Next Big Recognition Contest

Round 85

▼Winners▼

➤ Winning Comment:

First of all, congratulations on the spotlight! It was really interesting to read a bit about your background before digging into this, and I'm sure your work as an education director at a prison has added a lovely level of depth to this story!

Before I jump to the questions and the comment topic, I have to say that the first paragraph had me hooked in a heartbeat. "My world imploded on my 14th birthday" was such a powerful opening line, and "The upheaval had nothing to do with raging hormones and everything to do with betrayal" not only added to this, but also introduced the youthful age of the main character. Great job!

As usual, I've gathered a ridiculously long list of notes and quotes (I suppose that's what happens when you save all your words for a long outline review), but I'll try to squeeze them all into this review while also answering your questions. A lot of the minor details I've jotted down (e.g. turning "(sigh)" into "She sighed."/"She'd always sigh at this point.", writing "eight" instead of "8", using italics for Wayne's thoughts, etc.) have already been mentioned, so I'll get right to the 'meat' of this comment!

#QUESTION1

When I first started reading, I was a bit unsure if the narrator would be the older or the younger Wayne, but the line "I wasn't a full fledged rebel yet" (emphasis on "yet") sorted that out for me. While I wouldn't say that there's too much disparity between his narrative voice and his spoken one, I did feel like the line between them was a little bit blurry, mainly because there were both mature and youthful words thrown into the mix. Don't get me wrong – I absolutely loved "bounced at lunch", "the taste was bonk" and "graffiti her world". It really worked with Wayne's young age. The only thing that confused me was that these expressions were paired with words such as "leisure" and "incarcerated". That made it feel like Wayne's narration was a blend of the two ages.

One way to establish/remind the reader that it's the adult Wayne who's narrating these scenes would be to let him reflect on his own language. For example, I noticed a few comments on the use of the word "brews". Instead of changing it to a 'younger' word, a suggestion would be to turn it into: "brews – or booze(/preferred word), as he'd called it back then".

This may not be as much of a direct answer to the question, but I also wanted to comment on the way Wayne reflected on his relationship with his father. The main example of this would be this part: "I examined the writing to see if it looked anything like mine. I sniffed it to see if it had any particular smell. It didn't. I slid my finger under the flap and then pulled it back out. I stuffed the letter in my pocket, raced up the stairs, climbed out my bedroom window, and swung onto the platform of my tree house." There was a sense of innocence to the way he was looking for hints of what his father was like that just worked so wonderfully with the relatively calm start of Wayne's emotional journey!

I'm moving further away from your question here, but while I'm on the topic of this quote, I'll add a little comment on the descriptions used. I really admire all of the details in the mentioned paragraph, but I think combining the sentences/making them longer would create a smoother flow. It could just be me – after all, I'm hopelessly in love with contemporary writing – but I think turning it into something like "I examined the writing to see if it looked anything like mine – I even sniffed it to see if it had any particular smell – but it didn't" would work, too, and it would reduce the risk of a 'choppy' flow. 

This goes for the following part as well:

"He was wearing a light blue shirt and a pair of blue jeans. On the jeans the word inmate was stencilled in orange. Piercing blue eyes stared out of a tanned face. His chin was chiselled, almost like a Mt. Rushmore statue. His nose was straight and narrow, his cheekbones high. His dishwater blond hair was cut with military precision in a buzz cut. He looked fit, like he had been to the gym. His smile was lopsided, with the left higher than the right, and there was one dimple on the right, as though to make up for the fact that his mouth seemed to favour the left side of his face."