EyeShadow
If Only You Knew ..................................... Q3/Prose
If Only You Knew is a short story about a poor man who is lucky enough to not deal with first world problems. The genesis of this piece has been in my mind since the beginning of the school year but I haven’t had time to work on it. In ASFG, it is common for students to whine about first world problems, such as phones running out of battery or having too much homework. These are many problems I hear and say every day, which inspired me to write a short story about them, but in a perspective of a poor and hardworking man. The piece changed a lot since the beginning. It began as a conversation with a poor man talking to a rich one, but I decided to change it into a short story. The original idea for the piece never changed, it was always the same one. As to the evolution of the piece, it evolved significantly, especially with peer feedback. My peers suggested expanding on the life of the main character. I added more specific details on how it was to live life in a poor family and how it feels to work on agricultural fields. For example, the following passage wasn’t at the rough draft, but I added it to have more detail. “He was able to hear the sounds his neighborhood made. It wasn’t children voices playing, or the sound of nature’s breeze, it was the sound of the poorness”. These specific changes made my piece sound more realistic, which helps the reader feel empathy for the main character. In general, I enjoyed writing this piece because I love teasing my friends whenever they complain about these problems. The end result of the piece is amazing and I feel that it has a great potential because is shows a societal issue but in an ironic way. A specific quotation that shows a strength can be found in the following passage, “He answered, ‘Oh Martha, if only you knew how lucky we are for not dealing with first world problems’.” I believe it shows a strength because it is the sarcastic part of all the story. A specific weakness of the piece is the structure, it doesn’t have a climax, which makes it a choppy story. For further improvement, I can structure the
short story in a wiser way.
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