Definite Potential

After reading "Jeremy's" story, it is hard not to be consumed with all of his grammatical errors throughout his paper. When I first read his paper, that is all I could focus on. Switching tenses, quotation misuses, and spelling are just a couple that jumped out right away. As I reread his paper, however, I realized that this story definitely had great potential to be a perfect scary story.

I was certainly surprised by Jeremy's descriptive details that weaved in and out of the paper. "Their bodies were trembling and hearts thumped" is a perfect example of how Jeremy doesn't tell, but he shows how his characters were scared. People in my writing workshop class today in college, have trouble with this concept yet Jeremy hits it right on the ball. What I did not like, however, was that Jeremy simply ended the story with it being all a dream. Not only is this ridiculously cliche, but it leaves the reader feeling somewhat cheated. I think that his ending definitely needs to be worked on; it's obvious Jeremy is very imaginative and he should not just stop with a dream.

In a conference with Jeremy, I would not go over every grammatical error I spotted in his paper. I think this will scare him off from writing because he will feel overwhelmed. I will focus on the overall plot of his scary story. After complimenting him on his great descriptive sentences, I will tell him about two major rules when writing stories: Don't ever end a story in a dream and don't start a story with someone waking up. I will ask him how he feels when he sees a great movie but the ending just wasn't up to par, and then relate this with his story. Emphasizing how he should use his showing and imaginative skills to create another ending I think will result in a great second draft to this story. Another major issue I would mention would be how he dramatically switches tenses from past to present on the third page. I will have him read aloud the part that actually switches tenses, and this will make him realize himself how this does not flow with the story. The second draft will be the draft where we work on technical issues.