Hello,
So what we have here is a deeply flawed piece of writing with good bones.
First, let me tell you what I liked. The ending was quite surprising—I didn't see that coming at all. I thought you were going to go for the usual happy ending, reuniting the couple and giving them a rousing storybook ending full of marital bliss and smiles. But I'm so glad you didn't go that route. This felt much more gritty and tragic, and also highlighted the epidemic of servicemen and women committing suicide. That said, I did have issues with how you handled the death, but I'll get to that later.
I like the premise. As I said before: There's definitely good bones here. It's not an incredibly original or groundbreaking idea (man goes off to fight for his country, loses a leg, comes back changed), but the fact that you really went to that drama place and also included a miscarriage and a suicide (and possible, implied suicide of the wife as well) helped boost the originality factor a bit. I do love that you didn't back away from the tragedy or sadness, and didn't give us that Hallmarkian happy ending. That definitely made this piece stand out to me.
Now for some criticism:
This piece was almost laughably unrealistic. If this were a fantasy novel set in the make-believe kingdom of Gyulliptia, I could maybe give you a pass, but this is supposed to be a dramatic story set in our world and therefore should at least somewhat abide by real-world rules. But you pretty much threw those rules out the window with this story. From her miscarriage, to her pursuit of Zeke, to her landing that job, to him killing himself, almost every big plot point in this story strayed so far from reality that it may as well have been a fantasy novel rather than a grounded drama. It also did feel quite melodramatic at times, which may've been your intention, but I still thought I should point it out. Stories that border on soap opera territory are a pet peeve of mine. I'll get into the specifics a bit more later, but before I do, let's talk about another issue of this piece: showing versus telling.
If you hop around this site, you're bound to see that term come up. I'm not sure whether or not you're familiar with it, but searching Google (or even searching this website) should bring up ample results to clarify if you're confused. Here's a quick, oversimplified summary for the purposes of this review: Telling means to tell the reader what's happening, showing is to show the reader what's happening. So yes, it's just what it sounds like.
In this story, you do far more telling than showing—a big no-no. Most of the writing in this piece is written in overview format—like how a Wikipedia page would describe what a story is about rather than how the actual book is written. You don't want to summarize a story, you want to actually write a story. There's a big difference between the two.
Some particularly glaring instances of telling rather than showing include the wife's miscarriage (glossed over and sped through like you were trying urgently to get to the next part), Zeke's choice to join the Navy, the wife's feelings about him joining the Navy, the wife's attempts to find him, the reveal of Zeke's missing leg, the wife telling him about her miscarriage, Zeke's reaction and Zeke returning home, and finally, Zeke's suicide. All of these big, important moments are rushed and skimpy on details, and there's no emotion. It really is written like an overview.
I want to see Zeke's misery. I want to see the wife's pain over losing her baby. I want to see the bittersweet joy of their reunion. And I don't just want to see all of that, I also want to feel it. When you're writing a tragic story, I want to feel sad—hell, I want the story to make me cry. I want to be a puddle by the end of it, and I want it to linger in my head for weeks. A well-written tragedy will do that. A tragedy that tells more than shows and leaves out key details, will not. I felt nothing reading this. I wanted to ache for these characters, I wanted to sympathize with them and feel their pain, but I couldn't.
And here's the other reason I couldn't feel their pain: I literally know nothing about them. They have no personality, no flaws, no complexities, no layers. They're made of cardboard rather than flesh and blood. They're not even characters so much as stick figures meant to act out the action of this story. You might've noticed I've been referring to the protagonist as "the wife," and you know why I've done that? Because that's all she was: Zeke's wife. You use her name a total of one time, at the very beginning of the story, and even though I thought, "Gold—that's a weird name," I still couldn't be bothered to remember it. I had to scroll back to the start of this piece and look it up just now in order to recall what it was, and I think that's very telling.
Good characters will stick in your brain. Flat characters won't even stick around for the duration of the story.
These two felt very, very expendable because of their utter lack of personality/lack of development, which is probably why I didn't flinch when Zeke died. I was surprised, sure, but not sad—just like I wasn't sad when he lost his leg or when she miscarried. Unfortunately, it's not good enough just to have tragic events happen to your characters: You also have to make us care about your characters in order to feel for them. And you have to describe their pain and their emotion in a way that's compelling and detailed, which wasn't even attempted with this story.
The pacing and flow of this piece were also quite iffy (it felt very rushed due to the summarizing style of writing/telling rather than showing), and there was a general lack of imagery, not only in regards to your characters but also the setting. I couldn't picture any place your protagonist visited, not only because it was rushed over, but also because nothing was described. Details and descriptions are your friends, and they'll make your writing so much more fun to read. Use them.
Now onto some nitpicks and comments:
I wonder who he is I thought as he started walking my way. I could feel my chest getting heavier for just the sight of him made the butterflies in my stomach flutter around.
Comma after "who he is." Also, something about the line "for just the sight of him" feels kind of overwrought and cheesy. I'd get rid of the "for."
“Hey, I’m Zeke!” said the tall, handsome guy that was making his way towards me just moments before. “Um, hi. My name is Gold.” I stuttered because I wasn’t used to strangers introducing themselves to me.
First of all, if she stutters, you should show her stuttering (e.g., "m-my name is Gold"). Secondly, she isn't used to strangers introducing themselves? Has she never left the house before?
And finally, a general rule is that, after you have a bit of dialogue, you're supposed to hop to a new paragraph rather than continuing in the same one—particularly if more than one character speaks. So, for example, let's say you have a paragraph like this:
My friend Raj suddenly appeared at the park. He waved at me. "Hey, Dana!" I waved back. "Hey, Raj!"
The way that should be written is like so:
My friend Raj suddenly appeared at the park. He waved at me. "Hey, Dana!"
I waved back. "Hey, Raj!"
Note the paragraph break following Raj's dialogue and before Dana's.
“I’m just takin’ pictures for a class at school. What about yall?”
You're missing the apostrophe in "y'all."
“Why are you laughing at me?” I said starting to get irritated.
Comma after "said."
“Your accent. It’s cute.” My heart melted from this statement and at that moment, I knew I wanted to talk to this guy forever.
Jeez, just based on that? It was one stupid comment. Has she never had anyone compliment her before? That's, like, stalker-level attachment; I'm getting Lorna-from-Orange-is-the-New-Black vibes right now.
We continued talking for about thirty minutes, laughing, and making jokes. He finally asked me for my number and we started texting every day. Eventually he asked me to go out with him and we dated for three years. In our third year of college he proposed to me in the spot that we met our senior year of high school.
When Zeke and I got married, I knew that he was joining the U.S. Navy, but I didn’t know they had a secret station for him. One night we got a call from one of his commanders and they told us he was scheduled to leave on the first of the year. The commanders wouldn’t give us any details about where he would be moved to or for how long. I knew that it would be hard but my life would not be over.
This is a perfect example of telling rather than showing, and exactly what I was talking about when I said you wrote more of an overview of a story than an actual story. You skipped over a lot of meat by summarizing all this rather than detailing it.
I can tell that he didn’t know how to react.
I can tell that he was upset
I can tell he was scared
I can also tell that he was excited
You switch tenses repeatedly throughout this story, flipping from past-tense to present-tense whenever it suits you. This is just one example of many. See how parts of these sentences are written in present-tense ("can") and parts of these sentences are written in past ("didn't")?
Suddenly a thought enters my head, how am I going to let him know.
Question mark after "how am I going to let him know"; change the comma following "head" to a period or colon.
I wasn’t able to finish enough college in order to get my major so I got a minor instead.
A major is not a degree, it's a concentration of study. So, for example, one might say, "I got my bachelors in biology," or "I have a masters in psychology," but one would not say, "I got my major" when referring to a degree. A minor is also not a degree, but a less-intense area of study which is meant to be worked on concurrently with one's major. So, again, an example would be, "I majored in psychology and minored in women's studies."
Basically, I'm saying this line of your story made no sense.
They gave me a job as the head phycologist in the mental health ward.
In order to be the head psychologist of a mental health ward, you'd probably have to know how to spell the word "psychologist."
Also, this is just so ridiculous. The girl doesn't even have a degree and just got there, but she walks in and gets a job just like that? She has no idea where Zeke even is! What is she doing? She seriously hasn't heard from Zeke the whole time he's been gone, so she decides to jump on a plane and try to track him down by flitting from country to country? That is a horrible plan. And yet she finds him! She actually finds him, because I guess believability and realism don't matter? Also, how was she able to afford these absurd trips, anyway? This is the first time you mention she's "running low on funds," but I would've thought she'd be long out of funds by now.
He said yes and we make our way back to Wisconsin. When
The night we got home, Zeke excused himself to the bathroom.
Random, wayward "when."
I heard a crash in the bathroom all of a sudden. My heart was racing and I was assuming the worst as always. But this time, it was the worst thing that could have happened.
Zeke is laying on the bathroom floor with an empty prescription bottle in his hand.
When someone swallows pills, their death is not instantaneous. If Zeke excused himself to the bathroom and took some pills, and she hears him immediately fall and runs in right away, he'd still be alive. It's not like a gunshot; death by overdose is generally not a super-quick thing. Now, what often happens is even if the suicidal individual was found before they died, if they swallowed enough pills, they likely still wouldn't make it—but they'd be rushed to the hospital all the same and their stomach would be pumped. So what I'm saying is that if she finds him immediately (and she does), he'd still be alive and she'd be frantically calling 911, not standing there and already mourning him.
SO. Overall, this piece, while lacking any degree of believability or realism and while written in an undeniably flawed way, still has good qualities. I don't think it's beyond redemption. In fact, I think if you rewrote it—and worked on some of the things I'm suggesting you work on—it would turn out to be a really great story. It usually takes a couple of drafts to nail a piece of writing, anyway. Don't give up on it.
Keep the faith!
Points: 2856
Reviews: 41
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