The Kidnapping: A Creative Writing Piece

Crystal's feedback:

"I really like your overall approach to hooking the reader with the opening in terms of content and the metaphors you've used throughout to help create vivid phrasing. Some spots also have really awesome emotive language that bring certain aspects of the narrative to life really well--for instance, the end of paragraph about being put into the truck is so good! However, using similar vivid phrasing that uses language that connects to the five senses so that you're showing the reader how events unfold instead of telling would make the narrative more compelling. Similarly, while I like the approach to your hook, making it more vivid would make it stronger. Also, more background in the beginning to help the reader better understand who the man is in relation to the narrator's work as a lawyer would help contextualize the story more and build stronger cohesion. It's also not clear whether you've completed the narrative or this is just a segment of it. If the story is not complete, it needs a clearer and more impactful closing; there are currently a lot of unanswered questions (who the man is, what it is that you needed the courage to do, etc.). Finally, the sentence structures are super difficult to read (which makes following the narrative difficult) because there are many run-on sentences throughout (sometimes with many independent clauses crammed into one sentence), and the dialogue is not well integrated in some spots and lacks proper punctuation. I strongly recommended a thorough proofreading or having someone help you edit to correct those issues to first improve the clarity and readability. That would make it easier for you to then go through and strengthen the storytelling aspects I noted above. If you can build on the vivid phrasing that you've done well, you can really make your story come more alive."

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