workshop--bryan

"My First Time" by Bryan Thomas
This was a cute story about a teenager's first taste of "true love." I could associate with the feelings of anxiety, not being able to sleep, and the desire that the narrator felt. Unfortunately, there were a lot of run-on sentences and confusing points where things should have been in quotes, and it really took away from the story because I couldn't understand some of it. I appreciated the humor and obviously young voice, like on page 1: "Now that is the voice of Erma Thomas, the undisputed heavyweight champion of motherhood." There were a lot of good descriptive moments, like on the airplane, but once again, the run-ons really distracted me. The first step to improving this piece is to proofread a little better, and decide where you want scenes with dialogue to go, since those are formatted differently than straight prose. More dialogue could really add a lot to some scenes, like when you're talking to Sandy and you find out that Alicia has a boyfriend.
I liked the use of time to help us track what was going on at different parts of the day, but I think repetition of the date was unnecessary. I think you could put March 17 in bold or something at the beginning, and then just put the time until March 18, which you could put in bold (or something like that). I was a little confused as to how you were getting around Florida--were you in a church bus or something? I thought the biggest way (besides proofreading) you could improve this story would be to figure out what is important for us to know. There are a lot of details, and sometimes they take away from the story. Like, do we need to know what you were listening to on the airplane? At other times, I want to know more. What did it feel like to see Alicia again? Why did you mention 1995 at the beginning of the story? It needs more clear set-up, like that you had been fawning over this girl for years, and this was finally your chance to see her. Is the title effective? The title really drew me in, but if you take the story in a different direction, like by trying to emphasize some other aspect of your unrequited love, then you might want to come up with a new title. I'm interested to see how this turns out, since it addresses a topic we can all relate to. Make sure you keep your unique voice in this piece, and emphasize why this was such a big deal to you. Good job, Bryan!