Short Story Prompt #2 : Milk/Raven

workshop
#1

Happy Memorial Day, all.

I wrote a short story yesterday using the assigned quad for this month.
It ran rather long, but I went where the narrative needed to instead of working slavishly within the 1,500 limit.

Having had a side-conversation with Chief Jassnip, the suggestion was that I post anyway, but encourage people only to read the first 1,500 words! Sounds fair.

If you read only as far as the first asterisk, then that will be my “Appraisal” appreciation.
No need to go past there.

As last month, I’ve used Medium.com to publish, since the latter part of the story get’s a little sweary : Milk/Raven

Cheers,
DK

#2

Hey DK,

So, poor Em.

First kudo is for good tension running through this. From the moment Damon shows up I was wondering what the catch was, and you never made the POV character dumb. Damon acted in a way that didn’t set off her alarm bells.

So, my guess for the order of this is …hmmm. I can see a couple of different orders

Appraisal, doubt, investigation and reappraisal.

She thinks he’s a good guy
But he does a couple of hinky things, creating doubt
Her friend shows her the investigation
And she reappraises him as the slime bucket he is.

It drew me along for the length of it, so I’d say this is mostly a success.

Now, of course, you are wondering why mostly. Well it’s because this was missing drive for me. Em wanted the guy, but she didn’t have to do anything or overcome anything to get him. Which I think, if she’d had to work a bit more to get him, it would have made the eventual outcome even more devastating.

Anyway, those are my off the cuff thoughts. I’m glad you participated.

I started mine, but I don’t know that I’ll have time to finish it, so I’m really proud of your efforts.

#3

Thanks Jassnip.

Those are all astute comments. You nailed my (intended), encoding order. I also concur that there would have been an easy modification or two that could have kept the story pretty similar but flipped a few appreciations over.

Intuitively, I get your point about ‘Drive’. Is this an aspect of dramatica, or your perspective?
I think it’s still a valid comment, even if it’s the latter. That said, I don’t feel like I want to make this any longer to give her some ‘work’ to do to.

What I have done is re-written Damon so that he is much less telegraphed as a bad guy in the opening section. I’ve also removed the old ethnic beggar man so I keep away from the cliched trope of the mystic foreigner selling someone the answers… And I think those changes, in some way, cater to the lack you were sensing in the narrative. (maybe!)

Anyway, thanks again for the read and the comments, they were helpful and provoking.

Good luck getting your story finished!

Cheers,
DK