Matt Reigle CRW-3120

             In previous exercises I had worked on developing my story’s main character, Jerry. When I began writing my first draft however, I realized there need to be some other aspect to his life that would cause the decision he needed to make more difficult. I decided that Jerry would work for his dad in his home town. I thought that this ultimately worked because it made Jerry go back and forth in his head as to whether or not he was happy with his future and should leave his home town to do what he wanted to do, or was it more important to him to carry on the family business.

            One of the aspects of my story that I feel is working pretty well is the dialogue. I feel like it reads in a way that is realistic and also helps move he plot forward as well as offer additional information about the characters. I also feel like the overall plot of the story works well, and it’s structured in a way that makes sense. I do think that my descriptive language could probably be improved. That has typically been a weakness of mine.             One of the main questions I would like the workshops to address is does the plot make sense and is it easy to follow. That seems really simple, but to me that’s one of the biggest pieces. When writing, it’s easy for me to get carried away because I know how the story ends and what path it takes to get there. I like to make sure that what I’m thinking comes across properly to the reader.             The internal conflict for my character is whether or not he is happy with the direction his life is going. There’s nothing

Dear Diary, I'm tired of getting pushed around. I'm tired of people taking advantage of me. I've been pigeonholed as a nice guy, but that's beginning to be used against me. Without even talking to me first, people just use my stuff without hesitation. All they think is, "Oh, it's just Jerry's, he won't care." Thing is, I do care. I feel like I'm being pushed around, by everyone constantly. But I let them. That's the problem. I need to be more assertive. Let people know what I think and why I think it. It'll may rub people the wrong way, but eventually they'll get used to the new Jerry. I think in some previous exercises I had touched on the idea of Jerry being a little bit of a pushover, so I thought that it would be interesting to latch onto that as a character flaw. I think it's interesting to have a character who knows what one of their flaws is and wants to address it.