I read the outer story of “Flower Children” as being about the time that the narrator and her three friends ate ‘shrooms as a kind of capstone to their high school years. They eat the muschrooms and descend into a psychedelic experience. The narrator cuts her hand on a piece of glass, her friends become fascinated and try it as well. One of the friends cuts her hand quite deeply and then they go home. I wasn’t able to discern much of an inner story, since the narrator doesn’t really communicate much to us outside of her visual experiences while being under the influence. I was also unable to discern exactly what the narrator wanted in the story.
There are some really great descriptions of the things that the narrator encounters and becomes fascinated with while under the influence. Much of the story is spent with the narrator in this altered state and much of it is very interesting. In particular, the scene with the glass and the hand-cutting is beautifully executed and had me very much in suspense. I could tell exactly what was going to happen once the drugged up kids started having fun with glass, but I was dreading the moment in which it actually occurred. It is very hard to create suspense like that and I think that it was maybe the best job anyone has done all quarter at keeping me on the edge of my seat.
While many of the descriptions are great, I felt like the voice of the narrator while under the influence was not quite different enough than her normal voice, and at times she seems a little too aware of her mental state for how altered I think we are supposed to perceive her own perception as. One example would be when she tells us, “I have never been so happy”. I feel like someone so much under the influence might be feeling this intense of an emotion, but either couldn’t or wouldn’t feel the need to communicate that emotion with us. In general, I felt like much of the time the voice sounded like a sober person describing what things were like while she was under the influence, rather than the present-tense narrative of a person who actually is under the influence. It certainly is a challenge to create this kind of voice, but at times I got glimpses of it (the italicized portions are quite good) and I think you are up to it.
Like I said earlier, I had a difficult time discerning what the inner story/stakes/conflict of this story was. It reads kind of like a very well written account of somebody just describing what it was like to be on mushrooms. The narrator tells us in the beginning that the plan for the trip is a kind of spiritual shared experience, but this never really happens and we are simply left with the perception of the altered state. The scene with the bloodletting was so intense and then to have the characters just leave and have nothing really come of it seemed like a let down. I was honestly a little bit mad at the story for building me up like that and then leaving me with nothing. You’ve already done the hard part with getting the reader in that position, I think that the consequences or just the narrator’s perception of the importance of the event need to live up to this scene.
Brodie, The outer story is about a group of friends who take mushrooms together, and the inner story is about one girl’s disconnection with her set of friends.
You have created quite the vivid and visceral story. There are so many wonderful descriptions about this quad of friends and their mushroom trip. I love how the narrator describes Nico and her relationship so simply and succinctly with, “She likes me because I’m most sanguine…I like her because she’s unpredictable and dark” (3). You have continuously vibrant description of their mushroom trip, such as on pg 4, where “The liquid movement begins to solidify until it stops completely, and I grip y seat, a sailor who has just hit land.” I felt and understood what the narrator was experiencing, right along with her.
However, a lot of the descriptions seem to be included simply for the sake of description. The story shouldn’t be about a trip, it should be about the group of friends, what they mean to each other, how the react to the drugs, how they react to each other on the drugs. You describe shrooming beautifully, but the question “so what?” is still left unanswered to me. So what? I actually am not sure what the inner story of your piece is. Is it the narrator realizing she is different from her friends? That drugs only emphasize the realities of life? That leaving a close groups of friends is difficult, but it is perhaps what the narrator needs being so very different from her friends? What is the plot arc of the story? What is resolved in the end?
I think the gazebo scene, where each friend cuts their own hand is full of tension, is oddly beautiful and grotesque at the same time, and has a lot of potential to set the narrator apart from her friends. However, although the narrator is aghast that her friends are purposefully hurting themselves, we don’t get to see her react. She just lets her friends cut themselves, and tries to help Sally when her wound is particularly deep. Why is it, though, that only the narrator is worried about their cutting? Have the drugs worn off just her? Is she different from these other three girls? Are they much darker than we thought? Does the narrator learn anything from this experience? You raise the stakes in this story when the narrator is walking towards the gazebo and says that she is the happiest she has ever been. How does it feel to go from being that happy to being disgusted by her friends’ actions? Let us inside the narrator’s thought and feelings-- it is first person. I think this scene will become much richer and fuller with just a little more emotional content.
Also, I wonder if four is too many friends for this story. Although you have some wonderful descriptions of what they are wearing and what they do, I think of her trio of friends always as the ‘others.’ It is unclear how each one has a distinct and unique relationship with the narrator, and as a result their actions don’t carry any significance to me. So that one jumps in puddles. So that one decides to cut her hand first. So that one knows how to eat mushrooms. Does it matter there are four? Could it be about just the narrator and one other friend? What if there are just two best friends who are saying goodbye to each other, and one ends up seriously cutting her arm? Right now, the trio read as a blur of characters to me. Perhaps trimming down your cast, describing each one more fully, of having them more active in the scenes would up their importance and personality.
This story has a lot of potential and I look forward to revisions, Katie
This story is about a bunch of kids who attend a hippy-ish school taking a trip on magic mushrooms before graduation. It is a story about description. This is really well done and creates this really fluid reality that the characters almost swim around in. I felt as though this was what the story was really using for its strength, and being in a world of colorfully altered perspectives this seemed only right. Some suggestions. The first two and a half pages occur before the narrator had eaten. This makes it the only space where the narrator is able to give cogent backstory. For the most part, this is really complete, but I am still left with some questions. The four of them are described in pairs. Brigit/Nico Sally/Narrrator I didn’t know how to take this. Are they just more special friends in the group or is there more to this. What are the edgy black and white photographs about? I think this is important because later in the story, an understanding of their dynamics whether romantic or platonic would help me interpret what is going on more. The timeframe of their trip didn’t seem to be right. Mushrooms last longer than what I took from the story to only be a couple of hours. I think that they should either go to more places or do more in the spaces where they are. It seems like they are in car, walk past highschool and soccer fields, go to gazebo, get cut on glass, then leave. The description of what is going on is awesome. I enjoyed how Nico turned into a bird and back almost incidentally. What I don’t get in these scenes is any notion of time. Whether it is passing fast, or slow or just seeming to stand still, I can’t tell. I know from earlier in the story that time is somewhat of a concern. They don’t have much time together and they will soon be scattered all over the globe. Does this play in here at all? Are they completely unworried about having to do anything or be anywhere or is there any risk at all in taking this trip too far? I think that any of these concerns could be conveyed without moving out of the beautiful descriptive style that you create. This would make a little more consequence and add to the narrative. The scene in the Gazebo is awesome. I wanted more buildup, though. As it functions now, I can’t see this place as clearly as some of the other details. How big is it, does the roof leak, does it look like a castle to them? The cutting seemed like the climax of the story to me and I wanted it to happen, like a lot of the rest of the story does in some highly surreal but incredibly lucid place. She says she thinks that bad things have happened here. Is it scary to her? The way that she cuts her hand on the abalone broken glass was my absolute favorite part of the story. It really shows this almost complete detachment from world that is at the same time aware. I wondered how everyone saw the blood. Did it change at all? If Nico can become a bird, what does the blood look like dripping from their fingers? How does Brigit get to this point where she looks possessed and what kind of associations are going through the narrator’s mind here? Does Sally start freaking out? She won’t be near them when they exit, Sally and the narrator are extra close. I wanted to see more strange stuff going on here, the use of color that was so evident before. maybe talk more about the whiteness in her knuckles. The story ends with them all coming down off of this high, for one it didn’t last long enough, for two I don’t think that they have to. The narrator seems extremely isolated at the end of the story and I don’t know if this is true, if this incident caused it, or if she was always isolated and the trip just revealed it to her.
Awesome description and really well-written, Brodie
I’m really intrigued by their school and I want to know more about it. I think by elaborating on the school, I will understand the characters more. Where do they come from? Are they flower children before they arrive? Is everyone at the school like this foursome? How superficial or sincere is their perception of the world? Everything is relative, and I need to know what I am comparing this all to. In some places, psychedelics are incredibly rare and counterculture. Yet, I almost find it hard to believe at an artistic commune, this would be the case. I want to be directed as to how to feel about this being the foursome’s first time tripping. I like this idea of violent beauty, perhaps the pain of art, and I’m curious how it extends into the narrator’s life beyond this isolated scene. Back-story might help with this, or at least more introspection on the narrator’s part. There is a lot of sensory description, which is all very beautiful and vivid, but I wonder where else her thoughts are going. Do any of these vibrant visuals provoke fears or passions she has thought about before?
I really like how the language of the hippie school sometimes infiltrates the the narrative, although I find the parenthetical explanation for this on page 3 distracting and unnecessary. I want to see even more of this. I want to see how this mythical-feeling place has provided our narrator with a completely different set of tools to perceive. What is moral in this world? What is repulsive?
Lastly, I never feel like I have a hold on who is who in the piece. This might be because the characters are all introduced at once, and they all hold equal weight. I find it surprising that I get so confused, since you go out of your way to describe each character on the second page, and yet. I wonder if you could show more distinction in dialogue? I wonder if the narrator’s history with each character would help solidify their personalities? This confusion comes to a head during the cutting scene, as I noted at the beginning of my comments. I’m not even sure who is bleeding, let alone if she cut herself, or if someone else cut her. I assume that the character, Sally, who appears, is really one of our original foursome, but a name change did not make its way through the draft? I’m not even saying these characters need to be completely distinct, but I want to make sure that this is intentional. I think it is important to know whether or not the bleeding was self-inflicted, but also would the narrator react differently if someone else had cut her palm? Or is it merely the act of the bleeding that shocks her? I think this is an important question, largely unanswered in this draft.
Really beautiful details: the ceramic pots, the mud-coated hem, blood as sap, etc. -michelle
On the surface, “Flower Children” is about Sumi, Nico, Brigit, and the narrator going on a mushrooms trip, the effects of which seem to wear off at different times for Sumi and the narrator. At a deeper level, your story is about four friends trying to do something together before the summer ends, and they each go their different ways after high school. Unfortunately, what was supposed to be “unified spiritual awakening” turns out to be a divisive experience that leaves the narrator walking alone, Nico and Brigit oblivious to anything but each other, and Sumi trailing behind them all.
The strongest part of your story was your sense of detail and imagery. I loved a great deal of your description: “Late summer rain drums on our roof and blackens the pavement” and “Sumi’s finger is white and tattooed in black ink,” among others. I especially liked the painting metaphor that carries throughout the piece. I also liked that you tried to root a very psychological experience in the senses: the vibrating air, the sound coming from great distances, “the smell of rotting redwood,” and so forth. The language of “Flower Children” provides its own kind of movement and I was definitely invested in the story.
I also really liked the quirkiness of your characters and the details you chose to give about each: Sumi’s music snobbery, Nico’s red hair, Brigit’s gazelle-like body. I found myself really wanting to know about how exactly they related to one another. For instance, it seems like Nico and Brigit are definitely close to one another and suggestive language describes their interactions: “their legs piled up on each other,” “their blankets move,” and so forth. Brigit is mentioned as having a boyfriend; is she also in a relationship with Nico? It also seems like the narrator puts her and Sumi in a couple: “she’s fire/wind, and I’m water/earth.” The reason I want the relationships clarified is because it seems important to understanding how they fracture and break apart at the end. I see Sumi and the narrator as outsiders in the end, which is fine, but is it also a romantic break between the two? That last image with the trio of petals dropping as she walks away from her three friends seems to put Sumi on the same level as Brigit and Nico and I’m not sure what to think about this. Is the central conflict among friends or rather, which romantic relationship was able to last through the experience? Another tension I found interesting was the fact that the narrator is newer to the group and is also the only one going to an Ivy League rather than going out to save the world. Does this play into their interactions at all? I guess what I’m trying to articulate is this: while the ending of your story feels appropriate and believable, it doesn’t seem inevitable—looking back on the story, I wanted more concrete clues dropped that this fracturing would end in the very specific way that it does: narrator alone, Nico and Brigit together, and Sumi trailing. Basically, what in these characters makes the story end in the way that it does? And on some level, this can be as simple as adding in details about the relative levels of mushrooms mix they consumed and giving the reader more about how they interact with each other. Also, and this is a small thing, I’d like to see more of Sumi visually.
Overall, I really liked “Flower Children.” It is filled with beautiful language and takes on a challenging point of view—a drug-induced first-person—and really puts it off well. The story wasn’t melodramatic or even really about the drugs, and I enjoyed reading it very much, Brodie.
The external story in “Flower Children” is that four high school friends take magic mushrooms together as a goodbye ceremony and have strange hallucinogenic experiences leading to dangerous encounters with shards of glass. To me, the internal story examines the crazy effects of taking shrooms as well as the feelings of friends about to leave each other to follow the separate paths of their lives.
The language you use to paint the experience of tripping is so beautiful and vivid. Even before the drugs there are simple yet evocative descriptions, like “summer rain drums on our roof and blackens the pavement”, “she lets me paint her nails with highlighter in chemistry class”, and “her braids two crimson brushstrokes against the dreary sky”. Then when it gets fast and furious throughout the tripping experience, how the language plays with all the different senses, from the sounds “Sumi’s voice reverberates in my ear” to the visions of colors, rainbows, birds, to the touch: “drops strike my skin like tiny blunt needles, cold and precise” and “my hands are shocked to feel the sharpness of their thorns and the smooth tenderness of the berries”. The reader can feel the wonder, the detachment, the excitement, and the fear of the characters because the descriptions are so clear.
Another great thing about this story is how it shows the relationships between these four best friends. You do a good job of describing them so that they are each unique characters and have very interesting characteristics. And the way they react to things is interesting to watch. To me, this is the driving force of the story. This experience is supposed to be the culmination of their friendship, and also the proof that they will be friends forever. With such weight riding on it, there is such potential for things to go badly, and for them to come out of the trip disappointed and scared about the future, or it could fulfill their wishes and turn out to be the greatest thing they ever do together – this is what keeps me reading. When the story becomes centered on cutting themselves with glass, it is interesting to see that they don’t cut themselves but each other, and that they are fascinated with it and also irresponsible. I feel like this scene is representative of deeper longer trends in their past.
In revision, I think you should consider what you are trying to show with this story. What has changed by the end? I sort of take it to mean that while they expected this experience to bring them closer together, it did on one level (they are all “streaked with mutual blood”) but they have also been driven apart (they walk separately from each other and the narrator pulls apart a flower). If this is what you’re trying to express, then I think you can take it even further. The glass scene can show even more – are they doing this to be like blood sisters, so they are always connected? Or do they get pleasure from hurting each other? How do they react to the fact that they took it too far and really hurt Sumi? What do they feel after that scene? Are they scared about the future, their relationship? Do they feel closer because of the mutual blood?
Another question I have is why the narrator is going to an Ivy League school. She makes such a big deal about her hippy-ishness and how everybody goes on to do revolutionary, philanthropic, or creative things. I think it is important that the narrator has decided to be a “slave to the corporate system”. Is this her choice? How does it affect her interactions with her friends? Do they look down on her? Does she want to do drugs now while she still has the chance? Does she regret her decision. I think it is a detail that, if kept in the story, needs further explanation and needs to impact the behavior of the characters more.
Overall, I think this is a beautifully written story and examines interesting territory. Good work!
The outer story is about a group of friends that are seniors at a hippyish high school. They decide to take shrooms as a kind of going away ceremony before college, with the hope that it will act as a “spiritual awakening.” They all have a weird, trippy experience, which culminates with the narrator using glass to cut herself; her friends then follow suit, but Sumi cuts too deep. Then they leave. The inner story is about a desire to maintain some sort of connection that will last through college as the characters all go their separate ways; however, this connection doesn’t seem to occur.
I think the strength of this piece is in its descriptions. Like the Flannery O’Connor quote we read in class, your scenes often appeal to all the senses, which is great. For example on page six, in just a few sentences, you appeal to a number of the senses (“our clothes hang, saturated with rain [touch]…our sneakers squeak [sound]…wood chips, discarded cans, and cigarette butts litter the earth [sight]…the oppressive smell of rotting redwood hangs in the air [smell].” I also enjoyed the scene where they’re cutting themselves; it made me cringe, but it was also beautifully written (“the thick red sap pours from the tip of Sumi’s finger…”). This moment was really intense, and it slowed down the pace of the story, which seemed to drift too much earlier. In the end we get a really vivid scene here, whereas some of the other parts of the story don’t stand out as much because the sense of where they are is too vague, and it seems to fast paced for my liking.
I wanted to see more of a voice from the narrator, who doesn’t seem nearly active enough in this story as she could be. She reacts to the drugs and observes the actions of her friends, providing very stark, trippy details; but she doesn’t seem to make many judgments of her own. There’s little ambiguity, and things are stated very matter-of-factly; this is especially apparent when the narrator is describing her friends on pages 2-3. While the individual details are strange and compelling, because we don’t see her friends act this way, your descriptions of them got jumbled up, mixed together, and didn’t stick in my mind. For example, I remember that the narrator describes her friend as the yin to her yang, but I can’t remember which friend it is. We don’t see enough of them, or the narrator doesn’t pass enough judgment on them throughout the story such that each character can stand alone.
In terms of the ending, I wanted something more tangible—it doesn’t necessarily need to be obvious, but as things stand, if there was some overarching change, I wasn’t aware of it. I wanted to see something more discernible happen between the friends that either shows a change in their friendship, or shows how it has cemented itself further and will continue to maintain its strength through college.
I think you’re off to a great start. Good luck with your final draft.
The outer story in this piece concerns four friends who have decided to take mushrooms as a kind of ritualistic farewell to the end of highschool. The inner story seems to be about the relationships between these four characters and how they are subtly altered over the course of the night. I’m not sure what the narrator wants—she wants to connect with her friends, but on the other hand, doesn’t seem all too concerned with Sumi’s fate at the end of the story.
You had some really great language in this piece, and I really liked the descriptions of the narrator’s observations during her trip. They were obviously quite surreal and bizarre, but also felt really detailed and concrete. I also liked the set-up in this piece, and the weird situation of the characters’ school in general. I was intrigued by the “Euro-socialistic hippy commune,” although I wanted to know more about it. It seems like this whole community, not just the school, was this way, but I wasn’t sure how that was possible. I don’t think this is a boarding school, but at the same time they seem to be in a pretty typical upper-middle class suburbia complete with Rite Aids and cars. Maybe it’s powered by vegetable oil? I wanted to get a better sense of this world, which I think would add a lot of context to the goings-on within, and would bring the characters themselves into sharper focus.
I really liked the backstories you assigned to these characters—the descriptions of Brigit, Nico, and Sumi were just great and you included some nice, descriptive details that helped me picture each of them vividly. I felt like a lot of this distinction fell out somewhat as the story progressed, and they all sort of blended together. I realize that in part this is sort of an inevitable result of the altered state of the narrator, but I wanted some kind of conflict to play out during the course of the story, for these character’s distinct personalities to clash or interact in some way. I got some sense of that in the very end, with Sumi’s injury and her subsequent desire to be apart from the rest of the group, but I wasn’t sure how to read this, given that there wasn’t a lot of build-up or foreshadowing of this moment. If anyone, I thought it would be narrator who would end up being separated in some way from the rest of the group, due to her different background and decision to attend an Ivy League rather than working in the Peace Corps or attending a small liberal arts university. There’s a lot of potential tension and conflict there, but as it is the narrator seems to have settled into a niche in this place without many hitches. This might be something worth playing up in the story.
I wanted to know a bit more about the circumstances surrounding the mushroom trip. The narrator and her friend seem pretty comfortable doing this, so why is this a significant ritual? Maybe it’s because they do it so much that it has meaning to them, so how is this time different? Is this the last ever trip they’ll have together? Also, why are they doing it in front of a Rite Aid? Does it have some special meaning to them? I think the idea of this as a last hurrah for an epoch of their lives is great, but I wanted to see how it was affecting the narrator. Is she scared? Sad? Excited? Does she have any regrets about following a different path than her friends? I think answering some of these questions would add a lot of resonance to the story.
Really great writing, good luck with your revisions!
Hey Brodie, I read the outer story as being about a group of (hippy) high school students who trip out on mushrooms (which culminates in them "coming back" or whatever it's called as they're cutting themselves with glass). The inner story was a little fuzzy for me, but after reading others' suggestions is does make sense that it's about their dealing with splitting up (but I couldn't quite make that connection myself through just the story).
I know that probably just about everyone else alredy said it, but what really stands out in your story is just how vivid and alive it feels. The scenes all are very detailed yet abstract in a way, and you are able to create a sense of motion that complements the plot very well. Reading much of the imagery really was a very beautifully emotional experience. The glass scene was intense- by the end of it you had me totally caught up in the emotion of the scene.
I think my main concern with the story came with the main character- who is she? What does she think of what's going on? I saw so much going on in the story with so much imagery (it was really good, I just think it's been mentioned many a time in the other comments), but I couldn't really tell what the story was really about and what the narrator was trying to say. She seems to think she's an outsider in the "hippy commune" of a school but the way she talked just made her seem like she was one of those somewhat pretentious types that she sees her friends as. She does acknowledge that it's affected her, but she sorta goes back and forth between one who stays up and talks about existentialism and one who scoffs at that sort of thing. She doesn't really offer much about herself as the story goes on, so I just didn't know who she was.
I also think that there could be a bit more clarity about what's going on- since it's in the past tense (while the verbs are present tense it still seemed like it was being told after the fact), I think the narrator could describe the feelings she felt along with more about what's going on- especially in regards to the importance of the story and how it affected her. There is just such a brilliantly dramatic build with the hand-cutting sequence, I was let down a bit that there was only one paragraph left in the story and it all just sort of trickled away. It was a great set-up, but I think it needed some final push to give the story coherence and a satisfying conclusion.
I think you have the makings of a really good story here- the descriptions are fantastic, and the scenes are interesting and unique. All I think it needs is a bit more of a (not sure if it's quite the right word) conventional story beneath the unique description even if it isn't terribly prominent. A really good read- great job!
I understood your outer story to be about four best friends who take shrooms together as a sort of going-away-to-college ritual. The narrator cuts herself accidentally, and then another of the characters gets cut more deeply. I understood the inner story to be about the tension between the narrator’s love for her friends and her increasing feelings of distance from them.
Your use of imagery and detail in this story are truly wonderful. You do a great job of creating a drug trip that feels real and vivid, and I admire your commitment to specificity. The descriptions of colors are especially compelling, and I was amazed by the way I felt myself sharing in the characters’ sense of wonder. I think the ending is very powerful and nicely understated. The images and language throughout this piece are absolutely beautiful. I also love this “Flower Children” world that you explore, and I’d like to see even more of it. What are these characters’ parents like? Are the narrator’s parents hippies? If not, why is she at this school? I love that the narrator is unsure how she fits into this world, and I’d like to see more of that tension. It’s clear at the end that she feels distant from her friends, but I don’t quite understand why. The detail about her Ivy League future as opposed to her friends’ “Save the World” plans is intriguing. What exactly are her friends planning to do? Is this a tension that ever comes up in conversation, or is it unspoken?
The characters you describe in the first two pages are clear and interesting, but I don’t quite see these specificities carry through to their dialogue and interactions. I know that the drugs alter their interactions, but I’d still like to see more distinctions between the characters, and you already have them so clearly laid out at the beginning. It might help if we got to see them interact a little bit more before the psychadelic experience begins. Right now, I don’t get much of a sense of how things are when their normal, so it’s hard to know how the ‘shrooms change things.
There’s so much about this story that’s really wonderful, and it’s already a pleasure to read. I think that fleshing out a few more details about the characters and their relationships would be a great next step to take.
I read your outer story to be about four friends who take a trip on mushrooms as a goodbye to high school, and who, while tripping, find broken glass and cut their hands up. I wasn’t sure what your inner story was.
Flower Children had remarkable imagery. Everything, from the leather smell of the car, to the late-summer rain, to the color dripped landscape was vivid and convincing. The imagery does a good job following the high too, so that the kinds of detail you observe, and their intensity, change with the effects of the drug. The two middle paragraphs on page 5 were especially vivid, I thought.
I also really liked your characterization. The details you shared about your characters, from edgy black and white photos, to knit caps, made each one feel real and unique.
I couldn’t quite place your inner story. There certainly seems to be a change in the narrator after she cuts herself—a sort of separateness from her friends and violent indifference that we don’t see before. Why this change ahs happened though, is unclear to me, and what it means at the end is also ambiguous.
I tried putting some of your piece in the third person and I think that might actually work well. It gives the entire thing a feeling of detachment that might let you make your point more clearly. It’s a little unconventional, but you can keep all of the detail and structure you have now, just making it close third instead of first. When this happens I feel like I have a better understanding of the narrator.
I also wanted to see more dialogue. At times the piece felt a little bit heavy on back story and exposition, and so balancing scene and back story, especially at the beginning of the piece, would be helpful, I think.
Your narrator is clearly different from her friends, in that she is going to an Ivy League school. I wondered whether this was a consequence of her intelligence, means, interests, or parents. How does this play out among her circle of friends? What does everyone leaving mean to them next year? How strong are these friendships? Seeing some of these nuances would also be helpful for the reader.
Great draft, I really enjoyed your images and language, James
13 comments:
Brodie,
I read the outer story of “Flower Children” as being about the time that the narrator and her three friends ate ‘shrooms as a kind of capstone to their high school years. They eat the muschrooms and descend into a psychedelic experience. The narrator cuts her hand on a piece of glass, her friends become fascinated and try it as well. One of the friends cuts her hand quite deeply and then they go home. I wasn’t able to discern much of an inner story, since the narrator doesn’t really communicate much to us outside of her visual experiences while being under the influence. I was also unable to discern exactly what the narrator wanted in the story.
There are some really great descriptions of the things that the narrator encounters and becomes fascinated with while under the influence. Much of the story is spent with the narrator in this altered state and much of it is very interesting. In particular, the scene with the glass and the hand-cutting is beautifully executed and had me very much in suspense. I could tell exactly what was going to happen once the drugged up kids started having fun with glass, but I was dreading the moment in which it actually occurred. It is very hard to create suspense like that and I think that it was maybe the best job anyone has done all quarter at keeping me on the edge of my seat.
While many of the descriptions are great, I felt like the voice of the narrator while under the influence was not quite different enough than her normal voice, and at times she seems a little too aware of her mental state for how altered I think we are supposed to perceive her own perception as. One example would be when she tells us, “I have never been so happy”. I feel like someone so much under the influence might be feeling this intense of an emotion, but either couldn’t or wouldn’t feel the need to communicate that emotion with us. In general, I felt like much of the time the voice sounded like a sober person describing what things were like while she was under the influence, rather than the present-tense narrative of a person who actually is under the influence. It certainly is a challenge to create this kind of voice, but at times I got glimpses of it (the italicized portions are quite good) and I think you are up to it.
Like I said earlier, I had a difficult time discerning what the inner story/stakes/conflict of this story was. It reads kind of like a very well written account of somebody just describing what it was like to be on mushrooms. The narrator tells us in the beginning that the plan for the trip is a kind of spiritual shared experience, but this never really happens and we are simply left with the perception of the altered state. The scene with the bloodletting was so intense and then to have the characters just leave and have nothing really come of it seemed like a let down. I was honestly a little bit mad at the story for building me up like that and then leaving me with nothing. You’ve already done the hard part with getting the reader in that position, I think that the consequences or just the narrator’s perception of the importance of the event need to live up to this scene.
Brodie,
The outer story is about a group of friends who take mushrooms together, and the inner story is about one girl’s disconnection with her set of friends.
You have created quite the vivid and visceral story. There are so many wonderful descriptions about this quad of friends and their mushroom trip. I love how the narrator describes Nico and her relationship so simply and succinctly with, “She likes me because I’m most sanguine…I like her because she’s unpredictable and dark” (3). You have continuously vibrant description of their mushroom trip, such as on pg 4, where “The liquid movement begins to solidify until it stops completely, and I grip y seat, a sailor who has just hit land.” I felt and understood what the narrator was experiencing, right along with her.
However, a lot of the descriptions seem to be included simply for the sake of description. The story shouldn’t be about a trip, it should be about the group of friends, what they mean to each other, how the react to the drugs, how they react to each other on the drugs. You describe shrooming beautifully, but the question “so what?” is still left unanswered to me. So what? I actually am not sure what the inner story of your piece is. Is it the narrator realizing she is different from her friends? That drugs only emphasize the realities of life? That leaving a close groups of friends is difficult, but it is perhaps what the narrator needs being so very different from her friends? What is the plot arc of the story? What is resolved in the end?
I think the gazebo scene, where each friend cuts their own hand is full of tension, is oddly beautiful and grotesque at the same time, and has a lot of potential to set the narrator apart from her friends. However, although the narrator is aghast that her friends are purposefully hurting themselves, we don’t get to see her react. She just lets her friends cut themselves, and tries to help Sally when her wound is particularly deep. Why is it, though, that only the narrator is worried about their cutting? Have the drugs worn off just her? Is she different from these other three girls? Are they much darker than we thought? Does the narrator learn anything from this experience? You raise the stakes in this story when the narrator is walking towards the gazebo and says that she is the happiest she has ever been. How does it feel to go from being that happy to being disgusted by her friends’ actions? Let us inside the narrator’s thought and feelings-- it is first person. I think this scene will become much richer and fuller with just a little more emotional content.
Also, I wonder if four is too many friends for this story. Although you have some wonderful descriptions of what they are wearing and what they do, I think of her trio of friends always as the ‘others.’ It is unclear how each one has a distinct and unique relationship with the narrator, and as a result their actions don’t carry any significance to me. So that one jumps in puddles. So that one decides to cut her hand first. So that one knows how to eat mushrooms. Does it matter there are four? Could it be about just the narrator and one other friend? What if there are just two best friends who are saying goodbye to each other, and one ends up seriously cutting her arm? Right now, the trio read as a blur of characters to me. Perhaps trimming down your cast, describing each one more fully, of having them more active in the scenes would up their importance and personality.
This story has a lot of potential and I look forward to revisions,
Katie
Brodie,
This story is about a bunch of kids who attend a hippy-ish school taking a trip on magic mushrooms before graduation. It is a story about description. This is really well done and creates this really fluid reality that the characters almost swim around in. I felt as though this was what the story was really using for its strength, and being in a world of colorfully altered perspectives this seemed only right. Some suggestions.
The first two and a half pages occur before the narrator had eaten. This makes it the only space where the narrator is able to give cogent backstory. For the most part, this is really complete, but I am still left with some questions. The four of them are described in pairs. Brigit/Nico Sally/Narrrator I didn’t know how to take this. Are they just more special friends in the group or is there more to this. What are the edgy black and white photographs about? I think this is important because later in the story, an understanding of their dynamics whether romantic or platonic would help me interpret what is going on more.
The timeframe of their trip didn’t seem to be right. Mushrooms last longer than what I took from the story to only be a couple of hours. I think that they should either go to more places or do more in the spaces where they are. It seems like they are in car, walk past highschool and soccer fields, go to gazebo, get cut on glass, then leave. The description of what is going on is awesome. I enjoyed how Nico turned into a bird and back almost incidentally. What I don’t get in these scenes is any notion of time. Whether it is passing fast, or slow or just seeming to stand still, I can’t tell. I know from earlier in the story that time is somewhat of a concern. They don’t have much time together and they will soon be scattered all over the globe. Does this play in here at all? Are they completely unworried about having to do anything or be anywhere or is there any risk at all in taking this trip too far? I think that any of these concerns could be conveyed without moving out of the beautiful descriptive style that you create. This would make a little more consequence and add to the narrative.
The scene in the Gazebo is awesome. I wanted more buildup, though. As it functions now, I can’t see this place as clearly as some of the other details. How big is it, does the roof leak, does it look like a castle to them? The cutting seemed like the climax of the story to me and I wanted it to happen, like a lot of the rest of the story does in some highly surreal but incredibly lucid place. She says she thinks that bad things have happened here. Is it scary to her?
The way that she cuts her hand on the abalone broken glass was my absolute favorite part of the story. It really shows this almost complete detachment from world that is at the same time aware. I wondered how everyone saw the blood. Did it change at all? If Nico can become a bird, what does the blood look like dripping from their fingers? How does Brigit get to this point where she looks possessed and what kind of associations are going through the narrator’s mind here? Does Sally start freaking out? She won’t be near them when they exit, Sally and the narrator are extra close. I wanted to see more strange stuff going on here, the use of color that was so evident before. maybe talk more about the whiteness in her knuckles. The story ends with them all coming down off of this high, for one it didn’t last long enough, for two I don’t think that they have to. The narrator seems extremely isolated at the end of the story and I don’t know if this is true, if this incident caused it, or if she was always isolated and the trip just revealed it to her.
Awesome description and really well-written, Brodie
Mike.
Brodie:
The outer story is about a group of kids from an artsy, hippie school, who try psychedelic mushrooms for the first time. The narrator discovers the beauty of her own blood, and as a result, someone cuts her own hand too deeply (at first it seems Brigit cuts Nico, then it seems Nico has cut Sumi, finally someone named Sally seems wounded.) The inner story is about the tension between beauty and violence in the narrator’s life, and a perhaps, as cliché as it may sound, a loss of innocence.
I’m really intrigued by their school and I want to know more about it. I think by elaborating on the school, I will understand the characters more. Where do they come from? Are they flower children before they arrive? Is everyone at the school like this foursome? How superficial or sincere is their perception of the world? Everything is relative, and I need to know what I am comparing this all to. In some places, psychedelics are incredibly rare and counterculture. Yet, I almost find it hard to believe at an artistic commune, this would be the case. I want to be directed as to how to feel about this being the foursome’s first time tripping. I like this idea of violent beauty, perhaps the pain of art, and I’m curious how it extends into the narrator’s life beyond this isolated scene. Back-story might help with this, or at least more introspection on the narrator’s part. There is a lot of sensory description, which is all very beautiful and vivid, but I wonder where else her thoughts are going. Do any of these vibrant visuals provoke fears or passions she has thought about before?
I really like how the language of the hippie school sometimes infiltrates the the narrative, although I find the parenthetical explanation for this on page 3 distracting and unnecessary. I want to see even more of this. I want to see how this mythical-feeling place has provided our narrator with a completely different set of tools to perceive. What is moral in this world? What is repulsive?
Lastly, I never feel like I have a hold on who is who in the piece. This might be because the characters are all introduced at once, and they all hold equal weight. I find it surprising that I get so confused, since you go out of your way to describe each character on the second page, and yet. I wonder if you could show more distinction in dialogue? I wonder if the narrator’s history with each character would help solidify their personalities? This confusion comes to a head during the cutting scene, as I noted at the beginning of my comments. I’m not even sure who is bleeding, let alone if she cut herself, or if someone else cut her. I assume that the character, Sally, who appears, is really one of our original foursome, but a name change did not make its way through the draft? I’m not even saying these characters need to be completely distinct, but I want to make sure that this is intentional. I think it is important to know whether or not the bleeding was self-inflicted, but also would the narrator react differently if someone else had cut her palm? Or is it merely the act of the bleeding that shocks her? I think this is an important question, largely unanswered in this draft.
Really beautiful details: the ceramic pots, the mud-coated hem, blood as sap, etc.
-michelle
Dear Brodie,
On the surface, “Flower Children” is about Sumi, Nico, Brigit, and the narrator going on a mushrooms trip, the effects of which seem to wear off at different times for Sumi and the narrator. At a deeper level, your story is about four friends trying to do something together before the summer ends, and they each go their different ways after high school. Unfortunately, what was supposed to be “unified spiritual awakening” turns out to be a divisive experience that leaves the narrator walking alone, Nico and Brigit oblivious to anything but each other, and Sumi trailing behind them all.
The strongest part of your story was your sense of detail and imagery. I loved a great deal of your description: “Late summer rain drums on our roof and blackens the pavement” and “Sumi’s finger is white and tattooed in black ink,” among others. I especially liked the painting metaphor that carries throughout the piece. I also liked that you tried to root a very psychological experience in the senses: the vibrating air, the sound coming from great distances, “the smell of rotting redwood,” and so forth. The language of “Flower Children” provides its own kind of movement and I was definitely invested in the story.
I also really liked the quirkiness of your characters and the details you chose to give about each: Sumi’s music snobbery, Nico’s red hair, Brigit’s gazelle-like body. I found myself really wanting to know about how exactly they related to one another. For instance, it seems like Nico and Brigit are definitely close to one another and suggestive language describes their interactions: “their legs piled up on each other,” “their blankets move,” and so forth. Brigit is mentioned as having a boyfriend; is she also in a relationship with Nico? It also seems like the narrator puts her and Sumi in a couple: “she’s fire/wind, and I’m water/earth.” The reason I want the relationships clarified is because it seems important to understanding how they fracture and break apart at the end. I see Sumi and the narrator as outsiders in the end, which is fine, but is it also a romantic break between the two? That last image with the trio of petals dropping as she walks away from her three friends seems to put Sumi on the same level as Brigit and Nico and I’m not sure what to think about this. Is the central conflict among friends or rather, which romantic relationship was able to last through the experience? Another tension I found interesting was the fact that the narrator is newer to the group and is also the only one going to an Ivy League rather than going out to save the world. Does this play into their interactions at all? I guess what I’m trying to articulate is this: while the ending of your story feels appropriate and believable, it doesn’t seem inevitable—looking back on the story, I wanted more concrete clues dropped that this fracturing would end in the very specific way that it does: narrator alone, Nico and Brigit together, and Sumi trailing. Basically, what in these characters makes the story end in the way that it does? And on some level, this can be as simple as adding in details about the relative levels of mushrooms mix they consumed and giving the reader more about how they interact with each other. Also, and this is a small thing, I’d like to see more of Sumi visually.
Overall, I really liked “Flower Children.” It is filled with beautiful language and takes on a challenging point of view—a drug-induced first-person—and really puts it off well. The story wasn’t melodramatic or even really about the drugs, and I enjoyed reading it very much, Brodie.
Jessamyn
(sorry i posted above under my friend's account, by accident (jessica)) - mt.
Dear Brodie,
The external story in “Flower Children” is that four high school friends take magic mushrooms together as a goodbye ceremony and have strange hallucinogenic experiences leading to dangerous encounters with shards of glass. To me, the internal story examines the crazy effects of taking shrooms as well as the feelings of friends about to leave each other to follow the separate paths of their lives.
The language you use to paint the experience of tripping is so beautiful and vivid. Even before the drugs there are simple yet evocative descriptions, like “summer rain drums on our roof and blackens the pavement”, “she lets me paint her nails with highlighter in chemistry class”, and “her braids two crimson brushstrokes against the dreary sky”. Then when it gets fast and furious throughout the tripping experience, how the language plays with all the different senses, from the sounds “Sumi’s voice reverberates in my ear” to the visions of colors, rainbows, birds, to the touch: “drops strike my skin like tiny blunt needles, cold and precise” and “my hands are shocked to feel the sharpness of their thorns and the smooth tenderness of the berries”. The reader can feel the wonder, the detachment, the excitement, and the fear of the characters because the descriptions are so clear.
Another great thing about this story is how it shows the relationships between these four best friends. You do a good job of describing them so that they are each unique characters and have very interesting characteristics. And the way they react to things is interesting to watch. To me, this is the driving force of the story. This experience is supposed to be the culmination of their friendship, and also the proof that they will be friends forever. With such weight riding on it, there is such potential for things to go badly, and for them to come out of the trip disappointed and scared about the future, or it could fulfill their wishes and turn out to be the greatest thing they ever do together – this is what keeps me reading. When the story becomes centered on cutting themselves with glass, it is interesting to see that they don’t cut themselves but each other, and that they are fascinated with it and also irresponsible. I feel like this scene is representative of deeper longer trends in their past.
In revision, I think you should consider what you are trying to show with this story. What has changed by the end? I sort of take it to mean that while they expected this experience to bring them closer together, it did on one level (they are all “streaked with mutual blood”) but they have also been driven apart (they walk separately from each other and the narrator pulls apart a flower). If this is what you’re trying to express, then I think you can take it even further. The glass scene can show even more – are they doing this to be like blood sisters, so they are always connected? Or do they get pleasure from hurting each other? How do they react to the fact that they took it too far and really hurt Sumi? What do they feel after that scene? Are they scared about the future, their relationship? Do they feel closer because of the mutual blood?
Another question I have is why the narrator is going to an Ivy League school. She makes such a big deal about her hippy-ishness and how everybody goes on to do revolutionary, philanthropic, or creative things. I think it is important that the narrator has decided to be a “slave to the corporate system”. Is this her choice? How does it affect her interactions with her friends? Do they look down on her? Does she want to do drugs now while she still has the chance? Does she regret her decision. I think it is a detail that, if kept in the story, needs further explanation and needs to impact the behavior of the characters more.
Overall, I think this is a beautifully written story and examines interesting territory. Good work!
-Annie Jonas
Brodie,
The outer story is about a group of friends that are seniors at a hippyish high school. They decide to take shrooms as a kind of going away ceremony before college, with the hope that it will act as a “spiritual awakening.” They all have a weird, trippy experience, which culminates with the narrator using glass to cut herself; her friends then follow suit, but Sumi cuts too deep. Then they leave. The inner story is about a desire to maintain some sort of connection that will last through college as the characters all go their separate ways; however, this connection doesn’t seem to occur.
I think the strength of this piece is in its descriptions. Like the Flannery O’Connor quote we read in class, your scenes often appeal to all the senses, which is great. For example on page six, in just a few sentences, you appeal to a number of the senses (“our clothes hang, saturated with rain [touch]…our sneakers squeak [sound]…wood chips, discarded cans, and cigarette butts litter the earth [sight]…the oppressive smell of rotting redwood hangs in the air [smell].” I also enjoyed the scene where they’re cutting themselves; it made me cringe, but it was also beautifully written (“the thick red sap pours from the tip of Sumi’s finger…”). This moment was really intense, and it slowed down the pace of the story, which seemed to drift too much earlier. In the end we get a really vivid scene here, whereas some of the other parts of the story don’t stand out as much because the sense of where they are is too vague, and it seems to fast paced for my liking.
I wanted to see more of a voice from the narrator, who doesn’t seem nearly active enough in this story as she could be. She reacts to the drugs and observes the actions of her friends, providing very stark, trippy details; but she doesn’t seem to make many judgments of her own. There’s little ambiguity, and things are stated very matter-of-factly; this is especially apparent when the narrator is describing her friends on pages 2-3. While the individual details are strange and compelling, because we don’t see her friends act this way, your descriptions of them got jumbled up, mixed together, and didn’t stick in my mind. For example, I remember that the narrator describes her friend as the yin to her yang, but I can’t remember which friend it is. We don’t see enough of them, or the narrator doesn’t pass enough judgment on them throughout the story such that each character can stand alone.
In terms of the ending, I wanted something more tangible—it doesn’t necessarily need to be obvious, but as things stand, if there was some overarching change, I wasn’t aware of it. I wanted to see something more discernible happen between the friends that either shows a change in their friendship, or shows how it has cemented itself further and will continue to maintain its strength through college.
I think you’re off to a great start. Good luck with your final draft.
-Nick
The outer story in this piece concerns four friends who have decided to take mushrooms as a kind of ritualistic farewell to the end of highschool. The inner story seems to be about the relationships between these four characters and how they are subtly altered over the course of the night. I’m not sure what the narrator wants—she wants to connect with her friends, but on the other hand, doesn’t seem all too concerned with Sumi’s fate at the end of the story.
You had some really great language in this piece, and I really liked the descriptions of the narrator’s observations during her trip. They were obviously quite surreal and bizarre, but also felt really detailed and concrete. I also liked the set-up in this piece, and the weird situation of the characters’ school in general. I was intrigued by the “Euro-socialistic hippy commune,” although I wanted to know more about it. It seems like this whole community, not just the school, was this way, but I wasn’t sure how that was possible. I don’t think this is a boarding school, but at the same time they seem to be in a pretty typical upper-middle class suburbia complete with Rite Aids and cars. Maybe it’s powered by vegetable oil? I wanted to get a better sense of this world, which I think would add a lot of context to the goings-on within, and would bring the characters themselves into sharper focus.
I really liked the backstories you assigned to these characters—the descriptions of Brigit, Nico, and Sumi were just great and you included some nice, descriptive details that helped me picture each of them vividly. I felt like a lot of this distinction fell out somewhat as the story progressed, and they all sort of blended together. I realize that in part this is sort of an inevitable result of the altered state of the narrator, but I wanted some kind of conflict to play out during the course of the story, for these character’s distinct personalities to clash or interact in some way. I got some sense of that in the very end, with Sumi’s injury and her subsequent desire to be apart from the rest of the group, but I wasn’t sure how to read this, given that there wasn’t a lot of build-up or foreshadowing of this moment. If anyone, I thought it would be narrator who would end up being separated in some way from the rest of the group, due to her different background and decision to attend an Ivy League rather than working in the Peace Corps or attending a small liberal arts university. There’s a lot of potential tension and conflict there, but as it is the narrator seems to have settled into a niche in this place without many hitches. This might be something worth playing up in the story.
I wanted to know a bit more about the circumstances surrounding the mushroom trip. The narrator and her friend seem pretty comfortable doing this, so why is this a significant ritual? Maybe it’s because they do it so much that it has meaning to them, so how is this time different? Is this the last ever trip they’ll have together? Also, why are they doing it in front of a Rite Aid? Does it have some special meaning to them? I think the idea of this as a last hurrah for an epoch of their lives is great, but I wanted to see how it was affecting the narrator. Is she scared? Sad? Excited? Does she have any regrets about following a different path than her friends? I think answering some of these questions would add a lot of resonance to the story.
Really great writing, good luck with your revisions!
Hey Brodie,
I read the outer story as being about a group of (hippy) high school students who trip out on mushrooms (which culminates in them "coming back" or whatever it's called as they're cutting themselves with glass). The inner story was a little fuzzy for me, but after reading others' suggestions is does make sense that it's about their dealing with splitting up (but I couldn't quite make that connection myself through just the story).
I know that probably just about everyone else alredy said it, but what really stands out in your story is just how vivid and alive it feels. The scenes all are very detailed yet abstract in a way, and you are able to create a sense of motion that complements the plot very well. Reading much of the imagery really was a very beautifully emotional experience. The glass scene was intense- by the end of it you had me totally caught up in the emotion of the scene.
I think my main concern with the story came with the main character- who is she? What does she think of what's going on? I saw so much going on in the story with so much imagery (it was really good, I just think it's been mentioned many a time in the other comments), but I couldn't really tell what the story was really about and what the narrator was trying to say. She seems to think she's an outsider in the "hippy commune" of a school but the way she talked just made her seem like she was one of those somewhat pretentious types that she sees her friends as. She does acknowledge that it's affected her, but she sorta goes back and forth between one who stays up and talks about existentialism and one who scoffs at that sort of thing. She doesn't really offer much about herself as the story goes on, so I just didn't know who she was.
I also think that there could be a bit more clarity about what's going on- since it's in the past tense (while the verbs are present tense it still seemed like it was being told after the fact), I think the narrator could describe the feelings she felt along with more about what's going on- especially in regards to the importance of the story and how it affected her. There is just such a brilliantly dramatic build with the hand-cutting sequence, I was let down a bit that there was only one paragraph left in the story and it all just sort of trickled away. It was a great set-up, but I think it needed some final push to give the story coherence and a satisfying conclusion.
I think you have the makings of a really good story here- the descriptions are fantastic, and the scenes are interesting and unique. All I think it needs is a bit more of a (not sure if it's quite the right word) conventional story beneath the unique description even if it isn't terribly prominent. A really good read- great job!
-Matty
Dear Brodie,
I understood your outer story to be about four best friends who take shrooms together as a sort of going-away-to-college ritual. The narrator cuts herself accidentally, and then another of the characters gets cut more deeply. I understood the inner story to be about the tension between the narrator’s love for her friends and her increasing feelings of distance from them.
Your use of imagery and detail in this story are truly wonderful. You do a great job of creating a drug trip that feels real and vivid, and I admire your commitment to specificity. The descriptions of colors are especially compelling, and I was amazed by the way I felt myself sharing in the characters’ sense of wonder. I think the ending is very powerful and nicely understated. The images and language throughout this piece are absolutely beautiful. I also love this “Flower Children” world that you explore, and I’d like to see even more of it. What are these characters’ parents like? Are the narrator’s parents hippies? If not, why is she at this school? I love that the narrator is unsure how she fits into this world, and I’d like to see more of that tension. It’s clear at the end that she feels distant from her friends, but I don’t quite understand why. The detail about her Ivy League future as opposed to her friends’ “Save the World” plans is intriguing. What exactly are her friends planning to do? Is this a tension that ever comes up in conversation, or is it unspoken?
The characters you describe in the first two pages are clear and interesting, but I don’t quite see these specificities carry through to their dialogue and interactions. I know that the drugs alter their interactions, but I’d still like to see more distinctions between the characters, and you already have them so clearly laid out at the beginning. It might help if we got to see them interact a little bit more before the psychadelic experience begins. Right now, I don’t get much of a sense of how things are when their normal, so it’s hard to know how the ‘shrooms change things.
There’s so much about this story that’s really wonderful, and it’s already a pleasure to read. I think that fleshing out a few more details about the characters and their relationships would be a great next step to take.
Zach
Dear Brodie,
I read your outer story to be about four friends who take a trip on mushrooms as a goodbye to high school, and who, while tripping, find broken glass and cut their hands up. I wasn’t sure what your inner story was.
Flower Children had remarkable imagery. Everything, from the leather smell of the car, to the late-summer rain, to the color dripped landscape was vivid and convincing. The imagery does a good job following the high too, so that the kinds of detail you observe, and their intensity, change with the effects of the drug. The two middle paragraphs on page 5 were especially vivid, I thought.
I also really liked your characterization. The details you shared about your characters, from edgy black and white photos, to knit caps, made each one feel real and unique.
I couldn’t quite place your inner story. There certainly seems to be a change in the narrator after she cuts herself—a sort of separateness from her friends and violent indifference that we don’t see before. Why this change ahs happened though, is unclear to me, and what it means at the end is also ambiguous.
I tried putting some of your piece in the third person and I think that might actually work well. It gives the entire thing a feeling of detachment that might let you make your point more clearly. It’s a little unconventional, but you can keep all of the detail and structure you have now, just making it close third instead of first. When this happens I feel like I have a better understanding of the narrator.
I also wanted to see more dialogue. At times the piece felt a little bit heavy on back story and exposition, and so balancing scene and back story, especially at the beginning of the piece, would be helpful, I think.
Your narrator is clearly different from her friends, in that she is going to an Ivy League school. I wondered whether this was a consequence of her intelligence, means, interests, or parents. How does this play out among her circle of friends? What does everyone leaving mean to them next year? How strong are these friendships? Seeing some of these nuances would also be helpful for the reader.
Great draft, I really enjoyed your images and language,
James
Post a Comment