Taylor Hardy "Losing Sincerity"

This story shows a particularly busy evening in the life of a young hotel manager by the name of Brad. Brad has recently come into his managerial powers and some of his coworkers, including his recent girlfriend, believe the power has gotten to his head a little. I did not see any real change in the protagonist throughout the story; this felt more like a snapshot of a narrative rather than a fully developed beginning, middle, and end. The tension in the piece comes from two places: Brad’s coworkers and the drunken mass of party guests. The coworkers continually make comments, some serious and some not, about him being snobby with his power, and the party guests are so unruly that the entire event has to be shut down. I liked the subject matter of this story. It is not too often that we get the perspective of the management of a party, so the change of pace in viewpoint was refreshing. I think there is a lot of potential here with the characters, but there needs to be more of an arc when it comes to Brad.

            What I really liked about this story was the narrative voice. Internal thought seemed to flow nicely into dialogue, and I never found myself struggling to move through the plot. I was a little confused about his whole relationship with Alyson and how that played into the story. When it came up on the first page, I was expecting that to be some sort of driving force throughout, but it is barely visible in the action. In revision, I would suggest you take a look at this part of the story and decide if it needs to be there. If so, I would make it more prevalent and more important. All in all, though, there is a lot of good material here, and I do not think you will have any trouble making a few changes to have a good story.

jessica Mullino "For the Love of the Game"

This is a story about a girl wanting to meet her father. Ever since Lindsey’s mother has told her the identity of her father, she cannot get enough of watching his old baseball footage. He used to be a pitcher for the Mississippi State Bulldogs, but now plays in the MLB as a pitcher for the Cubs. Finally, Lindsey resolves to see her dad in person and sneaks off to a Cubs game one weekend. The primary tension in this piece originates from the absent father character in Lindsey’s life. As soon as she decided to go see him in person, the audience is wondering how both parties will react to such a meeting after never seeing one another. It is obvious throughout the story that Lindsey’s want is to meet her father and perhaps start a relationship with him. I cannot say I saw a significant change in Lindsey over the course of the story, but the circumstances around her appear to change a little.

            This story included a lot of really good descriptions especially pertaining to baseball. I enjoyed the imagery on page one that described the red clay and obscured lines of the batter’s box. There were several things that I think need to be improved, however. First, we need to know from what perspective this story is being told earlier in the action. For the first two and a half pages, I thought this was just a third person account of something happening right now. When I discovered that it was actually from the point of view of a girl watching a recording on TV, I had to go back and reread the section again so I could understand the context. I also wonder if the first few pages even really do anything for the story as a whole. Granted, they contain good descriptions and such, but I did not feel like they were necessary for the plot of this story. Perhaps if there was more insight into Lindsey and what she thought about while watching the video it would be all right, but as it stands now, this section feels a little extraneous. There are also some grammatical errors to address, but these should be quick fixes.

I really liked how the ending of this story was not as cliché as it first appeared it was going to be. Instead of getting to meet her father, Lindsey is only left with a note saying her dad wants to meet her, but wants to do so with her mother as well. This made for an unexpected turn, and I liked the unconventional route it took. With some editing and revising, I think this story has a lot going for it and will be a very enjoyable read. Nice job.

Kody Blackwell "Over the Counter"

Kody’s story is one about a father struggling to keep his house and support his three kids on a meager salary. As a pharmacy technician who doesn’t make much, it becomes obvious that he will not be able to keep his house with his current income. Based on the suggestion of an acquaintance, our protagonist decides to steal some prescription medications from his work and sell them on the street. By the end of the story, it is clear that the main character’s desire to keep his house for himself and his children is more important than staying on “this side of the jail bars.” What works great for this story is description. Just to pick out some of my favorites from page one: “each letter hit my eye like a typewriter’s hammer,” “ink sank into my brain,” and “the numbers that sat in my hands with the weight of all the money I didn’t have.” These did a fantastic job of engaging my attention and making care about the character. The voice throughout the whole piece feels relatable and down-to-earth, making his struggle feel more important to the audience.

            What I wished was different about this piece was the ending. It wasn’t anything related to the character’s actions that bothered me, it was just the fact that that was the end. The story felt truncated somehow, like there was more that needed to be said but wasn’t. I think I wanted to see more about what this decision did to the character mentally and emotionally as time went on. As it stands now, we don’t know how the character might have changed or developed as a result of this choice to sell drugs. I also wanted to see more interaction between the father and his children. We are given brief glances into their relationship, but I thought this could have been expanded a lot more and added a lot to the emotional appeal of the piece. All in all, this was a very enjoyable read, and I think with a little expansion it will be even more engaging than it already is.

Cole Eady "The Grind"

            This is a story that focuses on a young, aspiring writer in New York City named Skippy Fischer. From the onset, it is clear that Skippy wants to get into the comedy writing game and plans to do so by getting a job as a staff writer for the Midnight Slot with Stewart Donahue. When he finally gets his shot, however, he is too revolted by the people in the business to continue and simply walks out of the writer’s room. From these events, I understood it to show Skip’s change from being motivated to succeed in writing to wanting to remain uncorrupted by mainstream comedy. A lot of what is working for this piece has to do with the narrative voice. We are in Skip’s head throughout the story, and his descriptions, musings, and observations are very lucid and often very funny. The situations that unfold throughout the story seem believable and had me rooting for Skip the whole time.

            Where I got a little confused was the ending. Up until the very last page or so, Skippy appears to be willing to do anything to get his foot in the door for professional writing. He even lies about having an interview with the Rolling Stone in order to make himself seem more viable. When he finally sees behind the curtain of late night entertainment, I did not have any trouble believing he would be disgusted by the men in charge, but I did have trouble believing he would use this as a grounds to walk out on a potentially prestigious job opportunity. His concern for “victimizing people” and so forth does not come up until this last instance, and it appears to come out of nowhere. I was expecting Skippy to stand up and have some great alternative kind of comedy, perhaps putting a less derogatory spin on what the other men were saying. I wanted him to be the guy that brought the “next level thinking in order to raise the bar” mentioned on page 4. By walking away at the first sign of controversy, it took away some of Skippy’s character, at least for me. If a little work is done at the end, I think this will be a great story, more so than it already is. This was a story that flowed very easily and one that I enjoyed reading very much. Really good job.

Lauren Barkley "Winter's Chill"

This was a story that focused on a married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Smart, coming up against some relational stress. The root of their disease appears to be related to the rather haphazard way in which they met in a bar one night and is accentuated by a mysterious text of affection on Mrs. Smart’s phone. On the night Mr. Smart sees this text, he is called away to pick up a body from the mountain even though the weather is inhospitable. What is interesting about this story is that we get two perspectives: Mr. Smart’s in the beginning and Mrs. Smarts right at the end. From these two accounts I gathered that Mr. Smart was upset by his wife’s alleged infidelity and did not feel like he knew who she was anymore. Mrs. Smart’s account is significantly more limited, but she appears to want to repair their relationship especially after she sees how upset the text on her phone makes him. While the characters’ wants are vaguely outlined, I found myself wanting more by the end especially from Mrs. Smart’s point of view. I think if we as readers knew more about what each character really wanted out of this relationship, then the ending and preceding action would be much more impactful.

            There were moments throughout this piece that I really enjoyed. A good example is on page 3 where Mr. Smart sums up how he and Mrs. Smart became a couple. This description is concise and gets to the heart of the basis of the Smarts’ relationship, something which is both essential for the story and enjoyable for the reader. What I thought detracted from the story was some the unbelievable aspects of Mr. Smart’s profession. For beginners, it seems unlikely that a funeral home director would be in charge of gathering dead bodies and that he would take them to the funeral home instead of the morgue. In addition, I did not understand why it was so essential for Mr. Smart to leave right in the middle of terrible weather to go pick up a dead body that is not going anywhere. I would suggest either changing his profession and restructuring the circumstances that call him away or simple reworking the entire situation altogether. I would also like to emphasize that I liked the perspective shift halfway through the story, but I wanted more insight into Mrs. Smart’s character. We get a lot of Mr. Smart, but only a little dose of the Mrs. With some revision, I think this story can have a lot of things going for it.

Ethan Hightower "Holes Full of Dirt'

I’m a sucker for stories with good titles. As such, I immediately had high expectations for this piece, and I was not let down. What the title implies, at least for me, is the idea of calling something that it is not. Is a hole full of dirt really a hole? By definition, no. And getting to the heart of this story, I think this is what Jeremy discovers about himself: that he is trying to be something that he is not. By trying to fill in the holes in his driveway and impress Ashlyn with his work ethic, Jeremy is essentially trying to bury his adolescent awkwardness and smother the parts of him that he doesn’t like. When he is foiled in his attempt to do so, however, he has a great moment of honesty with himself in the middle of page 6.  “I had trouble driving this truck because I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to make Ashyln like me, because she just didn’t. That was something she had to do on her own, and no matter how nice this road looked at the end of the day, I would still be myself, stumbling through awkward conversations.” As a reader, this was like a gourmet feast of character development; there are so many layers, so many wonderfully honest layers in this short section that make the whole story come to life in one fell swoop. As if this weren’t enough, this section is quickly followed up by an interaction with Jeremy’s father that puts this moment, this realization in a larger context. Despite Jeremy’s mistake with the truck, his father still tells him he is proud of him and laughs off the transient nature of the truck anyway.

            This final interaction builds this story up beyond a mere relation of events, but rather depicts a journey of a boy growing into a man. When I finished this piece I knew two things: Jeremy is beginning to accept who he is, and Jeremy has a father who will be his unwavering supporter. This made the story so much more meaningful than some “another day in the life of a high-schooler” piece, and I really enjoyed the simplicity and subtlety of it all. The only shadow of a suggestion I have for this piece is perhaps to revise some of the dialogue between Ashlyn and Jeremy in the first couple of pages. There were only a few spots that seemed like they could use a little work (such as some of the tags and Ashlyn’s question about Jeremy’s age), but overall, this is a very well-written piece that was incredibly enjoyable for me to read.