My second meeting today with my mentor was very informative
and helpful. We went through two of my stories and discussed different aspects
that needed clarification or help in general. We also discussed striking a balance
between creating an ambiguous ending, one that makes the reader work harder
than necessary to derive a meaning out of a story, and explicitly stating that
point at the end of a story. In a way, it comes back to the age-old writing
advice of ‘show, don’t tell’. In two
weeks, we will meet again to go over the revisions of my original story as well
as revisions of one of the stories we worked on today.
Something
that I really appreciated was a trend she noticed in my writing. Sometimes I
add too many details into a sentence and until today, I didn’t realize how
awkward that makes a sentence for a reader to digest. Also, slowing a story
down with excessive details creates frustration in a reader who wants to know
how a story turns out. By only keeping the truly necessary details that help
move the story forward, I will, hopefully, provide readers with a better-paced
story. It’s these kinds of edits/revisions that make me very excited about this
project. We focus a lot on the story as a whole and the effect it will have on
a reader, which makes me look at my writing and what it needs to do to function
well from a new perspective.
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