Laurel Kostakis "Deception"

This story centers around an older couple living in the midst of suburbia. The primary tension throughout this piece lies in the relationship between Marcy and Kevin, namely in Kevin’s desire to go on a weekend trip with a coworker named Cynthia. From here, however, I struggled to put together any meaningful cohesiveness to this narrative. The most immediate thing I felt was missing from this story was a protagonist with well-defined wants or desires. While Marcy offers a vague distaste at her husband going off with some other woman for the weekend, she does not put up much of a fight, even internally. The next best candidate for character justification is Marcy’s desire to get a dog. Again, she does little about this desire other than talk to people about it. I think there are ways to make even a trivial desire like wanting a dog a compelling centerpiece for a story, but I did not think this piece reached that level at all. The section about the burglar is not so much a source of tension as it is a functional plot point for the end of the story.

            The bulk of this story consists of things happening to Marcy with little to no action on her part. Even at the climactic ending, Marcy’s sole role in the fray is to hide behind a closet door and watch two men kill each other. My first and most emphatic suggestion for this piece would be to recreate Marcy into someone the audience can root for; as it stands now, it is hard to find a reason to care about what is going on around her. My second suggestion would be to slow down on transitions and let your audience know how your characters are getting from place to place. A prime example is on page 3 when Kevin and Marcy somehow get from finishing their walk to going to bed without any indication of what time has passed or what the characters have done. Not only is this confusing, but it also detracts from the opportunity you have to improve characterization. If I had to add just one more quick suggestion, it would be to eliminate A LOT of the ellipses in this piece. In a few places it is fine, but all in all I was extremely distracted by the sheer volume of these suckers. These are by no means to only areas that need work, but I think they would be a good starting point.