Comments on the Payback

For a Freshman, I think that this is a good start. I told a story about something I knew, and although that might not be that difficult, I feel that the story was told well. One of my goals for that year was to work on building suspense, and this piece shows my attempt to do so. I also, throughout my four years of writer's workshop classes, wanted to learn how to tell a really good and captivating story. Stories of your experiences can often be the best pieces you write, and so I wanted to see if I could develop this skill.

Looking at this story, I can see a solid foundation for that skill. The storyline is there and I do a decent job of developing the plot. What's not good about the piece is that the story moves too quickly. In order to build more suspense and write a better story, I learned over my writing career that I should have extended the suspenseful parts as long as possible. This would have allowed me to add many more details while keeping the reader's attention because he or she wants to know what's going to happen next. And the good thing about the details is that the more of them I tell to enhance the story, the more involved the reader gets in the piece and the more he or she wants to read the next line. Overall, this piece is a nice start to my high school writing. It is a pretty suspenseful story that is developed nicely and may make you laugh a couple of times throughout.