Downright mean

In my Creative Writing class (disguised cleverly with the name Seminar in Fiction), I had to respond to four short stories by other students. For lack of a better word, three of the four were just play shit.

I mean, they were BAD. And this is supposed to be a graduate level course. They were boring, full of cliches, and just tough to read. So I ripped them to shreds in my responses. I wasn't very nice.

Here's one of my responses. You don't need to read the story to which I'm responding to understand what I felt:
As I read through this, I actually got a little perturbed that the mental hospital thing was glossed over with one paragraph. THAT is the story. All that previous stuff should have been told as a kind of exposition. It could have been little bits of exposition. I don't think you needed to explain how the character fell apart on the phone and that stuff. I think we as readers know that stuff. You explained much of the beginning fall with cliches such as "the next days were a blur" and "I would just fall apart." It also sounded like you were just kind of retelling a diary entry. The story should have focused on the mental hospital. That would have been something.
I really liked the ending and the phone message. But I didn't see it coming. I saw bits of the boyfriend but did not first hear of him until the funeral on page three. And I thought she had blown him off already. I didn't see how he connected, especially to somehow "saving her" like the prince in Sleeping Beauty. Somehow he made everything right. I actually think it might have been more interesting to have the boyfriend married to someone else--she calls and the wife answers. Then she would be surviving under her own power and steam.
I just never seemed to connect with the character until the very end. And I just didn't understand the nickname or the title. If it was supposed to mean something deeper, I just didn't grasp it. I wish more time had been spent on the mental hospital.
Grammatically, I felt your paragrahs seemed too long. I kept feeling I was being told something instead of experiencing a story. There were a few phrases that seemed redundant, like the orphan phrase after saying your entire family was killed. Even the first sentence, I wondered why it was important that it was age 24 that this happened.

Here's another:
I felt the pain in this one at the end. Setting it up seemed forced a bit though. I didn't find the clear connection to her hardly ever talking to the dad and then feeling like that at the end. I felt she just started feeling emotion about it without there ever being that change that made the character feel differently. What makes her feel like that towards this man that at first she genuinely disliked.
The title and the theme surrounding it seemed to be overdoing it a bit. It seemed a bit forced. I think the images needed to be toned down a bit more. And how exactly does it tie into the song "If I were a Rich Man"? The water images really seem forced on page five and the ones in the first paragraph just don't seem to coincide with the ones in the last paragraph. I thought that maybe the mother needed to maybe feel something from her kids in respect to how she felt towards her father. Then I could see the sudden change. The kid images were all cute but I don't see how they advanced the story.
Grammatically, I was thrown off a bit in the beginning by some run ons and comma splices and the awkward metaphors "Like an awkward pause in a long conversation, a feeling from the past begins to disturb her." What does this mean?

Here's the third, on a story called "Pirate's Journey"--it was really bad:
First of all, I don't see how that first paragraph ties into the end. Was he unwilling? Was it really hope when the two kids still kept the slaves as indentured servants for four years? It seems contradictory to the them that became present at the end.
I felt the dialogue and language was a lot like trying to read old stories of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle or stories of King Arthur. You hit that right, if that's what you were going for. I think the ideas behind this piece would make for a better screenplay. I think the scope and grandeur you tried to impress upon the reader was too much for a short story.
The ending raised my eyebrow and I had to look back through the story. I don't see it as the revelation that I think it is supposed to be. It seemed a casual reference that was brought forth at the end as the theme to the piece. I think the end is much different from the beginning.
I think you need to pick one part of this and detail it further. It was too much.

I was trying to be nice but I could hear how frustrated I was in these posts. I wrote to the teacher to basically tell her:
Hi there,
After doing my responses to Workshop #1, I feel like I was downright mean to three of them. On those three, I tried very hard to come up with something positive when I wanted to say "rewrite." I felt my response to Reed's was the only one with real constructive criticism because I thought the story was good and workable. What I am trying to say is that if these criticisms seemed mean, I did not intend them to be. How do you deal with stories that you don't like and then have to respond to them?

Here's what the teacher wrote back:
Hi, Matt.
Some of these writers are inexperienced. They haven't had much feedback on assignments or models for their work yet. I remind myself that they're making an effort and probably taking some emotional risks, too.That usually gets me through my frustration when the writing is sloppy or sentimental. I thought your comments were all, in substance, things that these writers needed to hear. However, you did sound fed up most of the time. If you were to pick one or two of the highest priority criticisms and explain them patiently and thoroughly, the writers would be more likely to be able to absorb it. Also, I thought that you did well in your critique of Gigi when you praised the final images and said you wanted more of that kind of writing. Usually you'll beable to find one part that is better than the rest for some reason, so keep doing that. You don't have to gooverboard with praise (as I feel some people do); just use their best writing as a standard to elevate the rest. Thanks for writing to me about your concern. I appreciate it. I also appreciate your honesty.
Sheli

I found this very constructive to me. I am also hoping that my short story, as I write it this week, doesn't get torn to shreds either. At least I am not going to do some of the things that I vented against.