Sepela week_5

[linz]

Sepela Week_5.docx (22.23 KB)

[ginny]

I really enjoy the suspension of the 'not remembering' until the final paragraph of this piece. I kept asking myself (something I don't know that I'd have done had I not known the underlying assignment) how you would have remembered so many of these details. I do think an audience who didn't know the underlying prompt might question the kind of remembered detail from a four year old. So while I find the final paragraph and that suspension really effective, I wonder if you might want bring in the 'details filled in' earlier. I'm not sure what's best, but I do think some might question it. I also wondered if perhaps, especially if you're suspending telling the reader these are details your parents filled in, if maybe you'd want to try telling this in present tense, like it's happening. Thanks for sharing!

[linz]

THANKs for all of your helpful feedback, Ginny. Looking back, I felt comfy in the hospital although I had no idea what was happening. I wasn't afraid. Which is amazing in an unknown place with strangers.

[lynneheins]

Sepela,



Love your first paragraph , very detailed and gave a pinch of the plot, setting ( time). Then you move onto a description of finding the car in a junkyard. That is both a fascinating and scary place to a child. I wonder how many people have gone to a junkyard on such a mission? But you tell it factually, which is good. Your timing as to when to introduce the event is a perfect, We are craving the details. You have not presented the junkyard as a place that reflects tragedy or alternation of human lives. You’ve displayed the hospital from a child’s point of view: the toys, the roof over the crib…. but you do convey natural confusion. The ending explains everything. Well done.



Lynne

[maura]

Lindsay, this piece is stellar! You are great with vivid details, especially of material objects that convey a good sense of time or place. It's really interesting that the memory is at four, and so vivid. I too remember things from that age, three even, but many people do not it seems. Too "I always thought the word Glockenspiel was fun to say." I learned that word in grade school music class, and couldn't stop saying it with my friends for days LOL. Also, the part about Sarah Bernhardt-- my parents called me that too when I was younger! There's a great flow of time and suspense from the junkyard scene in which the reader wonders what's going on, to the fun at the restaurant, to ending up in the hospital. It definitely creates the sense of an accident for the reader because of the loss of memory and being filled in by others. I really enjoy your work! And relieved everyone was largely unharmed in the story.