The Vance Creek Bridge - Comments

I really enjoyed the concept of this piece. It was dark, sad and not at all how I expected it to go. I like that you went along the lines of something taboo and shied away from, because I honestly did expect Billy to talk her out of it. It wasn’t until Billy had crawled out to her that I realized she had already made her mind up long before. The fact that she did actually do it was surprising and powerful all the same because not everyone can be saved. And the ending was definitely more of a shock and definitely gruesome with this line: Small clinks filled the forest as he hit five more beams before landing in the river.

The only slight problem I had was that where I did see your intention to make it powerful and emotional, I think it was missing something – which prevented me from connecting entirely with it. It might have been the shortness of it, but I think it might have been because while your imagery was good, it could have used more depth?

I feel like you could definitely expand on this story, in the sense that you flesh out the details and the characters. I understand how third person can feel kind of limited, but you actually have a unique opportunity to delve into both Billy and Kelly’s perspectives to give readers a glimpse into both of their characters in one single chapter. You don’t have to limit yourself to one narrative when you’re writing in third person. You could write about why Kelly wants this—like writing about she feels so lonely that she feels this is her only option, even when Billy is telling her straight up that he’s there. There’s a whole spectrum of emotions that would be there during a situation like this that would create something absolutely heart-shattering for a reader if you went into it. It verged into ‘telling me’ rather than ‘showing me’, making me feel it, and I think that’s why I felt like something was missing.

Overall though, I really did think this was a good one-shot. It was unapologetically dark and sad, which I really appreciated, and it managed to take me by surprise. Well done!

@ Michael Westen
Thank you for the comment! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Woah! Honestly I did not expect that.

This is so sad. I feel so bad for the boy. He faced his fear and it was just horrible that he ended up dying. I was also very sad for the girl, but it seems that she was just too far gone, her decision was already made.

@ Aspiring Oneironaut
Thank you for your comment! Like I said I did this for class from third person objective, but I may go back and interweave that with third person limited to provide what has impacted the decisions my two characters make!

Very dark! Nice story and feel for the characters, though. I like that even when they are named, they are still referred to as "the girl" and "the boy." A couple of lines I really liked were: "She was the size of an ant as her blood painted a rock below..." and "Just like the girl, the boy was carried away by the current."

With a story like this, there still feels like there's potential to go into more detail in describing the world around these two characters and how the world around them impacts the decisions they make (and the accidents that happen). Well done!