Love Him, Hate You (Contest entry)

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Dear, wickedwonder

Your welcome in advance for the review.

wickedwonder wrote:

Spoiler

Contest Entry! for Yuriiko's Postsecrets Contest (http://www.youngwriterssociety.com/topic70858.html) Enjoy! I'll attach the picture at the end.

Marissa~

I know you hate me. I know you can’t stand the way I smoke and the way I ride a motorcycle instead of a car. Luckily for me, and unluckily for you, Jeremy loves me. I hope I just gave you a heart attack.

I’m not sure where you got your sexist, archaic views. Women are meant to do more then cook, clean and have a couple children, no. According to you, just because I wear skin tight jeans, enjoy getting drunk once in a while, it makes me a demon.

Oh, and I have a tattoo. On my lower back. Right above my butt. Do you want a picture?

I hope I just sent you into cardiac arrest.

Your son, Jeremy, loves me. I mean it. You should hear what he calls me in bed. Truthfully, I love him too. That’s why your son spent $11, 100 on my Tiffany engagement ring.

That’s right, Marissa. Jeremy loves me so much that we’re getting married next spring, on April 19th. Marriage. I’m going to be part of your family.

Just makes you sick, doesn’t it?

I really hope I become your least favorite Daughter-in-law. Lets face it, Jeremy’s brothers will marry nice girls that you’ll love, so it’s up to my to tarnish your perfect reputation.

I’m going to enjoy this.

~Chyssa Johnston

PS-Like the dress? Me too, though I don't think it's revealing enough.

Spoiler

Picture-

post_secret_bride.jpg

Look:

Because of the length of this story there weren't any glaring errors for me to nitpick at. That's not necessarily a good thing, because to me it just signifies that this story was too vague and short.

You chose to write a 2nd person narrative, ambitious, but extremely difficult to pull off effectively. I think you did okay in terms of voice as well as setting up the frame of a letter/email which makes the story more believable. The problem then lies in the lack of conflict.

Don't get me wrong, your story definitely contains tension, but tension and conflict are not the same thing. Conflict is the source of the tension, it is the driving force in the story that must come to a tipping point by the time the story is over. This story lacks that.

One thing I suggest for generating conflict in the story is to be more subtle with your description, at least in the very beginning. Your narrator should hint at the tension between her and the fiance's mother. As the story goes on become slightly more explicit, and for God's sake use some detail:

I’m not sure where you got your sexist, archaic views. Women are meant to do more then cook, clean and have a couple children, no. According to you, just because I wear skin tight jeans, enjoy getting drunk once in a while, it makes me a demon.

Get rid of adjectives like, sexist and archaic, and replace them with descriptions. You tell the reader outright that the soon-to-be mother in law has sexist and archaic views but you never give us any examples as to why. For all we know this woman could be a perfectly reasonable individual and the narrator is the one in the wrong.

I'm assuming you want the reader to sympathize with the narrator, but based on this story the mother is far more sympathetic than she is. We need several of these examples to get the point across.

Also, I suggest changing the title to something a little more subtle and esoteric to the story.


Hope this has been helpful to you. Good luck with your contest.

Hi. This isn't really a story at all. There's no plot. I know two people are getting married but that's just something that's going to happen, it's not the same thing.
There's no progression; it's just a static image of someone ranting to someone else.
There's no conflict or resolution.
There's no description. I have no idea what the mother looks like, or the person writin gthe letter or the setting or anything.

As Badnarrator said this is a tricky format to pull off, but it can be done really effectively. For example, are you familiar with Joey Comeau? He wrote a series of cover letters for real job advertisments as various characters, and some of them are pure genius. Look here: http://www.asofterworld.com/oqarchive.php

Maybe take a look at a few and see if you can take anything from them. I don't mean to sound patronising, just trying to help