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 Review #4260073 |
 | The Soundtrack to Life  [13+] Jeremy Cabb writes his best work after breaking up with his girlfriend.  |
| ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Hello, Grant Kniefel , and good afternoon evening!  Thank you for stopping by my little cafe. First of all, welcome to WdC! I'm honored to be one of the first to review your work on this site. Here, have a cupcake...  There's a few Website/Proprietary WdC things I want to touch upon before I dig into your story: White Space: This has more to do with writing on the internet in general. The screen is much harsher on the eyes than the page, so many writers make a point of adding a fair bit of white space to the writing to break up huge text blocks. You don't have to indent paragraphs—generally you don't on webpages, anyway—but often you will see spaces between paragraphs instead (this is pretty much industry standard with blogs). As you learn to work with the site's WritingML system, you can work with the text's spacing, size, and font, too. Shorter Entries: I know that you have a free account with limited item capacity, but I will still suggest that you make the chapters separate items instead of making all the chapters a single item. That makes it easier for reviewers/critiquers to give more focused feedback as they can review each individual chapter and hopefully help you improve your writing more effectively. Again, once you get the hang of WritingML, you can link the chapters together so the reading can flow. (Here's an article about WritingML you might find useful: "Enhance Your Item With WritingML" )Content Rating: Writing.Com does take its Content Ratings very seriously, so I will advise to be very thoughtful and careful when rating your content, especially with the E Rating. Your Intro Rating of E is fine, but do take a look at "Content Rating System (CRS)" and reconsider your Content Rating of E. I don't want to sound like a nag, but I also want to keep the feds off of ya, too.  Genres: I noticed that you listed this item under Music and listed the other two Genres as Other. You can keep it like that if you want, but I'll tell you that when you use all three genres, your piece has a better shot at coming up in searches and gain more exposure. Romance and Drama are good genres to fill those other two spots with, but you can pick anything you want.  Special Requests or Considerations? I want feedback to make it better. Anything will help. Anything, huh? Okie doke, I'll try my best... A few things I noticed as a reader: Since there are several chapters in this item, I'll tackle this review chapter by chapter... Prologue and Chapter One I find it interesting that you decided to make Jeremy your protagonist—it's a rather bold move since he does clearly have some narcissism issues, making him a less sympathetic character. I couldn't help but imagine him as The Social Network's version of Mark Zuckerburg (except taller). Everything from how he and Ramona met ("this is my seat") to how he asked her out (bringing her onstage so she has to say "yes") sets up the inevitable break-up for obvious reasons, and it's sensible that you had Ramona act in a realistic way (albeit cold—no one's perfect in reality). I also think that this leaves a fair bit of room for Jeremy to improve as a character and person. I'm curious to see where you take Jeremy's character and to see if there's a journey to be had here. (Live reviewing, right now ). There's a couple of technical gripes to address before I move on to Chapter Two: Everything has to [be] about you and I hate it. Snowflakes feel fell from the sky, covering I added be since it seemed to be missing and fixed fell. Also, I'm going to mention that last bit of phone dialogue. You switched from the dialogue form to a sort of abbreviated script form which I found unnecessary and distracting. When dialogue is used correctly, it naturally implies the back-and-forth that the script does. Movin' right along... Chapter Two So she broke up with him and life is over, or at least it feels like it for a while. There's nothing anyone can do except leave him be with his ice cream and his song writing. And with all of these emotions flying all over the place, the song writing he does just has to be off the charts, right? Right? Nope, and this is true to life, so kudos there.  There was something that my non-fiction writing professor told our class—to be able to write well about a painful experience, one has to have distance from it to earn a decent perspective. Jake gave him some, perhaps, equally sensible advice: write about the pain. After all, songs about pain made Three Days Grace and Linkin Park millionaires, no? What got me about Jeremy in this chapter is that he knows there's issues with him, but he doesn't quite get it and is not quite ready to change. He tries to send Ramona a tweet, she doesn't respond (for whatever reason), and he gets all upset because he's loaded with emotions. He poured his heart out, he says (in 140 characters or less). I don't think he really believes that, but it does illustrate the selfishness that he isn't quite facing yet that sent the short-lived relationship down the tubes. He's feeling things! Right now! Why doesn't she drop what she's going through and respond to that?! Right now?! The good part about this is that his character is consistent. He didn't change his whole personality over night over this break-up and vow suddenly to be a better person and become it, which is also true to life. We'll see where this bit of soul searching through music takes him... Chapter Three This chapter took some left turns that start to wander into "comedy" territory, especially the wedding. So it appears that he did manage to pare down and polish the songs enough to get them recorded and make some money off of them. Not a ton of money, it seemed, but that's fair. It gets him enough to sell off the old place and get himself a comfortable condo in Anchorage and a few fans. What kind of caught me by surprise is Ramona's reaction to seeing him after several months apart. It was cold to have a break-up over the phone, but to have her basically picking a fight with him over being in the same coffee shop seemed to teeter over the edge for me (then again, I've never had to deal with an angry ex-girlfriend, so take my limited experience into account). Her actions started to lose the reader's sympathy for her, which I'm not sure that's what you wanted to do. It seemed to me those events at the coffee shop occurred mainly to spring the disastrous events that occurred at the wedding. And it was there where Jeremy finally has the fight that leads to the self-realization of his self-absorbed personality. I caught only one obvious typo in this chapter: and I hoped Jake world would pay attention this time. Let' see where Jeremy ends up... Chapter Four and Epilogue Perhaps I shouldn't say where he ended up, since this is a public review.  In some ways, this was the best possible ending. Everything ended up as it should, Jeremy got a few hard life lessons, and everybody moved on. Having him react the way he did about Ramona's new life situation did come off as a bit dramatic for me, as if you had to wrap up this story, so you have him do something extreme. Having him win a Grammy felt like a little much to me, too, but you have to consider that as the writer. And there were bits, like the lists and script again, that make this piece come off as experimental, which is a not bad thing, per say, if you are consistent with it (kind of a one-eighty from where I was in the beginning of the story, but like I said, consistency is key). That's another decision you have to make as the writer—it's a strong impression to make. There are some strengths in characterization here, especially with Jeremy, and the story itself is a good start. You could probably use a few more points of view about the storyline from others as folks review your work and then get started on polishing this piece. It's got potential to become a modern fable.  Thank you for allowing me to review your piece. I'm just another reader and writer so use or discard any of my suggestions at your personal discretion. If you make changes and would like me to reassess your piece, feel free to e-mail me.  Keep writing and keep improving! —Brandi the Queen Bobbi!  Welcome to WDC from "Newbie Welcome Wagon" !  My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .
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You responded to this review 09/17/2016 @ 9:05pm EDT