So here’s the thing. I went into reading your submission with the Caps vs. Rangers hockey game on in the background. I don’t want NYR to win because their coach is Alain Vigneault and he coached Vancouver and I hate Vancouver (the Canucks) therefore I should hate NYR. But that’s besides the point. I didn’t really care about the game. My team (Oilers) have been out of the playoff picture for 9 goddamn years and hockey has been a chore to watch especially in these spring months.
But something happened while I ‘read’ your story. I suddenly became interested in this hockey game the means almost nothing to me. Your first five pages that had 1186 words — less words than a goddamn pamphlet — was so uninteresting that it took me half-an-hour to finish. I looked back and forth from my computer screen to the television and found that the game was 1000000x more interesting than your story.
WHY?
Short answer: NOTHING HAPPENS
Long Answer
So first off, this is another goddamn science-fucking-fiction story and everything sucks for humans and earthlings and where have I heard this story before… that’s right — EVERYWHERE. It’s such a cliche concept and if I read the blurb on the book at a bookstore or library I would 100% put it behind a different book so completely forget its there next time I go through the same aisle. As you can tell, I do not like science fiction.
Why else is this submission so mind-numbingly boring? See: short answer.
As everyone has said, this story is severely lacking in the ‘action’ and ‘developments’ that are apparent in all great, good, okay, — in literally all NOT BORING STORIES. I think that this problem comes with your narrative choice.
You wanted to write a letter that’s being used as a therapy exercise, right? Well, it’s not working. This is mainly because there are only 3 people interested in reading it: Clark Bracci, Clark Bracci’s dead father, and Clark Bracci’s therapist whose name I won’t remember because I don’t give a shit about Clark Bracci’s therapist. See? Your submission is not letting me, as a reader, get into the story because it’s like I’m reading someone else’s letters. Imagine going to a friends’ house. Now, imagine him/her taking a stack of papers from their desk and saying ‘read this shit’. And now you’ve spent 3 hours sitting in his/her desk painstakingly reading his/her notes from his/her doctor. Yeah, not interesting. The main thing you need to do is change the whole ‘letter’ approach.
Compliment and more criticizing because I don’t want this to end on a happy note because I’m terrible
Your writing is good. Not great, not amazing, not terrible, not bad. Good. It’s nice to read. But guess what — that alone does not matter. In my opinion, you need 3 main things along with many little things. First: prose. You’ve got it. Nice work. Love your ability and cultivate it. Second: Characters. I guess… your characters are okay. No way am I going to empathize with them, though. That’s because you’re missing number three: a plot. YOU’VE GOT NO FUCKING PLOT. YOU’VE GOT 1186 WORDS OF EXPOSITION THAT WOULD MAKE ME PUT DOWN THE BOOK. The letter does not up the tension. It does not advance the story. It can showcase your prose, and it can establish your characters, but the events — or rather lack thereof — that you want me to care about will fall short of my interest as long as you stay with this style. Start the fuck over. Don't do a stupid letter.
