Jeremy Hare "Dreams"

Jeremy, what I think works most about this story is how it encapsulates a full journey of sorts. When you started the story, I found myself in the middle of what was happening, but quickly got a recounting of the past and even a glimpse into the future with Sora’s narration. I got to see Sora’s arc, even though the story only takes place over a fairly short time period. I got the sense that Sora started out weak, but would eventually grow strong by challenging Ryu every day; this is the journey that I saw underlying the entire story. In this way, it was nice to have a strong sense of direction in both plot and character development.

            I remember you saying in class that you enjoyed reading/writing a lot of Manga, and I definitely felt that influence on this piece. I had a few suggestions to try to move this story more towards literary fiction in a few areas. First, I would remove some of the instances where Hikari says out lout what she is thinking. Examples of this include “Hmm?” “Asleep?” and “I don’t really recognize him. Must be a freshman,” on the first page. These are things that I felt like a real person would not say out loud but would rather think to themselves. Rather than have her says these things, I would suggest you either describe what Hikari is thinking through authoritative voice or have her think the same thoughts directly. I think this would make the story feel a lot more realistic.

            A second thing I would suggest is to take out a lot of the laughing. I did not count the number of times a character laughed, but it was frequent enough that it became distracting especially since nothing particularly humorous is going on during the story. I also thought all the laughing conflicted with Sora’s initial character description. At first, he his curt and even sneering towards Hikari, but then resorts to laughing almost any time he speaks. Perhaps there is nothing wrong with either one of these characteristics separately, but together they were confusing. Altogether, you have likable characters and potential for an entertaining story. I especially liked how the story ended in a note of action and tension.