Framing Statement

David Colon

Creative Writing

Professor Miller

3/21/18

Throughout my short story revision process, my main accomplishment was adding tension to my work. From my first draft to my mezzo draft, nothing really changed due to the fact that my peers only told me that they liked my work. As I asked them for criticism, they told my about adding more taglines to the end of my dialogue (for example: he said). As I read my work, I eventually disagreed with my peers and submitted my work.

It was during my one-on-one that Jesse gave me the most significant advice that would later drive my revisions. Our discussion centered on tension and how I could use tension to drive my story while also adding a reason to care about my main character. In my first and mezzo drafts, my main character, Michael, seemed to aimlessly walk around the party as he reflects on his ex girlfriend. There wasn’t anything that drove the story along, no tension that made the reader care about why my character was so heartbroken. When Jesse pointed this out, I realized that if I were the reader of my story, I really wouldn’t care what was going on. Jesse also added that it would be interesting to take my main character out of a party environment to juxtapose the overall tension of the party. When he gave me this advice, I knew that there needed to be some element of tension to add that would developed my characters further and developed my story.

When revising my final draft, I wanted to initially add two scenes: a flashback that would develop and show the significance of Mike and Rachel’s relationship and an after the party scene that would juxtapose the chaos of the night before. For the first couple of days, I had writer’s block. I read and re-read my work trying to find a place where I could break the continuity of my work without it feeling like there was a big/dramatic break. After a couple of days, I found a place to further develop a pre existing flashback that I had established earlier on in my work. Here, I was able to flesh out Mike and Rachel’s relationship, adding tension to the story and an element of care for my characters. I began capitalizing on two inferences that I made in my original drafts: Mike’s fear of loneliness and how his friend’s used that fear to make him break up with Rachel. After adding this flashback, I began rearranging my dialogue to develop how nasty Mike’s friends were and to show a bit more of Mike’s happiness while he was with Rachel. By the end of my final draft, I added a bus scene that followed the events of the night before. In this scene, I wrapped up my story while toning down the tension ever so slowly. This scene definitely felt like a juxtaposition compared to the chaos of the party, but I believe it also forced the reader to think as I left the story on an open-ended, positive note.

In my final draft, I believe that I accomplished my goals of adding tension and an element of care in my work. After reading my work, I care about Mike’s relationship and from a reader’s perspective, I want to physically push him back to Rachel so he can admit he screwed up.