Oct 29, 2023
Hey, Bubbles! Thanks for reading my short story and even taking the time to leave extensive and detailed feedback! This is, by far, the best feedback I've received on this short story, and that's including my creative writing professor!
I think you make a lot of good points, and I personally actually wanted to avoid suggesting that love can somehow help people overcome suicide since that does seem saccharine and trite to me too, and it reduces the real struggles that people go through. That's why I didn't have the guy ever reciprocate or respond to her declarations of love, only that he didn't resist, which is, I think from personal experience, how a lot of people struggling with depression and suicide go on with each day. It's not that the guy realizes that suicide is bad, only that he can carry on one more day at a time with the hope that maybe the unknowable future could hold more than this obsession.
The main point I was trying to make here was that a lot of depressed and suicidal people can't ever be happy because they marry their self-conceptualization and identity with depression and can't imagine themselves ever being happy, which may or may not be true. That's not something anyone can ever say for sure. I think portraying these helpless people as beyond saving as you've suggested would've been a fascinating way to offer this different perspective while also refuting the original short story by condemning the romanticization of suicide. This story did always come off as a bit too preachy even to me, especially with a word limit of only 1500 words to develop everything, and I think you perfectly encapsulated why that is.
Since there are still a few days left before the end of the competition, I think I might bring this up with some other people in my network who give me feedback and make some edits to improve the thematic narrative. (I think I can still make changes to a submitted entry marked as complete as long as it's before the deadline???)
Anyway, thanks again! And if you have the time, I'd love to know what you liked about the story too!
