Home at last

July 28 2021

Dear Lily,

It happened. I am finally home. I keep thinking to myself that you are at home with your family, playing with your dog Cinnamon, seeing your little sister Bella. Maybe you are, maybe you are watching over them right now. I don’t know what happens after we die, but I hope that you are finally at peace. Two days ago, I escaped, that is how I’m able to write this letter. I killed the people who kidnaped us, I hope they are rotting in hell. Right now is when you would say something like “Isn’t that a bit harsh?”. You were always much kinder than me. Oh, by the way, we were in Chicago, Illinois! I found that out after I killed our kidnapers and escaped. After I escaped, I passed out on the street and woke up in a hospital. The nurse kept asking me a million questions about who I was, what happened to me, and how I got the scars and bruises that cover my body. It was when I told her my name and my parents numbers when all the insanity started. When she looked me up on the hospital database and found out I had been missing for 2 years.

The nurse asked me a million more questions and I ignored all of them. After 14 hours of waiting, I saw my parents, it was the best feeling ever. I wish you were there with me. I eventually fell asleep and the next morning I was released from the hospital and my parents drove me home. It was when I got home when things got a bit crazy. The police showed up at my house to ask me a couple of questions about where I was the past two years. They said “what were the events that lead up to your disappearance?” I told them that I went for a walk to clear my head when someone knocked me out. It was when they asked “what happened next?” when I freaked out. If I told them that I woke up in a room, they would ask me how I escaped. They would ask me what happened the last two years and I was just not ready to talk about that. So I said “I don’t want to talk about this anymore” and ran up to my room. Is leaving details out the same as lying? I wish you were here so you could tell me. I miss you so much and I hope that wherever you are, you are happy.

Love,

Maria Roberts

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© 2020 Sara Elyse Abrams

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Reviews

JayG

Okay, now that I can see to read the text... You may not be as glad to get these hints. 🙄 Though bear in mind that what I have to say is no reflection on your talent, or how well you write. And the problems I mention are ones you share with most hopeful writers.

I see and appreciate what you’re attempting to do. But you need more. In all the world, only you have context to make this meaningful as-it’s-read. When you read it you already know the characters and their lives, in depth. You know their backstory, their aspirations, and their problems. You know what prompted the protagonist to write this “letter” and, what’s being discussed. And because you know all that, and have intent for how the lines are to be taken, you get a very different meaning from the words than the reader does. They have only what the words suggest to them, as-they-read, based on their own knowledge and experience, not your intent. Making things more difficult, the only emotion they “hear” in the your words is what punctuation suggests, while you hear your own words, all filled with emotion. Look at this chapter, not from your chair, but from the seat of a reader who just arrived, and knows only what the words suggest to them:

• It happened. I am finally home.

So someone unknown, who could be nine-years-old or ninety, live in Victorian England or on the Planet Tatooine, in an unknown year and living in an unknown neighborhood, has returned to an unknown place, from an unknown place for unknown reasons.

So? That matters to the reader because? Remember, if you do not make the reader need to know what happens next they will stop reading. Knowing nothing about why this person wanted to go home, and why it was reported as “finally happening,” what emotional connection will this evoke that makes the reader care—or want to know more? Missing information isn’t a mystery, it’s just missing information. And since you can’t retroactively remove confusion, or make a second-first impression…

• I keep thinking to myself that you are at home with your family, playing with your dog Cinnamon, seeing your little sister Bella.

Why include the dog's name, given we don't know its breed name, or age? Every unnecessary word slows the read and dilutes the impact.

That aside, this unknown speaker “thinks,” this person named Lilly, who has an unknown relationship with the unknown speaker, is in a place they think of as home—which could be a hovel or a palace—playing with a dog and sibling? Again, what emotional reaction can a reader have to this but, “Huh?”

The problem is that you’re telling the reader all this from the viewpoint of someone who has full context, and knows the character's motivation, while not giving the reader any of that. So what makes perfect sense to you may be meaningless to the reader. By all means, write from your chair. But edit from that of your reader.

You don’t see the problems as you edit because you have context. So while it makes perfect sense to you…

Yes, you can tell a story in the epistolary format, but...there’s a LOT more to it, and writing fiction, in general, than sitting down and writing, using the skills we were given in school. First, you have to thoroughly understand the approach and methodology of fiction, which is nothing like the kind of writing we’re given in our school days. There, we wrote mostly reports and essays, which are nonfiction applications, to prepare us for the needs of employment, not ready us to be professional fiction writers. Remember, professions are acquired in addition to the set of general skills we’re given in school.

It might be nice of we learned to write fiction by reading it, but do we learn to cook by eating? Paint by visiting the museum?

There’s a lot that’s not obvious, and our teachers don’t tell us that fiction, screenwriting, tech-writing, and journalism require very different approaches from both nonfiction and each other. In fact, when we leave our school years, unless we’ve worked to become proficient in one of those professions, we’re exactly as qualified to practice one of those professions as to remove an appendix.

That doesn’t say you can’t learn it as easily as anyone else, and, says nothing about your talent, or how well you write.

For an idea of how different fiction is from nonfiction, you might want to dig through a few of the articles in my WordPress Writing blog (link at the bottom of this post). And if it seems you might want to know more about those issues, use the link I provide just below to pick up a copy of the best book on creating scenes that sing to the reader I’ve found.
https://ru.b-ok2.org/book/2640776/e749ea

So…was this good news? Depends on how you look at it. Certainly, it wasn’t what you were hoping for. Who would? But…given that it’s not a matter of talent, and is fixable, I thought you’d want to know.

So dig in, and add the skills the pros take for granted to the skills you already own. And while you do, hang in there, and keep on writing.

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

Posted 3 Years Ago

I see and appreciate what you’re attempting to do. But you need more. In all the world, only you have context to make this meaningful as-it’s-read. When you read it you already know the characters and their lives, in depth. You know their backstory, their aspirations, and their problems. You know what prompted the protagonist to write this “letter” and, what’s being discussed. And because you know all that, and have intent for how the lines are to be taken, you get a very different meaning from the words than the reader does. They have only what the words suggest to them, as-they-read, based on their own knowledge and experience, not your intent. Making things more difficult, the only emotion they “hear” in the your words is what punctuation suggests, while you hear your own words, all filled with emotion. Look at this chapter, not from your chair, but from the seat of a reader who just arrived, and knows only what the words suggest to them:

• It happened. I am finally home.

So someone unknown, who could be nine-years-old or ninety, live in Victorian England or on the Planet Tatooine, in an unknown year and living in an unknown neighborhood, has returned to an unknown place, from an unknown place for unknown reasons.

So? That matters to the reader because? Remember, if you do not make the reader need to know what happens next they will stop reading. Knowing nothing about why this person wanted to go home, and why it was reported as “finally happening,” what emotional connection will this evoke that makes the reader care—or want to know more? Missing information isn’t a mystery, it’s just missing information. And since you can’t retroactively remove confusion, or make a second-first impression…

• I keep thinking to myself that you are at home with your family, playing with your dog Cinnamon, seeing your little sister Bella.

Why include the dog's name, given we don't know its breed name, or age? Every unnecessary word slows the read and dilutes the impact.

That aside, this unknown speaker “thinks,” this person named Lilly, who has an unknown relationship with the unknown speaker, is in a place they think of as home—which could be a hovel or a palace—playing with a dog and sibling? Again, what emotional reaction can a reader have to this but, “Huh?”

The problem is that you’re telling the reader all this from the viewpoint of someone who has full context, and knows the character's motivation, while not giving the reader any of that. So what makes perfect sense to you may be meaningless to the reader. By all means, write from your chair. But edit from that of your reader.

You don’t see the problems as you edit because you have context. So while it makes perfect sense to you…

Yes, you can tell a story in the epistolary format, but...there’s a LOT more to it, and writing fiction, in general, than sitting down and writing, using the skills we were given in school. First, you have to thoroughly understand the approach and methodology of fiction, which is nothing like the kind of writing we’re given in our school days. There, we wrote mostly reports and essays, which are nonfiction applications, to prepare us for the needs of employment, not ready us to be professional fiction writers. Remember, professions are acquired in addition to the set of general skills we’re given in school.

It might be nice of we learned to write fiction by reading it, but do we learn to cook by eating? Paint by visiting the museum?

There’s a lot that’s not obvious, and our teachers don’t tell us that fiction, screenwriting, tech-writing, and journalism require very different approaches from both nonfiction and each other. In fact, when we leave our school years, unless we’ve worked to become proficient in one of those professions, we’re exactly as qualified to practice one of those professions as to remove an appendix.

That doesn’t say you can’t learn it as easily as anyone else, and, says nothing about your talent, or how well you write.

For an idea of how different fiction is from nonfiction, you might want to dig through a few of the articles in my WordPress Writing blog (link at the bottom of this post). And if it seems you might want to know more about those issues, use the link I provide just below to pick up a copy of the best book on creating scenes that sing to the reader I’ve found.
https://ru.b-ok2.org/book/2640776/e749ea

So…was this good news? Depends on how you look at it. Certainly, it wasn’t what you were hoping for. Who would? But…given that it’s not a matter of talent, and is fixable, I thought you’d want to know.

So dig in, and add the skills the pros take for granted to the skills you already own. And while you do, hang in there, and keep on writing.

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

Rating /100

3 Years Ago

Thank you so much JayG for taking time out of your day to review my work. I will take your construct.. read more

JayG

You absolutely must dump that font. Were this a submission to a publisher it would be returned, unread. Impress your audience with your writing skill, not by, in effect, sprinkling glitter on the prose.

Readers expect a serif font like Times, Times New Roman, or Garamond (the choice for publishing). Anything else makes the act of reading more difficult. The opening line tells the reader it's a letter, and that's all you need.

Next: To indent, use the top tab on the ruler in Word, not spaces or tabs. Both are stripped out in the conversion to HTML, and are not acceptable to self-publishing. on Kindle or Smashwords.

The text is a pretty good tease for the actual story, which is what I assume comes next. But...one thing to think about is that you might be giving away too much information. Before the reader gets into the story they know she'll be kidnapped, treated badly, and then not only escape, she'll kill the ones who captured her. So why read on? Is there any suspense if we know how it comes out? If we know, from the beginning, that she'll be okay, it kills a lot of the joy of reading. making it feel as if you're just filling in detail.

Sorry my news isn't better, but I thought you would want to know.

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