Joshua West: Break Up
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This was creepy-awesome-spectacular. I felt very disturbed as a woman reading it, but that's the thing, then: you nailed the narrator's voice perfectly. (So awesome. And creepy! And awesome.) One of the things I felt was very effective is that you didn't linger in any one scene for very long, but gave just enough information in the opening scene to establish the characters and relationship, the shadow outline of the grounds for the break up. That was very well done. In the second section, you also spoke around the direct violence in a way that I found more chilling than if you had described it in detail. It amplified the narrator's indifference to the violence taking place. It's like what we discussed about Buffy (writing in the space around the subject), only used to provoke terror and alarm rather than grief and sympathy. The only slightly confusing place was at the end, where there is the first use of a name (Mario). Is Mario the narrator, and we switched over into third person? That's the only place where I was thrown out of the story for a moment. Really well done.
p.s. Unfortunately, I can't think of a clever title. I'm not good at titles, either. Sorry!
Thanks for the advice and kind words Sarah, I am very grateful for it! I'm taking your cue on the last scene and working on revising it to make it more clear for my final draft.
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