[September Contest] Matthew and Ali

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Spoiler

Your story is about a house cleaner in New York e-mailing their mom.

from Matthew Rice <wildricematt@yahoo.com>
to Kelly Rice Davidson <kjr55@sbc.global.net>

Subject: Hey


Hi Mom,

Can you answer my calls? I know I keep telling this to you, but I'm sorry I wasn't able to make it to the wedding. I really hope it went well and that Tom's been a good husband to you. Can you please send me the pictures soon?

I really couldn't afford to miss a day of work. Fewer calls are coming at each day--this really nice old lady Karen (she lives about two miles from here) still calls, and I go to clean her house once every two weeks. But I think she's our only regular customer. And they just had to lay off three of us two days ago.

I guess people just don't need their house cleaned too much anymore, so trying to work up the money each month to pay the rent has been has been tough.

Also, Ali got evicted, did I tell you that? She's not had much luck finding a job ever since Macys fired her. I let her move in with me, but I honestly don't know how I'm going to be able to support us both for very long. Needless to say, we're waiting to get married until things change. And they will, I promise.

I really miss you, and Lily as well. How is she liking her senior year of high school? Do you think you guys (Tom can come too if he wants) could all come out to visit Ali and I in Manhattan soon? A visit would help so much right now. Do you think you bring some of your homemade key lime pie or bring the ingredients to make it here?

Again, I apologize for not making out to the wedding. I really, really wanted to come. I'll make it up to you, I promise. Hope to talk to you soon. I love you, Mom.

Love,

Matthew

Hey Eli! It's not often I get to review something of yours, so woot!

I'm glad you took an original approach with your story and gave some hint of a back-story behind what the son is saying. It gives him some depth that could be relatable.

However, I have some tiny qualms that you might want to think about, this being for the September Contest and all. For one, I don't get why this is so formally written--or rather, too well written. It doesn't feel like it's being written by a house cleaner in New York low on work. It feels like it's written by someone like you! A writer! I don't like that. Of course, if you don't want to "dumb down" your story, you could always add some history to this by maybe making writing--or something like it--his one-time career aspiration (which would explain his understanding of the English language ). Ideas, ideas...

Second: It's all a bit cheesy. There is no familiarity between the mother and the son, no nicknames or inside jokes (not that you need to be funny), nothing that would give me a sense of family or to what depth their relationship goes, be it positive or negative. I really think you could develop that. Otherwise, I'm afraid we have a Folger's commercial on our hands.

That's really it, though. I don't see any major areas where you need work, other than those. Good luck in the contest; I hope you do well!

Hey girl! Not much to review, but I'm going to do the best I can to help ya out here.

Quotes 'N' Comments

(I told you about her, remember?)

Argh I hate this. I think this would be an opportunity to introduce something, well, interesting to your story. This is a good first draft, but it needs something that will keep us reading, and by this point, I can tell that it isn't really going anywhere. So spice it up a bit! Maybe this old lady can be some psycho who has blood stains on her carpet every time they go to clean it, I don't know. Something creepy, something that will add an unexpected twist. You followed the prompt good, now you need to add a little bit of you to it.

I let her move in with me, but I dunno how I'm going to support us both. Needless to say, we're waiting to get married until things change.

Your character is confusing me. The first underlined is slang, and the second is really proper sounding. He/she sounds like one big oxymoron, and I don't appreciate it very much. I think you need to grasp your character a bit better. Figure out things about them that aren't included in the story, but might have helped shaped their personality. Maybe this character ran away from home? And that's why they're emailing their mom? I don't know. But a person who ran away from home ought to have some emotional problems different from one that just left, right? That would affect their personality, so you need to figure it out, mkay?

Do you think you bring some of your homemade key lime pie or bring the ingredients to make here?

I do really appreciate this, though. It adds a bit of personality and realism to this letter. Most of the email sounds personal, but not really in depth, and this comment totally seems real. I can just smell the serious sucking up your character is doing by saying. It makes me think that maybe something in the relationship between mother and and son/daughter is wrong. I love it.

Characters

Like I said above, figure out your characters. Are they rich or poor? Are they mentally unstable? The main problem in this is that there is no plot, therefore you have to get into your characters. Something has to be interesting in this, and right now I just can't see it. Add a little spice. Have the email talk about weird homes they've cleaned, or maybe something strange that happened when the new roommate moved in.

Overall

Like I said above (haha, repetitive?) this isn't all that interesting, but like I also said above, this is just a rough draft. I know how you write. You usually like to jot things down as your first draft, take in the reviews, and revise completely, making it oh so much better. I expect the same with this.

I think that your main character could be interesting, you just need to do some fine tuning.

Add some twist, something interesting and original, something you. There are so many characters mentioned, but you don't go into any of them. I would like to know a little more about Ali, since the title of this work has that name in it. They're just mentioned, try talking about them and explaining who he/she is. Maybe how she/he is affecting the living environments? Your main character is a maid, do they get frustrated with the new roommate making a mess? I don't know, just add something!

Keep going with this, I can see it turning into a great work.

Sam

*Edited*

Hi again,

I think I'll just go through and edit the grammatical things ...

Elinor Brynn wrote:I really couldn't afford to miss a day of work though, you need to understand that. Fewer calls are coming in at the firm each day. This really nice old lady Karen (she lives about two miles from here) calls once every two weeks, but I think she's our only regular only customer. And they just had to lay off three cleaners just two days ago.

I changed around "Karen, this really nice old lady," because I feel that that's the way somebody would write in a casual email to their mom.

Elinor Brynn wrote:Do you think you guys (Tom can come too if he wants) could all come out to visit Ali and me in Manhattan soon?

This is a pet peeve of mine. I'm sure the phrase "proper grammar" is synonymous to the words, "__ and I" in many people's minds, but this is actually not the case. Take out Ali, and what does it say? Do you think you guys could all come out to visit I soon? This doesn't make sense, so it should be me.

I really liked this story overall; I think it's the best short story contest submission I've read! Keep writing.

- Abigail

Hey Elinor Jai here to review.

If you're going to stick literally to the email concept, perhaps you should also include a time stamp, and the email addresses of the two characters:

from "Matthew Rice" (mattyboi@yahoo.com), 12:38 PM, 19/08/2015
to "Kelly Rice Davidson" (kelly_rice@gmail.com)

Can you answer my calls? It really hurts me that you're ignoring me like this.

It might just be me, but I can't really imagine a man saying this, or typing such a well-written email. *is immediately flamed by all the male YWS users*

I really couldn't afford to miss a day of work though, you need to understand that

.
I think it sounds better that way.

Fewer are coming in at the firm each day.

This sounds a tad stiff, "There are less people coming in at the firm each day" sounds more realistic to me.

I guess people just don't need their house cleaned too much anymore, so trying to work up the money each month to pay the rent has been has been tough.

Wait, what? I totally thought that by "firm" you meant some sort of lawyer business. I don't know what you would replace the word with, but "firm" sounds too professional for a cleaning service. Also, I sorta don't believe that. People need house cleaners all the time. Especially if you're renting and you are moving out. If there is the smallest problem regarding the cleanliness of the property when they do an end of lease inspection, you get hit with the cost of a cleaner, and in the worst case scenario, your bond is withheld. We paid a private cleaning service $400 to clean our rental property of two rooms, bathroom, laundry, kitchen, dining/lounge room.

tl;dr, all they would need to continue running is two full house cleans a day. If this business is in a large metropolitan, they'd always have business.

Also, Ali got evicted, did I tell you that? She's not had much luck finding a job ever since Blockbuster fired her. I let her move in with me, but I honestly don't know how I'm going to be able to support us both for very long. Needless to say, we're waiting to get married until things change. And they will, I promise.

Woah, how old is the guy? His girlfriend worked at a movie rental - that's a teenagers job?

Overall, this was a nice snippet of an average person's life. I don't think the part about the wedding needed to be in there. If you removed it, you could add in more stuff about Matthew's current situation and I think that would be more interesting.

- Jai

I thought this was nice- it was an interesting approach to the topic you were given- one I wouldn't have thought of. Nicely done for that.

I think that you could have done more with this. You can give your character more of a voice. There were a lot of things going on in the story, but they weren't really being fully formed. I think you might be able to incorporate more emotion. More drama into it (which isn't something that I normally recommend). Maybe not "drama" drama, but make it seem more like a plead for forgiveness. You want the mother to know the dire situation they're in, so she knows that they really COULD NOT afford to skip a day of work. You could develop things more, round them out a bit.

Also, as people have mentioned, the voice doesn't seem to fit a cleaner. Also, I don't know if I've ever seen a male house cleaner before. Just sayin'.
I would think about making this more relaxed, and assume that the mother knows something things. Make the information-giving more subtle.

Otherwise, very very nice job.

Great write.


-Coral-