RE: The review for a story "The Baby Picture" by @wordymouth from @mgaft1
Thank you for the review. I think you missed a few things: 1) the man was receiving anonymous calls and felt like he was being watched. 2) the man decided to run away to Belize; he purchased the ticket. 3) The girl had been watching him and followed him to the restaurant. 4) Because she had been following him, she knew about the money. Maybe she heard him or her spying revealed this to her. 5) She poisoned his meal. 6) In the commotion, she escaped, with his money and the ticket to Belize.
A lot of the story relies on the reader to fill in the blanks. Taken by itself, the girl was working with someone and wanted revenge. Maybe her mom was a famous spy who knew about poisons. Maybe because she didn't know about her father, she decided to take him out. Maybe her mother poisoned her mind with terrible stories. Maybe the man is a scared excuse for a person.
You have to decide.
For me, it was just a quick piece of flash fiction and I tried to add an element of film noir. It might not be for everyone, but it was fun to write.
Thanks for reading and giving me your feedback. Believe me when I say it will help me in the future to think about the story.
Cheers!
No, my friend, I didn't miss any of this. It's the “filling in the blank part” where we have philosophical divergence. In my view, a reader might not know everything about the intricacies of the story and the characters’ backgrounds, but the author must.
To me, things just don’t add up. Why would the girl or her mother be giving him anonymous calls if they planned to kill him and take all the money? Why did she plan the revenge? What did John do to deserve it? How old was the girl? What was her moral makeup to kill a person so easily, more so to kill her own father? Maybe she wasn’t aware of it and her mother lied to her. How did she know that he would be going to Beliz? How did she know that he already bought the ticket and it was the time to strike?
These and many more questions must be answered in the story so that it would work, wouldn’t have loose ends. Answering these questions would make the story much more profound and will enable the reader to suspend the disbelief and emotionally attach to what’s going on in the story.
The way it is, though, it’s looks just like a writing exercise. A well-written one and yet only an exercise.
Cheers!