After consulting with a member of the Writing Center, I made some specific changes to the dialogue in certain scenes of the screenplay. Having someone that I knew and respected tell me my dialogue, in certain scenes, didn’t sound natural made me go back and redo a lot of my wording. I made the dialogue sound more natural and even flowing. Having another respected peer read my script and give helpful feedback made for a much better work overall.
I struggled a little with tense so Nikita [a tutor] at the Writing Center helped point me to some recourses online and also highlight areas with inconsistent tense. She also suggested writing the whole story in the present tense so it’s more engaging to the reader. I reviewed all her markups on tense and updated the main story to present tense. I kept [a few] past tense sentences just because they make more sense that way. Nikita also pointed out to me that my dialogue and thoughts could be more clear. I went through her markup and updated all thoughts to be italics and added “I thought” at the end to distinguish them.
Brady [Writing Center tutor] helped me cement the ambiguity of this piece into concrete, sensory imagery. His interpretations and comments on the meaning of my poem helped me to understand where to keep ambiguity and where to aid the reader with more obvious, concrete images. In the original draft, the “eddying winds” were not specifically autumn winds, and the “fronds” were not specifically sere. I added these details to signify that the poem, fundamentally, is about the season of fall and the death that it presages. The added details aid in the atmosphere of the poem, and these suggestions helped me ground the reader with images and sensory experiences.
Brady [Writing Center tutor] and I discussed a lot of things regarding the second stanza of this piece. The poem naturally trails into a more philosophical realm during this stanza, and I received help in how to effectively convey what the point of the poem is. Sometimes this, as in prior pieces, included the bolstering of ambiguity that works but more often in the addition of concrete non-abstract imagery to ground the reader. What inspired me philosophically to write this poem is my belief in the interconnectedness of nature; that every living thing is kindred on some fundamental level.
I received such great feedback on how to keep the integrity of the syntax in the poem by letting go of some more florid phrases in the original draft. Since this poem is a terza rima, any editing and word changes at the end of a line can mean having to reverse engineer the poem to clean it up. The feedback as a whole never changed the narrative of the poem, but many words were changed. In the first stanza instead of “lanes,” I originally used “streets.” Changing this singular word meant altering the whole poem sonically (the rhymes and sounds would now have to be different), but the narrative functions the same as it would have stayed as “streets.”
I found that for “forever summer,” feedback regarding the “how to wind me / back down to me” line was useful as it was initially “how to wind me / back to me.” The latter line made it slightly confusing to read as the next line mentions “summer’s wind,” which uses a different meaning and pronunciation of “wind.” Thus, I included “back down to me” as it makes the meaning and pronunciation of the first “wind” clear. All in all, my feedback for “forever summer” has helped me approach punctuation and flow differently, providing me with new means to improve both.
I found the feedback regarding the perceived meaning of the poem very helpful as not only did I struggle to find the right way to communicate what I was trying to, but it is also hard to gauge whether or not someone else will see it that way. One stanza that prompted a different meaning than what I intended was “as I gave this a try.” I hadn’t made it clear that the “try” this one is about hadn’t been one of the “past plights,” which made it seem like it was. Ultimately, knowing which certain lines made my message unclear was very useful and allowed me to focus specifically on sections that needed rewording.
I ended up revising the story to reflect more on my relationship with my mom as well as this specific memory; I hinted at it in the original but held back as this was one of the first times I tried describing our relationship. I ended up including the second section from a different project to help elaborate a bit more on the importance of this moment and, in a way, my mom. The last big change was switching the order of the two main sections as they were originally the other way around. After making that change, the narrative flows better and aids in conveying the complexity of a strained relationship with one’s parent.
One suggestion that was made was to add more metaphors to the piece. I liked the idea but not the actual conception. When I added on, it made the main idea of the piece vaguer by drawing away from the hammering of the nail that I wanted present in the piece. Instead, I added questions to the end of each numbered paragraph to use the desired figurative language within my piece while still keeping a clear idea of the characterization and story of “you.”
The specific feedback I received was to separate my two original writings. Together they didn’t work and the feedback to keep them as separate stand alone pieces proved to be correct. Originally, I had a preceding piece (Dogs Pt. I) which spoke to my love for my first dog. I expressed the friendship we shared and details of his last week which was the most significant death I had experienced up until that point in my life. But, it didn’t flow with (Part II). It was best to remove it and save for later.