Response: "Safe"

“Safe” is a story told from the perspective of Alexandra, a young woman raised by her mother after her parents’ divorce. The tension of this story is located around the strained relationship between the narrator and her father and how her mother’s influence over her has affected her ability to exist with the opposite sex.

Needs better transitioning. At times the story built up the tension and all of a sudden there would be a skip in time and the narrator would be doing something completely different. The start of the second section on page two feels like a completely different beginning to the story and the split on page 5 is an awkward transition, I found it hard to believe that when Alexandra was on edge and realized her dog was missing, she’d just fall asleep.

The main character has the opportunity to be a dynamic and memorable character, but other than the fact that she is scared of men and she has a dog named Twinkle, we don’t know much about her. I’d really like to see more of the bond between her and the younger brother, he is only mentioned once in the beginning and maybe building up his character a bit could serve as a foil to Alexandra later in the story so we understand more about her personality.

As it is now, the ending doesn’t reveal a change in the character. She starts the story as fearful and remains the same through the conflict. The only change we can see is minimal during her attempt to fight back and defend herself from her assailant. If you wanted, one suggestion would be to flip the divorce situation and have her distrusting of other women but when the father turns against her, she realizes that it’s really men who she should fear.