May 22, 2024
Whilst I appreciate the candour of this piece, it feeling very much like personal experience (or self-insertion), I think there's a lot that your storytelling still leaves to be desired. For one, I think the style is all over the place, though it is an improvement over your past works – which is very good! More like this! The more poetic bits feel dangling, like pencil sketches, and I think that's in no small part due to the pacing. We go through the story at a very hurried pace, which makes it all feel like a summary of experience; nevertheless, we dedicate a good chunk to the preamble and grounding of the character, frontloading which really dulls the beginning. It is hard for the imagery to live like that – it's the literary equivalent of a teacher writing with one hand, only to erase the board with the other.
Secondly, whilst I will reiterate that I understand the memoir quality of this, I would be remiss not to point out this is still meant to be a story (or at least that's what the contest is for) and therefore the characters are expected to obey a certain development. Or if not the characters, the plot. Here, I feel like both character and plot are just simmering. Nothing of note happens – and if/when it does, it is written with no specific attention to tone or detail, to the point where it feels like just another beat in the song. At the very least I was hoping to see some accent or significance attributed to *something*. But as it stands, not one line is different from the rest – and a monotonous composition isn't something I particularly enjoy. Perhaps you could consider adding some dialogue? Some sprinkled-in lines could be a good way to break rank a little bit. Or otherwise, structuring your paragraphs in a more compact manner (as opposed to the 4 line maximum you choose here, an interesting decision in and of itself given the nature of this story) could allow you to deliver a bit of punch with one-liners.
Thirdly and finally, I wonder if the main character couldn't have had more personality. I've noticed this as a kind of throughline of your work, where the protagonist is mostly blank, an observer, or the few qualities they have are very muted or constrained. Even when he said he got very drunk to talk to his crush, he felt aloof in a way that is less thematically congruent and more clumsy and unintentional. I can appreciate this might've been the intent, but as with most feedback I give, me being able to glean the underlying reasoning of a choice doesn't mean I agree, support or enjoy its portrayal and execution. In other words, I'd advise that you let your characters off the leash a little more. There's plenty of potential to them (and to your writing), which I imagine and hope can be achieved without lapsing into shitposting.
That all out of the way, I do think the story beats here are very cool. I like the idea of borrowed time romance (so much so that I tried centring a novel around it), but I wonder if, based on the vibes I get here, if you wouldn't have benefitted from a more melancholic approach. I'm not sure what happened in reality, but I think it would've made for a more compelling narrative if your character didn't confess. Trimming the beginning, you could start on the 'meet-cute', and then present a couple vignettes where he started falling for the girl, thought about confessing several times but overthought his decision, got drunk to help but that didn't work, and then he went back to the US, regretting his cowardice - and blaming some sort of doomsaying, that it wouldn't have worked out anyway because long distance, impermanence, something something cope. Spring is the season of new beginnings, and that much happens here. But every beginning eventually ends, and with your character leaving Japan just as summer rolls around (headcanon), I think that would make for an interesting parallel. You can also keep the leitmotif of the bus stop, though perhaps doing it for every vignette could get droning (you could inject it in different ways, though). Happy to expand on this off-line, i.e. on Discord.
Best of luck in the competition,
Bubbles~
