First story workshopped

Last night, I got my first trip in the "hot seat" over. It went better than I feared, based on Dan's comments to the guy last week. Here are his comments:

Maggie,

Your writing is powerful and fluent, and you have a good command of the drama in ordinary moments. I liked, particularly, the moment when she walked into the room and heard the "gunfire". That moment says a lot about him (and her), and it effortlessly ups the ante on this subtly dramatic situation for those few moments that we don't know what kind of gunfire you mean.

Still, I find this piece to be mostly skirting around the real drama. There's so much drama near this piece, but you always seem to be finding some way around it. There were two opportunities for dialogue here, and in both cases, you found a way to avoid it. That left me wondering if that was because the piece demanded that avoidance or if you (the author) was more comfortable just not getting into it.

During the workshop, I'll talk at length about all the drama that is inherent in this piece and the choices that were made to avoid it--we'll discuss whether they were good or bad choices. For right now, though, what I want to say is this: when you avoid drama--that is, decide that telling your story is more important that letting your story tell itself -- you want to be aware of the cost of that behavior. Yes, maybe they don't have anything to say to each other in their last moment together as a couple. Yes, maybe the mom doesn't have anything good to say to her daughter. But think about all that you're missing when you pass those opportunities by. Think of all that might have been revealed in those contentious moments. You'd better have a good reason to not let us find out.

Best,

Dan

So, not too bad I guess, right? I felt better after I read the comments when I got home. I'm not discouraged. I mean, I got into the program, so I know I don't suck. I think the thing that bothered me is that like half the students didn't have any comments, which kind of made me feel as if they were indifferent. Either that, or they didn't know what to say because they didn't know if there were supposed to be problems or not. IDK. I guess I'll see when I read the written comments from them. I'll post some of those after I read them. So, the good thing is that I got the first submission over and now I kind of know what Dan wants. I think next time I'll submit chapter one of Ghost. He wants drama! That's go DRAMA! ;-)