Chapter one - Lily
Perfection. The common love to say it doesn’t exist. The extraordinary know that perfection is infinity. A never ending ladder. All that matters is how far up you climb before you fall.
Perfection. It’s funny how much of a hold that one word has over me. My whole life I was on top of the world, at the fiery tip of success, destined for greatness. Everybody had faith in me, believed in me, rooted for me. Until suddenly one day they didn’t anymore. That's when I went from an aspiring star to wasted potential. The bottom of the barrel. Just another addition to a special graveyard where dreams were left to die. All because I dared to love.
***3 Years ago***
The final bow was always my favorite part of the show. Of course there was no actual dancing involved but that feeling of absolute exhilaration as the audience applauded. There was simply nothing like it. Standing there with my chest heaving both with pride and fatigue, flashing the ever adoring fans with a smile knowing that this simple act alone could turn regular applause into a standing ovation. That was the power I once had. My grandmother had a saying she loved repeating to me when I was young, "You can either spend your life clapping for people or watching them clap for you.” Simple really, but it stuck but maybe not in the way it should have. She’d always implied with that little quote of hers that she wanted me to pave my own path and I did but it also gave me the constant need for validation. I had to be the best in every room. The smartest, the strongest, the most graceful. People had to be dazzled, in shock, awe even when they heard the name ‘Margaret Davenport Winchester’ . The point of me sharing this with you? Let me break it down plain and simple. Throughout my life, I had a desperate need to be loved. But the things we want most in life are always the things we’ll never get.
***
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125,027 Literary Works • 672,774 Reviews
This is a very strong start to a character-driven narrative!
I love how this sets up a mythic tone to the story! Lily, or Margaret, feels haunted by her own ambition, and that's a fascinating contradiction. I think that it is theatrical without trying to extend into something too ambitious. She knows she sounds a bit tragic, and she is leaning into it. The effect is dramatic, but it's not self-indulgent like most fall into. That is great!
You use the 3 Years Ago shift well, as well. It’s brief, but it has some thematic backing to feel natural. It is sudden, but this is short so that everything is sudden.
Your language does feel unclear at times, though. Short stories should be able to show a clear timeline of events, but I feel that it gets repetitive here rather than creating unique plot points. I can't pick out something that I would say is the defining arc of the story, but I should. For example:
These are a lot of words that mean the same thing. It doesn't do much for the storyline, so it would be best to cut down. It could be sharpened to something like:
There’s some ambiguity about the narrator’s identity too. It starts with “Lily”, but most of the focus is on Margaret Davenport Winchester -- I could see that Lily is the narrator, using her full name as a dramatic device. Or that is Margaret someone else entirely e.g. the grandmother. If it’s the same person and Lily is Margaret, I can't begin to wrap my head around that.
Great story so far!
Thank you so much for the great feedback! I really appreciate it
I would just like to say how much I love the language and writing! The descriptions are so lovely. While being so personal from the character, the writing remains to be so lovely to the point it borderlines to being poetic at some points. "That's when I went from an aspiring star to wasted potential. The bottom of the barrel. Just another addition to a special graveyard where dreams were left to die. All because I dared to love." and "flashing the ever adoring fans with a smile knowing that this simple act alone could turn regular applause into a standing ovation" are one of the many great examples of writing in here that is so well!!
Though, I do feel like the indication of the specific perspective belonging to a character had some odd formatting. "Margaret Davenport Winchester" with a bullet point still blends in with the rest of the text a bit too well despite it the purpose of it being to stand out while not being jarring, yet it still looks too similar to a usual list to the point I was confused for a bit.
I also do think the paragraph after the time skip would benefit from being broken up a bit to give more impact to the character's words and emotions. So many things at once being grouped up by a single paragraph makes it a bit harder to really take in the emotion and impact that the writing has. It would also help with processing what's going on, for that impact to hit even more.
Again, love the writing here! While I did think some of the impact was lessened a little bit, I still felt the great suspense from the end which is still amazing! Revealing bits of the character while containing the mystery was really well done as well!!
Thank you for the formatting pointers, i could tell it was a bit stylistically jarring after you pointed it out and thank you for the wonderful feedback, very much appreciated!!