Summer Loving

by Marla Zarrow from the June 12, 2023 issue

Tagline: Ellen knows never to get involved with the summer folks who come to stay in her town...until Timothy comes along.

Observations: I made an assumption reading this story that turned out to be wrong, but it provided a Teaching Moment about names for the blog, so I'll take it! 

Since Ellen had tears in her eyes when she gazed at "Jake Ellery's seaside cabin" at the beginning of the story, I thought Jake Ellery was an ex for whom she still had feelings. 

When you give a character (Jake Ellery) a first and last name, you mark them as a person of importance in the story.

For instance...

The waitress took their order.

The reader will not think this waitress is important. They are the story equivalent of a movie extra--you know, like in the credits when someone is billed as Girl with Dog.

Now, I'm going to give the waitress a full name.

The waitress, Theresa Rodgers, took their order.

The reader will naturally expect this person to have a greater role in the story because the writer gave her a full name. 

You can give a character just a first name and not be assigning too much importance to him/her, if only because it can get awkward to keep using the phrase "the waitress" over and over. But give a character a full name and that character will be expected to have a greater role than movie extra.

This also applies to the amount of physical description you give to a character. The more description there is, the more important the person.

Photo by Ruth Hartnup via the Flickr Creative Commons License

Ready...Set...Go for Love

by Marla Zarrow from the March 7, 2022 issue

Tagline: After losing his wife, Matt doesn't know if he's ready to get back into dating...until a beautiful waitress shows him that the time is just right.

Stream of Consciousness Observations:

For those of you new to the blog, stream of consciousness observations are just my thoughts, as they occur to me while reading the story.

• Right off the bat I see we're about to get a matchmaker story. Nice! I love those.
• Oh, a widower too. I think we all have soft spots for a man, adrift because he's lost his partner in life. I immediately want to take care of him, maybe cook him some good food.
• Aha, another tried and true Woman's World trope--moving to a new town--with one of the best reasons--to be closer to family.
• There is a great couple of paragraphs where I really get the feeling I'm in a small town. Here's why...Zarrow mentions the town center. Once you get past a certain size, there's no real town center. There's just a sprawl. The diner (a small town requirement) is called Sandra's Breakfast Spot. This is not a hipster place where you're going to find quinoa or kale. This is just a no-frills place where you can get a good breakfast. Lastly, The people in line shifted good-naturedly as Matt 'pardoned' his way through. Where I live, he'd probably have gotten dirty looks.
• His daughter had found a good one. This shows Matt has a gratitude attitude, which I think is admirable. It's always a good idea to make your characters likeable. 
• Kinda weird that they ordered before Matt even got there.
• "Why don't I surprise you?" You already have, Matt thought. -- We want to show the reader the main character's thoughts and feelings so they can live vicariously through the story, however, we also want the story narrative to flow. I'm getting to the point where I feel the flow is being interrupted too much, especially when we've already firmly established Matt's interest in Sandy.
• I love Charlie. He's hilariously precocious. 
• On the whole, cute story.

Photo by jenn b. via Flickr Creative Commons License