Thread: Ethaniel
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Old 19-10-2007, 03:16 PM
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Re: Ethaniel

Hmmm, I have to say I'm not a big fan of this one. Its a character study of sorts, but your character is completely one-dimensional and somewhat boring. He never really does anything. He's mature for his age, but what does that mean? He's excels in school, but so what. You paint broad stereotypical strokes on high school cliques putting him with freaks, but that tells us nothing.

Then there's a girl who takes interest because he paints well. Strange, but okay. Then they get some coffee. That's a start. Then he invites her over for dinner. Still okay, though its difficult to understand what her interest is when he doesn't really interact much (sympathy maybe?). Finally she's 22 minutes late and he commits suicide. Really? Really? How emo can you get? Not even a phone call first to see if she has a flat tire? Come on!

There's virtually nothing in the story to make this character sympathetic and when he behaves so irrationally at the end, whatever little there is vanishes completely.

I'm not a big fan of the teenage angst stuff but that doesn't mean this piece can't be improved. You're really going to have to flesh out the relationship between Ethaniel and his true love. And she's going to have to really hurt him before the suicide is believable. It would also be nice to flesh out a secondary character (maybe a fellow "freak"). Finally his biggest problem is that he's listening to Incubus...
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