Boot Camp Emerging Writers' Club 2
Feedback on last week's submissions, plus three more readings to feed back on.
Ten Shun!
The submissions from last week were:
‘The Bees of Ritaville’ by Alexia
‘August 1991’ by Masha
‘The Project’ by Troy
That comment thread ( 27th October) is now CLOSED. Any more submissions/remarks need to go on the comment thread at the end of this post and should only refer to this week’s submissions. Thank you.
I thought these all showed a great deal of promise. And there was terrific feedback from other Boot Camp members.
In no particular order, I will start with August 1991 by Masha.
It had a fair number of fans on the the thread. Ann Gauger thought it was ‘absolutely beautiful’. Troy thought there was a ‘great sense of innocent energy and young love’. I enjoyed it too, but I agreed that it ‘strained for poetic effect’ as Troy had it. More seriously, it didn’t fully engage me. It felt very ‘generic’ I thought, and there was some clunky exposition in trying to explain what was going on politically at the time. I though it needed more ‘voice’ ( which both Troy and Alexia had in spades), some kind of compelling individual signature. I didn’t see the point of the prologue either. But of course it was only the first few thousand words, so this shouldn’t be taken as a critique of the work as a whole. I will be interested to see where Masha takes it.
This, incidentally, is why I have asked people who submit to give an idea of where a story is going, because I don’t only want to judge on the writing, but on the story idea. And on that front, there is really no meat there yet in Masha’s story, although the setting has a lot of potential. How do the two lovers clash/grow/get tested? And how does that dovetail with the overall theme/historical backdrop?
As for ‘The Project’ I thought it was brilliant - perhaps because I am a single father myself and I can so well identify with the situation.
Link removed at the request of author
I have put a few notes on the document above, which I haven’t done for the other two submissions as I didn’t seem to have edit privileges ( and I don’t know how you get them). But the narrative drove forward with great energy, and dilemma piled upon dilemma. I loved the fact that the stepfather turned up to pick up the lost project and that Alvaro is so infuriated to be so brutally confronted with his own inadequacy when Leo turns up in possession of the project. The dialogue is snappy and the hurt surliness of the child beautifully portrayed. Full marks from me.
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