Specific Comments:
“The room was small, a lot smaller than some of the other places they had been told to wait before they were called on stage”. This sentence is pretty long-winded and the phrasing, to me, seems a little awkward. Is there a word for rooms where pop stars wait before going on stage? If so, I’d suggest you use that word here, or at least try to rephrase the sentence to make it shorter and more concise.
“Three by four meter space” is a bit of a mouthful. Also, most American readers won’t understand the reference to “meter”. I would suggest finding another adjective to describe the space.
I like the phrase “just a guy who liked to play the guitar into a gal who had sampled every illegal substance under the sun”. It carries a lot of weight, and shows the transformation Sammy Silver/John Richner has made. The two characters seem totally antithetical, and yet they are the same person.
I was a bit unsettled by the line, “the most important day in all of history and you go and kill half your brain”. The phrasing of this sentence sounds like it’s the first time Sammy has turned to drugs, like they haven’t tried to kill half their brain before. But from what you’ve written in previous sentences, it sounds like they do drugs all the time. I get what you’re saying, and it’s well written, but it just comes off a little weird to me.
I like the way you had Sammy suck her wrist because she thought it was blood. It’s a crazy detail, and totally fits.
I was confused by the paragraph where it says Lex “rose a hand and waved a final goodbye. Bonnie B noticed and he saw the understanding dawn in her eyes. She smiled and waved to him farewell”. This sentence seems more in line with the last actions of a martyr. But Lex isn’t going to sacrifice himself; he’s just playing a different song than they had planned. Why doesn’t he just tell the band what he’s going to do, so they can go up on stage and sing it with him? I did like, however, the way you weaved in the detail about “Here Comes the Sun” being the first song they played at a gig. It was a nice twist at the end.
General Comments:
Nice job! I was impressed by the smooth nature of the narrative, and the way you easily tied in a lot of thoughts and ideas. There were no abrupt stops or starts, and I felt like you guided the reader throughout the whole narrative. There were also a few times where I was particularly impressed by your phrasing, for example when you say “the sun had the best seat of all, looming over him. The giant ball of flame searing the sky” as Lex is playing “Here Comes the Sun”. It’s beautiful, poetic imagery, and reading it touched my heart.
While your writing style was beautiful, there were many times I felt a bit overwhelmed by the themes in your piece. You address the end of the world, the crisis of being an old pop star, the downsides of fame, drugs, and being transgender. As you fit so many themes into such a short space, I thought a lot of them were glossed over, and didn’t get the significance they merited. For example, the end of the world. Why is the world ending? When did humans find out the world would end? Why have they all turned to drugs and drink? There is so much more to explain about the end of the world. I’d also like to know a little more about Supernova, the band. I felt like I only got a superficial glimpse at them. I don’t know much about their history, and what they were like when they were younger. If you added more details about the glory they had in their youth, it would make their old age even more pitiful. I was also confused as to why they were picked to sing the last song. Were they really famous? Unless they were as famous as the Beatles, it seemed to me a little strange that they would be picked to sing the last song ever played.
I was also a little confused about the fact that the end of the world wasn’t mentioned until the second stanza. The phrase introducing it was quite beautiful, but it was so sudden I didn’t really notice anything but my own confusion. It was introduced in such an offhand way, and I feel like if the world is ending, that should be front and center. If it’s there, it has to be a major part of the story, always looming. And it was there in your story, but I didn’t feel like it was as important as it should be. You focused a lot on the band, and finding Sammy, while as a reader, I was most curious about the end of the world. The story just seemed to take so many twists and turns, and it confused me. I’d think the story is about one thing- pop stars- and then it’s not, it’s about the end of the world. But then it switches to being about old pop stars, and then to the problems of drug addiction, and it’s not about the end of the world at all. But then it goes back to being about the end of the world after all. Everything about your story was well written, but the direction was confusing.
I liked, however, the solid imagery throughout the piece. I always had an image in my mind of where the characters were, and what they were doing. You put in a lot of little details, such as saying the room they waited in was “furnished modestly, with a few mirrors on one wall”.
I also liked the whole idea of faded glory that was woven throughout the piece. The main characters are old pop stars, past their prime, on a dying Earth, past its prime as well. I would encourage you to keep that theme, and elaborate on it. I look forward to reading more of your stories!
Points: 7
Reviews: 100
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