During my revision I mostly added to my story with a little bit of rearranging. I first decided to delete the original ending, of the main character dropping June off at the airport. I then decided to revise the beginning half of the story according to what feedback I was given in the workshop. I was able to add more emotional aspects as well as hinting to there being a problem that June wanted to bring up. For the emotional aspects throughout the story, I wanted to make it feel more like a teen romance novel where the person can’t live without their significant other, and I really wanted to bring through that longing with more descriptive words (ex: hoping, wishing, longing, desire, etc). Throughout the beginning half, I read through and added in sentences/paragraphs depending on how much I wanted the emotion to come through at a given point in the story for the two characters. Like on page 3 I added in the line, “What a lovely last night of the semester” right before the main character asked if June was ok to hit the reader with the fact that it was not going to be such a nice night. I also sprinkled in a little more about the main character thinking June had been acting odd lately before and after June told her the news. I did this because many of the people in the workshop found it to be a little unbelievable that the main character had no idea what was coming (I agree with them). I tried to integrate more of the background of their relationship throughout the first half of the story as opposed to having it all at the beginning. Before I revised this it felt like it took a long time to actually get into the meat of the story so that’s why I shifted the background information around. The main aspect of the story I enjoyed revising was the ending. I really enjoyed completely deleting the original one to replace it with the new one. I think the new ending I put really delves into the feeling of loss. I also hope that I was able to get the feeling that the main character was finally realizing how she might have felt for June. I wanted to show their realization in a non-explicit way that is why I ended the story with “My Other Half” to show the kind of “lightbulb moment” the main character had as she cried on her bed. I also changed the title of the story from “Girlfriends” to “Soulmates” to try and reflect the actual feelings of the main character. There were a lot more revisions/alterations I would talk about specifically (like giving page numbers), but I don’t have enough space. Overall, I really enjoyed re-working my story to what it is now, and I hope you enjoy it!
Meep<3
