Melodramaa
That Poor December Night ................ Q1/Prose
That Poor December Night narrates the story of a shopaholic girl in London and how her life changes drastically because of her new bad habit. The genesis of this piece came from a writing prompt that one of my classmates proposed as one of our homework assignments. This piece was written in quarter one. In quarter one, I wasn’t happy with the ending of the piece, it sounded forced and as if I had written it the night before. I wanted my piece to evolve in that aspect. In other words, I changed and expanded on the ending to make it more intriguing. The specific changes that I made were that in quarter one the character solved her shopaholic problem by attending a fashion school, but in quarter two I modified it and erased that part and made everything become a dream. Basically, the girl dreams about the solution to her problem while sleeping, but at the end, she wakes up and continues with her bad habit. In general, I feel satisfied with my improvements to this piece. The ending from quarter one bothered me a lot, but because I changed it to something better, I feel content with it. My favorite part of this short story is the following passage, “I woke up hours later in a soundless place. I was inside a small room, maybe five meters by five meters, all covered in a white soft foam material. I could barely open my eyes, a horrible headache was penetrating the inner membrane of my brain. My arms and hands couldn’t budge, I was tied to straight-jacket in an isolation room.” I like it because it shows the strength of the piece, the detailed descriptions. A weakness of this short story are the transitions. Some parts of the piece are not fluent for the reader, which makes the story sound confusing. For further improvement, transition words could be added, specifically at the end, when the character wakes up from
her dream.
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