1

A week before our school’s Snowball Dance, I ask Luna if I should go. “Yeah,” she answered without hesitation, “it only happens once a year. I’m going.”

To be absolutely honest, I have no interest in school gatherings at all. My past experience in attending dance parties all ended up with me sitting at the corner, trying not to be distracted by the music while diligently reading my book. Despite my preeminent ability to speak or perform in public, I cannot move my body parts in a certain way that’s pleasing to the eye around people. I was once in a group popping dance course, and though I could perceive the dance moves easily, my body was totally paralyzed. If you see me standing by myself in front of the bathroom mirror, I promise you that you’re watching a dancing prodigy.

If I asked my mom to find a solution for that, there’s no wonder she would tell me to practice more. That worked for public speaking, but dancing is a completely different thing. My roommate is the direct opposite. Maybe it’s just the fact that no one is allowed to be too perfect.

But I still want to go. Not only because it was an annual event, as Julia said, but more because of the excitement created by people at our school. It might be a hallucination, but everyone around is really thrilled and has already started planning who their dates were 10 whole days before the event.

“Which boy should I ask out for the dance?” My roommate asks me one night as I stay up to finish reading the last chapter of Looking For Alaska. She lays there on her bed, looking up as if she’s talking to the ceiling.  

“I don’t know,” I answer without paying attention to the question. I’d rather concentrate more on my books because 1. She probably won’t listen to me and 2. I don’t really care about what she does. To me, she’s just like a typical middle-school girl eager to get into relationships that are destined to last for less than a week. By saying that, I’m not intended to be condescending because not a long time ago I was a typical middle-school girl, too. But now my identity is changed into the nerdy intellect who loves books more than humans.

She leans towards her nightstand and starts choosing lipsticks from her exquisite makeup collection. “Now, actually, I’ll go out with any boy as long as he asks me out,” she says as she paints her lips in front of her little vanity mirror.

This is pathetic but amusing. She just broke up with her ex a few weeks ago. He was a Korean guy in ninth grade who always looks like he just got punched in the face. Or even worse, because a punch doesn’t nourish the growth of acne. Even though she claimed that she had already gone over him, she’ll still disagree with me if I describe him like that. I don’t know how she liked him in the first place. Is there a mysterious attraction between Koreans? My roommate is not counted as gorgeous, but she has the fashion taste that beats most of the girls at our school. She deserves better than that. There are only some pretentious rich boys who take time planning what to wear every day. The few cute ones probably either day students who have a mom who helps them pick outfits or are overconfident about their faces.

Author's Note

Please point out anything you think I can improve in this story.

Reviews

[JayG]

Well, you did ask...

• A week before our school’s Snowball Dance, I ask Luna if I should go.

Present tense.

• “Yeah,” she answered.

This is past tense. Pick one, and stick with it.

That aside, what you're doing is talking to the reader as if they can hear the emotion in your voice as you speak, and as if they can see the emotion on your face, your gestures, and body language. But they can't either see or hear you, which means the emotion of your performance has been stripped out. Have your computer read this aloud, and you'll hear how dispassionate the voice of the narrator is.

Problem is, readers don't come to us to learn what happened in the story. That's the history-book approach. And they aren't looking for a nice chat with the character, with tidbits of past experience given as asides. Your reader has come for the story, as it happens—told from within the moment of time the protagonist calls now. If it matters to the protagonist in that moment, as part of their deciding what to do, or the meaning of an event as it relates to them, then it matters to the reader. But if a given line doesn't set the scene meaningfully, develop character, or move the plot, chop it. Chop every place where you explain things, or provide an info-dump of backstory because they serve only to slow the narrative and reduce the impact.

The first person POV you're using isn't the kind first person a publisher expects to see used. Why? Because there's no difference between a narrator talking about events as an external observer and a narrator who's dressed up to resemble the one you're talking about. An external reporter is an external reporter. And your narrator lives at a different time from when the events took place. So they can't appear onstage with the one living the story and have it seem real.

So, how do we get around that, and make the story seem to be happening as we read, rather then as a recollection? We learn how to write fiction—something were NOT taught in our school days. Professions are learned after we master the general skills of the three R's. And fiction writing is a profession—not an easy one to master.

In our school days we learned only nonfiction skills—great for reports and essays, lousy for fiction, because nonfiction's goal is to inform. Fiction's goal is to provide an emotional experience. And such a major difference in objective requires different methodology. In this case, the craft of the fiction writer.

My recommendation is to begin in the library system's fiction writing section. And if you can find or buy it, look for Debra Dixon's, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict. It's an easy, warm read, like sitting down with Deb to talk about writing. And it will give you the nuts-and-bolt issues.

Think about it. Everyone you know has been reading nothing but professionally written and prepared fiction since they began to read. To impress someone like that you need to know what the pro knows.

Make sense?

If so, have at it, and begin digging into the tricks of the trade. If you're meant to be a writer you'll find it fun. If not? Well, you've learned something important.

Hang on there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/

[Mint Cheung]

Thank you so much for the feedback! This is my first time posting on public platform and I did not expect to get such a detailed response to my work. I need a lot to improve on and I will definitely consider about your suggestions.