Response to "Dress Rehearsal"

The story focuses on Kate and Diana, sisters in high school only a year apart in age while they prepare for the future events that are looming ahead, namely prom and a play in which Kate has been cast as an extra; these events cause much stress to both sisters but for the most part we only experience Kate’s perspective. It’s the story of a senior year we all know and remember well.  

We have two main relationships: Kate/Diana and Kate/Sean. The bond between the sisters seemed very natural to me but I would like to see more tension between the characters. The dialogue between the first pair seems spot on and realistic, and was your best tool I felt that really sold the characters to me. It was easy to grasp that sense of resentment that Kate held for her younger sister; especially on page 4, when Kate tells her friend that her teacher called her by her sister’s name in class again, we get the first good look at the Kate beneath the surface. But when Diana asks Kate to get her out of small prom dilemma I was expecting some big turning point with some explosive behavior but the conflict never really escalated.

At the beginning, it was hard to keep track which character went with which description or who had what event going on. To me the information was all piled together and got a bit tangled up during the first couple pages while they were trying on dresses together. Another little thing that bothered me was Mark’s character. You only mention him twice and I couldn’t tell if standing next to Andrew in the end was related to Diana only or to both of the girls.  

The other relationship we get is between Kate and her best friend Sean. Their drama consists of Sean’s desire to take Kate to the prom for which Kate has no answer and while the one scene that takes place in the auditorium is tense, I felt it was too brief and too tame. We don’t exactly know if this friend is putting his heart on the line, hoping for something more than friendship but at the same time we’re neither sure if he just wanted to go as friends to begin with. I feel like this scene could add a lot more conflict into the mix and really shake things up.