from her real friends.” And if she is so negative towards Janie, why does she assert that they are so much closer than Tiff is to them? If she is so angry at Tiff, why are they even friends with her in the first place? Is she jealous of Tiff? Of Janie?
Overall, this was an amusing and fun story, (and hurt me a little bit at times in its familiarity!) and I respect your creative approach. Great work!
-Annie Jonas
Dear Katie,
I understood your outer story to be about a high school girl who banishes another girl from her social clique, and recalls a previous situation in which something similar happened. I understood your inner story to be the narrator’s deluded belief that her cliquish behavior is justified.
I love the way you’ve immersed yourself in the voice of this piece, and you’ve done a great job of creating a very believable narrator who thinks of herself in a totally different way from that in which the reader probably does. It really sounds as though this girl is telling us a story, and the voice is clear, entertaining, and pretty consistent. I think it’s great the way your focus upon the things that are important in your characters’ lives, and treat them with enough seriousness that the world of the characters becomes real and funny. The language and rhythm of this story are great, and they really help me buy your premise and your characters.
I did have a few issues with the plot, and I felt like this story would have been more effective if you’d taken it further, or in a different direction. While I understand the use of the parallel storylines, and I like the way you use these to show that your narrator has not changed at all, the similarities between the two situations and the way you jumped back and forth was often confusing. I think you need, at the very least, more variation between the two circumstances, even if the way that the narrator behaves is similar. I’m also not sure why the narrator is telling the story about Kimmi, since she has no regrets or revelations about it, and still believes that her behavior is justified. There needs to be a reason for her to recount this story at her point her life, and I don’t see that coming through here. I’m also unsure about how much time has passed between these two storylines, which added to my confusion. What I’d really like to see is you take the storyline with Tiff, Janie, and the narrator, and take it further. What happens after the narrator ends her friendship with Tiff? Does she feel remorse? How does Janie respond? What happens if one of them gets a boyfriend? I think you’ve got a great exploration of the pettiness of young teenage girls, and I think that you can do more with it.
Good work, Katie. I enjoyed reading this a lot.
Zach
Katie,
I think this story is about a group of friends in high school dealing with all the drama involved around getting a date to the Sadie Hawkins Dance. One of them is a rich chubby girl, one is pretty and the other has no car. They all have their problems.
I really struggled with this story. I could not understand what is going on at all. The language is extremely broken and the ideas are not coherent at all. I took this to be some kind of stream of consciousness writing that maybe the character is thinking really fast and is frustrated. But then I get sudden shifts of narrator, even before the breaks. It really made me want to put the story down. I am trying to find some common string to hold onto, but I can’t get it. I think that some of the stream of consciousness writing can stay but most of the rest of the story needs to be in some kind of more general narrative so that I can see what is going on.
Also, there needs to be some kind of driving force in the story, some kind of ticking clock I think that this dance is trying to do this. Janie’s situation could also be this. She seems to be breaking down, but why is never explored. One or more of these two things can help to explain why their relationship is so strained or why there has never even been a relationship.
The Dress is the title, but it doesn’t seem to be the real reason for this. It is just the event that catalyses things and brings everything to a head. I wanted more of the character’s backstories to flow through the narrative so that I can tell what is going on in the now.
I think that the broken sections at the end where multiple points of view would benefit from actual demarcations of who is speaking. I think it could be like a screenplay here and this would add to it.
A really interesting story, thanks.
Michael.
Katie,
The outer story here is about Tiff(any?), Janie, and Kimmi, and the awful and unexpected consequences that arise from Kimmi telling Tiff that Tiff looks better in Janie’s dress than Janie does. The inner story seems to be about superficiality in teenage relationships, and the incongruities between how people view their own friendships with one another.
The voices in this piece were great and did a good job of capturing the backbiting, bickering, and politicking of high school girls. The language felt appropriate, and the syntax did a great job of evoking these personalities (although I felt it lessened somewhat as the story progressed). I also thought that the conflict between the three girls was absolutely hilarious in its superficiality, but of course it also felt frighteningly real. Although I was initially confused by the structure of the story, Kimmi and Tiff did have distinct voices and personalities, and I liked how you brought out Kimmi’s hyper self-involvement and Tiff’s more thoughtful type of introspection and analysis. In general, this is a really fun way to tell a story, and it was great seeing the contrasts in how the two narrators perceived their world and reacted to it.
Although I did feel that the two voices were ultimately distinct, as others have already mentioned, it took me a while to realize that there were in fact two different narrators. I initially thought that Kimmi was a fourth character, and that Janie running into bathrooms crying because people had implied that she was fat was a common occurrence. There are lots of ways to alleviate this problem. One approach would just be to match up the opening actions of the first two sections very clearly— “I picked up Tiff in my brand new silver beemer right after school on Wednesday,” and then, “Kimmi picked me up in her brand new silver beemer on Wednesday.” Or something like that. It doesn’t have to be that boring. My point is it’s not a big deal.
I really liked how this piece ended, and it was great that the sections began shortening as the action intensified and the conversation grew more heated. By the end of the story, the two voices were in dialogue with one another, which was wonderful. However, I think the climax would have a greater impact if there were more at stake in the story. Although Kimmi’s ruminations about three being a crowd were incisive, mean, and true to life, I felt that they jarred a bit with the previous action (if Kimmi sees herself and Janie as true friends and Tiff as something of an outsider, why does she put Janie down in front of Tiff?) and made the story less important. Kimmi doesn’t seem to care whether or not she stays friends with Tiff. And neither does Tiff, really. Why are these two together? I think we need some back story here, which would go a long way toward answering these questions and making the story more important. I feel like the “friendship breakup” at the end has the potential to have a lot of impact, but it’s not quite there yet. Why is this particular fight so important? Do they fight like this all the time? How long have Tiff and Kimmi been friends? We need to know these things to know how to take the ending.
I really like this story and I think there’s a ton of potential here!
Michael Booe
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