Michael Braun's Blog

First off, maybe it’s time to get a new banner for my website. The spooky one I put up for Halloween is kind of freaking me out, and what with it already being Nov. 7, I guess a change wouldn’t be such a bad thing at all.

So, the story I have been working on for the past 2+ weeks is finished. I reread it just now, made a few changes, and am finally convinced that this is the version I will hand out to people for critique. Let me talk about the story a little bit.

I wrote it in a completely new way for me. I usually prefer first person narratives. Why, you ask. Because in first person I can write what I want and do not have to worry about concerns over authenticity. If I write what the person thinks, no one questions it because it is from the narrator’s perspective. In third person, when the narrator says ‘Joe thought this’ I always wonder how the narrator knows that, and thus hesitate to write in that way. But for this story I broke free from all these structures and constraints and entered into a world simotaneously more liberating and constraining. I decided to write the story from the perspective of a narrator completley outside of the action, only able to observe and report what he say going on. I gave this narrator the ability to be anywhere in the story, but with no power to read thoughts.

This was challenging because I would write something personal to one of the characters and have to delete it because my narrator could not know that information. For example, there is a scene where Lia stares at Altan. I wrote that her eyes “burned his forehead” before deleting it because the narrator would not be able to know that. It was a challenge, but in the end, I “show” everything and “tell” nothing. I never resort to statements like “he was angry” or “she knew that he loved her and it made her happy.” Everything that goes on in the story is up for interpretation.

So how will it be received? While I was working on the story, I sent it out to a select number of people who all gave the story rave reviews, though didn’t provide a lot of feedback. Because I have great trust in these people, I will assume that is because they are too nice to me. NO. I will assume it is because the story is pretty good and there isn’t a lot they would change about it. So I am hoping this will carry over into my class. My first story was different and it met with a lot of flack, problems with motive and so on, but this one is so tight, so quick, so woven, I think it will do better.

And so now you say, Michael where can I read this story? Simple. You can download my story by clicking right here. Oh, and the story is called ‘Baby.’

In other news, my weekend was good. I was in Milwaukee on Saturday for my cousin Jenny’s 11th birthday party. That was a lot of fun. I also hung out with Brittany and her sister and cousin (both 16) on Saturday night. We played Halo. On Sunday, I went with Brittany to Stoughton to get a love seat for her apartment. That was also fun. My life is constantly fun.

So that’s it. Read the story, tell me what you think, and let me know. Seriously, if you do that, I will love you forever.