To Kate, from Tom

I separated comments by assignment.

asst. 1. There is a great accumulation of detail here that keeps the scene vivid and makes it flow. I think the shifts in point of view work, though not giving the female character a name makes them slightly difficult to follow at first. I also appreciated how the gist and meaning of the conversations is conveyed by describing dialogue, not using it, as too much talking can slow down areas focused on description and exposition. On the other hand, throwing in a line or two of dialogue can also help moderate the pace – maybe put “There’s nothing wrong with having money” in quotes, for example.

This clearly serves at the beginning of a longer piece, and I think it does a good job establishing the two characters, especially the woman. What I couldn’t figure out, though, was who the central character was. The unnamed woman gets a lot of backstory filled in, but it starts out with Harley too, and he’s the only character with a name.

Also, one piece of advice: I thought the large number of subordinate clauses separated by dashes interrupted the flow of the story for me, almost like speed bumps.

2. This also felt like a slice out of a larger piece. There’s effective use of local color in the story – some particular aspects of dog mushing and skiing come into play which nicely situate the story in its world and give it a specific energy. I liked some of the imagery, too, such as “crystallized birch and more snow and more snow and a pure blue sky.” It felt real.

I wanted to learn more about Jasper. While we get an idea of his exuberance, his bravado, and his outdoors skills, I wanted this ski jaunt to spur some kind of reaction in him that revealed more of his character.

3. This piece, again featuring Jasper and Phillip, is essentially a soliloquy, in which Jasper recites his inner monologue in a whisper. It made Jasper seem somewhat off-kilter as a character, because that’s a lot of talking to himself. But this feels like another part of a larger piece, so that may be explained somewhere along the way.

I did, however, wonder why he was up in a tree, which was never clear.

I think the soliloquy is an effective device, but it may function better here if it is interspersed with more of what Jasper’s doing up in the tree, and what he’s seeing. You can interrupt him to add description of the vista and his activities without weakening the stream-of-consciousness motif, and maybe even strengthening it by linking it to external stimuli.

4. A strong opening, which reveals the woman’s character through her peculiar actions – looking at shoes, primping, pondering her hair – and also sets up conflict and mystery via the piece of paper. By the end of the paragraph, the reader wants to know what’s on the paper, and what kind of person would communicate by handing a note to a stranger on a plane. So it actually starts to develop two characters, not just one.

On the other hand, it’s a really long paragraph. 30 sentences, in fact. Looking at it, I feel like you could trim more than half of it and still get the same impression across about the wife’s personality, still fit in the note from Harley, and do it with more punch, leaving some of this stuff for subsequent graphs.