[stylist] Fiction Short Story Hindsight

[Chris Kuell]

Hi Jennifer,

The best advice I can give you came from novelist Elmore Leonard who said,
"I recommend you delete all the boring stuff." Shelley is on the right track
by telling you to delete all the unnecessary details that you give,
especially in the first third of the piece. 
The next piece of advice is something that every fiction writer should have
tattooed on their arm (since I'm blind, I did mine with a hot soldering iron
to make braille dots) which says - show, don't tell. Showing brings a story
to life. In the first part of this story, you do a lot of showing, and
except for the plethora of details, it's good. But around the part where she
gets diagnosed with RP, you shift into tell mode, and you ride that wave all
the way to the end.
My third piece of advice is that every successful story has conflict, and a
resolution. The writer can be very creative about how she handles both, but
they both need to be there. In this story, I suppose you could argue that
blindness, or her attitude, is the conflict, and her finding her way to the
classroom is the resolution, even if it's not exactly powerful. Personally,
I'd work to strengthen both. Start the story in the classroom when she is
having trouble seeing--that's when the conflict begins. Show her parents
distressed over the diagnosis, and shorten the section about the exams--we
don't need all the details. Skip ahead, as you do, through school, then
college, and have her get an academic suspension. Show us how she's in
denial, and scared, and getting fat on the couch drinking 2 liter bottles of
Pepsi and bag after bag of Doritos while watching Gilligan's Island reruns.
Then the beginning of the resolution comes as a powerful scene where
someone--her parents, or her aunt Molly say something like, "Listen Kelly.
Fat and stupid and scared is no way to live your life. I know you think it's
a 4 letter word, but it's not. You're blind, which if you use your fingers
addes up to five. You need to get your ass off the couch and learn how to
live life as a blind person."  And then summarize her training, ending with
her at college again, capable and competent and most importantly--changed.
Finally, and this goes back to something Shelley said--work on trimming
extraneous words. Read each sentence  and think to yourself--can I say the
same thing in less words? Do I really need to list everything they packed
for their trip, or is it sufficient to simply say they packed the van and
readers will figure out they probably packed what they needed?  


I hope you take these comments as constructive feedback, and I wish you luck
in editing/revising your story. Thanks for having the courage to share it
with us.

Chris