Nov 12, 2023
To:NATAS
You don't need to apologise, but thanks. Much appreciated. And since you've so graciously invited me to give feedback your story, how could I refuse? Let's dive in.
First of all, you overuse a certain kind of sentence, one that goes like this, multiple clauses linked by commas, to the point where they get really hard to get through, let alone pointless to parse. Their stylistic effect is pretty minimal, oftentimes muted by the fact that you add in some kind of repetition every single time. It's cool to rely on some techniques, but the more you invoke them in quick succession, the less effective they are. Not to mention how the attempts at this kind of narrated 'poetry' fall flat, mostly because the rest of the story doesn't do much to build around this airy, arthouse vibe.
Speaking of the story, the narrative thread is pretty thin. A lot of the time the main character just stops the narration to insert this kafkaesque self-interrogatory, which doesn't really contribute much. He doesn't ask any dramatic question, doesn't follow any particularly interesting lines of enquiry. It's just 'do I know this?', then explaining what this is for three more questions, then following on. Coming back to the main point, structurally, you don't really have any sort of goal to write towards and your plot beats don't hit as a result. The reveal that the girl killed herself is padded out so much, and its impact is nullified. Whereas the ending just comes as the stale conclusion of something without any proper setup.
See, the issue here is that the tone of the narration doesn't really change. There's no flow to it and because of that it's easy for the events presented to mesh together and be read mechanically. Since the same kind of writing is used beginning to end, the story never actually feels like it has a beginning, nor an end. Rather, it's just a slice of film cut out from a larger piece. Which was definitely not the intent, mind you; otherwise that 'three days have passed' wouldn't have existed.
Ultimately, what you've got here is a somewhat 'prettily' written soliloquy that makes a vague gesture at a storyline structure. Although with the writing quality being far from stellar and the events presented lacking the necessary 'oomph', this kind of experiment remains unsuccessful.
And so, all I can wish you is the best of luck in the competition.
Cheers,
Bubbles.
