robertpaullocke's 2nd Assignment

[robertpaullocke]

there are some days I think I am better at poetry

[Rhabbi]

there are some days I think I am better at poetry

Nothing wrong with being good at poetry. I wish I was better at it myself.

Let me tell you what I would like to see from your stories.

I like the basic ideas behind what you write, but you seem to want to get them in ASAP. That is not the idea here. You need to develop the stories more. Quite often I find I have more ideas about the people in the story than I can ever use. I recently wrote a 3,000 word story that ended up without about 10,000 words of background and notes.

This may seem excessive, but it actually helps me to know a persons background so I can write them as more than a piece of cardboard. did he go to college? What did she do as a child? all these details make the characters more real.

I am not saying you need to the lengths I do, but this really helps me focus the story. There are a lot of good techniques for things like that in Pencil Sharpening, why not check them out?