I loved the method of storytelling "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" used, not only with the actual storytelling Mel uses but the unspoken tension in the character dialogue. Each character is given a quick description--from Terri's "pretty face, dark eyes, and brown hair" to Mel's "curly soft hair" and "precise, very careful" movements--and then further characterized by what they say--or don't say--throughout the story. Indeed, the narrator himself doesn't say much at all; he mostly observes, and doesn't add a lot of commentary to his observations, either. But although the narration is very concise and understated, almost a little clipped, the dialogue itself is amazing. Each word is chosen carefully to reflect the character's personality and what Carver wants them to convey to the reader.
It was so interesting to see "Beginners," particularly because of the very large chunks that were eventually taken off from the original story. Entire pages were cut out after Carver decided that they provided good backstory (I definitely enjoyed reading them, and finding out more about the characters' motivations), but were unnecessary for the meaning of his work. Individual lines, too--you could see that he was intensely attentive to not only the flow and phrasing of his story, but to word economy. And it worked so well; my favorite thing about this story is how it does so much with so little.
I found the editing process for this story to be utterly fascinating. Reading what Carver had originally intended really changed the way I saw the story. This was especially true for the characters. In the edited version, we see that Carver saw Terri as a hippie. For me that changed how I viewed her view of love. It made her seem less naïve and even stupid at times to know that Carver saw her as a hippie. Though it is a simple change, the names for Mel and Ed made a difference to me. Ed lends itself more to the overall image of an abuser than Carl, and Mel is easier to take serious than Herb. However, for me, the most important change came with the telling of the old couple’s story. I think the editor was right to take out the meat of the story. While it was nice to able to see the gradual recovery and hear the specifics of their lives together, it was not necessary. Lish captured the essence of those two characters completely when he simply wrote that the old man was anguished that he could not see his wife. That moment convinced me that what those two had was love. Pure love. My heart melted. Those few lines were so much more effective than the pages Carver had written. After reading “Rough Crossings,” I can only imagine how hard it must have been for Carver to have his work decimated like that, especially since it involved such personal issues like his drinking. Ultimately, though, the editor got it right. We did not need all the details of Terri’s life to understand it. And we did not need Terri to say that Mel was a suicidal drunk for us to understand it. Understatement was the best tool in this story.
I agree with Leena and Lori that reading the edits was an incredibly cool experience. Editor Gordon Lish is so adept at enhancing the mood of the story and in determining what aspects and details to leave out entirely from the draft. I thought changing Herb’s name to Mel and Carl’s name to Ed was also intriguing—just a small change, hardly recognizable, makes an immense difference in their characterizations throughout the short story.
From Lish’s edits, I noticed that he preferred to take a more subtle approach throughout the story, particularly in dialogue between Terri and Mel. Lish frequently cuts more explicit descriptions of Terri and Mel’s emotions, allowing the reader full room to infer and explore the tone of their relationship. On the first page of “Beginners,” Carver includes Terri’s line “After he tries to dump on me” and notes that “she wasn’t smiling” (1). Lish cuts a number of lines similar to this, probably because they push the reader to view the relationship in a certain way. Lish’s choice is important, because the story gains so much power from its ambiguity. We question how the two marriages are actually progressing. At the climax of the story, the ambiguity and powerlessness grows so great that no one can summon the energy to turn on the light or get up to go to the restaurant. Carver’s last line, chosen by Lish in the edits, speaks to the powerful uncertainties we have in our hearts about love—and the damage that can occur when those are voiced.
I thought Nick was an interesting choice of narrator; I was given the impression that he was not the driving force of the conversation in this short story, but he brings an observer perspective to a dialogue that I thought primarily featured two other more colorful and vocal characters. This choice reminded me of Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, where we also have more of an observer’s perspective to learn about the world of Gatsby and Daisy. I also admire how the story is structured. Carver captures the essence of the conversation without painstakingly overwhelming us with detail. I noticed how he inserts paragraph breaks to indicate the flow of speaking and thought, allowing him to capture the genuine lulls and pauses found in typical conversation and further immersing us into the scene.
I found the edits, as previous posters have mentioned, very illuminating. In particular, the deletion of entire pages of writing reminded me of letting go of favorite moments or lines for the good of the story overall, something I’m sure we can all relate to as we work on polishing our drafts. This idea came keenly to mind in one of the edits that didn’t make its way to the final version, where they discuss The Library restaurant, which seems like such a wonderful detail that would strike all readers, but was ultimately removed from the story for reasons I imagine relating to continuity, flow, or pacing.
To me, the published version of the story was clearly edited to appeal to a wider audience. Apart from cutting out a lot of what many would consider depressing narrative, for example the last scene of the unedited version, the published version used several stylistic tools to immerse an impatient reader. First, the edits remove a bulk of the tangents that the characters go on as they drink more into the night (e.g. on page 28: "Shame on you," Laura said....). Second, there is less description that accompanies the dialogue, which serves to immerse the reader into the conversation more than the connections between the characters. This can be seen on the top of page 25: "I still feel sorry for him," Terri said. [She sipped her drink and gazed at Herb. Herb stared back.] Third, there were the standard edits where the author was encouraged to show more, tell less (e.g. middle of p25 when Terri describes how Ed didn't have anyone else).
While the two sections where the story was slashed helped focus the story, leaving the reader to linger on ideas such as "the man's heart was breaking because he couldn't turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife" and "I could hear the human noise we sat there making...", I felt the unedited ending was much more satisfactory. When first reading the published story, I felt that I had many questions left unanswered and did not like the lingering feeling of heartbeats. While the unedited version conveys a more pessimistic outlook on love, I felt that Carver answered a lot of questions that he had only raised in the published version. I thought there were so many more interesting ideas that Carver had, such as the idea of being too vulnerable and having no defenses, and how past memories of love are still present and can be "all too much." Being able to read the unedited version after the published version was valuable because it showed how there are tradeoffs in the editing process.
The change in title from “Beginners” to “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” shifted the way I approached the story and better captured the story’s main themes. I appreciated how the story had little narration because approaching the topic of love from a series of conversations better encapsulates the different types and degrees of love. Through the exchange of perspectives among the characters, we see that there is no universal definition of love and that talking about love is a difficult subject. With just the two couples in the story, we already see three different types of love: new-found love, longer relationships of love, and a second chance at love. And then through the characters’ own individual experiences, we see even more types of love – from irreplaceable love that consumes a person’s life (the old couple), to parental love (Mel and his children), to violent love (Terri’s first person).
Overall, I enjoyed how the edits made the story less explicit and more concise and subtle. Reading the concise edits reminded me of what we discussed in class about writing pages of dialogue and then cutting down to keep only the most salient parts of it. I noticed that before the edits, the characters’ dialogue were more similar to each others’ and even read sometimes like narration but after the edits, the characters, especially Mel, seemed to have dialogue that better reflected their personality quirks. For example, as Mel continued to drink, he began to talk more aggressively. Cutting out dialogue that restated what was said before gave more significance to the remaining sentences of dialogue, which seemed more understated and therefore open to readers’ interpretation. The change of names from Herb to Mel and Carl to Ed significantly altered my perceptions of the characters, especially since we are given very little of their physical descriptions until halfway through the story. Mel seemed more appropriate to me for the name of an alcoholic while Herb seemed too harmless of a name; likewise, the name Ed conveys more gruffness. Furthermore, cutting down the story on the elderly couple was likely a difficult choice for the author because the way Mel conveyed the story reflected much about his frustration as a character; however, I agreed that the back story was necessary to take out because it did not contribute to the story’s message on the different degrees of love. Lastly, I noticed that the editor cut out unnecessary descriptions of characters’ actions to direct more of readers’ focus to the dialogue, and I also noticed that several additions to the story involved descriptions of setting to ground the story.
In reading through the edits, I noticed two primary reasons for cuts: 1) redundancy and 2) backstory. The edits in regard to redundancy made me realize how well-chosen words can account for entire sentences. It also made me realize that repeating something in a slightly different way does not add something to your story, unless the redundancy itself is part of the purpose. I feel like I learned a lot from these edits.
Regarding the backstory, I - like MIchelle - would have preferred that much more be left in, specifically about Terri and Mel. I was quite dissatisfied at the end of the story, because I felt like the author had raised a lot of issues and not dealt with them. What point was he trying to make about abusive relationships? What point was he trying to make about drinking? At times, I thought the author was going trying to give enough hints to the reader that Mel and Terri's relationship was going to mirror the development between Terri and Ed's relationship. To raise such big societal issues, ones around which there are many misconceptions, and leave them unfinished almost made feels reckless. The backstory in the unedited version illuminated the effects of previous relationships on Terri and Ed's current relationship and gave a much more developed picture of the issues regarding abuse, depression, drinking, etc. I would have like the ending in the unedited version to be published.
One edit that I thought was particularly effective regarded the mini-story about the husband and wife in the car crash. In the original, I noticed that Carver actually named the husband and wife -- Henry and Anna Gates. By removing their names and referring to them only by their relationship titles, it actually made the story more relatable--instead of making it Henry and Anna's story, it meant that it could be anybody's story, any elderly couple who loved each other like they did. I would never have thought of that, but it was a really effective stylistic choice and ended up giving the story greater meaning.
The second edit is larger and more thematic. Lish really refocuses the story to a conversation around love, instead of a conversation around beginnings. In some ways, I actually prefer the original theme, and the original ending. In some ways, "Beginnings" and "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" feel like two completely different stories -- the narrative/emotional arc is completely different, and the endings give the story a completely different feel. I agree with Michelle that "When We Talk About" raised a lot of questions that were only answered in "Beginnings" -- but maybe unanswered questions makes for more effective writing? I just really preferred the ending of "Beginnings" in a way, not so much all of the detailed backstories but the more thoughtful conclusions. The ending of "What We Talk About" felt abrupt, emotionally, when I first read it -- and that feeling made sense after I saw the edits. I don't mean to criticize the edits, but rather to show the way in which they completely reshaped the landscape of the story.
I want to agree with what most people have already said about the presence of backstory in the edited "Beginnings". Like Lindsay, I think that by including the names Henry and Anna Gates, it does make the overall story more about them as a couple and takes away from Mel's story and relationship. However, I enjoyed the edits backstory additions in terms of the ending that offered much explanation. In "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" the ending was extremely blunt almost. i wanted to know more, learn more from it. One thing I did take away from all three of the pieces however was the presence of alcoholism clearly present in Carver's life. As a reader, I could tell that the author must have personally struggled, or known someone to have struggled with the disease and had been greatly affected by it. It was clearly an issue that needed to be criticized and addressed.
"Beginners" is about the people who are actually in love throughout all this storytelling and dialogue; "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" is about the dialogue (and, of course, the love). For me, the edits completely changed the theme of the story. I don't know if they made the story better, but they made it unique. Most stories linger on details and backstory because character and plot are driving the reader to read on. This story, edited, becomes philosophy, and it's waiting for the answer--what are they talking about?--that keeps the reader going.
At the same time, the edits mostly show to me how strong Carver's own prose is. You don't need lines about anorexia when you've described an older, well-off woman as bone-thin. You know what that means already. You don't need to know exactly what an old man misses about seeing his wife, because simply not seeing her says it all.
In a similar vein as many of the previous posts, I found "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" to be very satisfying even with the cuts, except with conclusion at the end. Removing that entire last scene makes me feel unfulfilled after only reading the edited version. I don't feel as if I can really point to where the characters will end up after this dinner party ends, or how things have shifted. In general the group is just a bit more depressed and a bit more drunk. I think as Lindsey mentioned, the seem to work in tandem - one poising a question and the other proffering an answer.
I agree with many of the above comments that "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" removed a lot of the extraneous and explicit details and added subtly. I specifically agreed with the comment that it was kind of like writing pages of dialogue and removing some parts. From my perspective, I am someone who enjoys relating to the characters on an emotional level. At first, I thought that the emotional attachment would be removed with so much dialogue being cut, but I realized that the subtly said so much more, and was in fact more powerful for me. I think that while some parts were indeed extraneous, the edits did change my perception of some of the characters. For example, the narrator's extra lines "my dear sweet Laura" adds a little more emphasis on his admiration for his partner. Perhaps, it did show more affection towards Laura, but it was also in a sickening way, whereas the gentle hand holding was much more effective and expressed love in a subtle and sweet manner. These edits made me realize how much of a difference in perspective (via an editor) can enhance a story.
I loved the method of storytelling "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" used, not only with the actual storytelling Mel uses but the unspoken tension in the character dialogue. Each character is given a quick description--from Terri's "pretty face, dark eyes, and brown hair" to Mel's "curly soft hair" and "precise, very careful" movements--and then further characterized by what they say--or don't say--throughout the story. Indeed, the narrator himself doesn't say much at all; he mostly observes, and doesn't add a lot of commentary to his observations, either. But although the narration is very concise and understated, almost a little clipped, the dialogue itself is amazing. Each word is chosen carefully to reflect the character's personality and what Carver wants them to convey to the reader.
ReplyDeleteIt was so interesting to see "Beginners," particularly because of the very large chunks that were eventually taken off from the original story. Entire pages were cut out after Carver decided that they provided good backstory (I definitely enjoyed reading them, and finding out more about the characters' motivations), but were unnecessary for the meaning of his work. Individual lines, too--you could see that he was intensely attentive to not only the flow and phrasing of his story, but to word economy. And it worked so well; my favorite thing about this story is how it does so much with so little.
I found the editing process for this story to be utterly fascinating. Reading what Carver had originally intended really changed the way I saw the story. This was especially true for the characters. In the edited version, we see that Carver saw Terri as a hippie. For me that changed how I viewed her view of love. It made her seem less naïve and even stupid at times to know that Carver saw her as a hippie. Though it is a simple change, the names for Mel and Ed made a difference to me. Ed lends itself more to the overall image of an abuser than Carl, and Mel is easier to take serious than Herb. However, for me, the most important change came with the telling of the old couple’s story. I think the editor was right to take out the meat of the story. While it was nice to able to see the gradual recovery and hear the specifics of their lives together, it was not necessary. Lish captured the essence of those two characters completely when he simply wrote that the old man was anguished that he could not see his wife. That moment convinced me that what those two had was love. Pure love. My heart melted. Those few lines were so much more effective than the pages Carver had written. After reading “Rough Crossings,” I can only imagine how hard it must have been for Carver to have his work decimated like that, especially since it involved such personal issues like his drinking. Ultimately, though, the editor got it right. We did not need all the details of Terri’s life to understand it. And we did not need Terri to say that Mel was a suicidal drunk for us to understand it. Understatement was the best tool in this story.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI agree with Leena and Lori that reading the edits was an incredibly cool experience. Editor Gordon Lish is so adept at enhancing the mood of the story and in determining what aspects and details to leave out entirely from the draft. I thought changing Herb’s name to Mel and Carl’s name to Ed was also intriguing—just a small change, hardly recognizable, makes an immense difference in their characterizations throughout the short story.
From Lish’s edits, I noticed that he preferred to take a more subtle approach throughout the story, particularly in dialogue between Terri and Mel. Lish frequently cuts more explicit descriptions of Terri and Mel’s emotions, allowing the reader full room to infer and explore the tone of their relationship. On the first page of “Beginners,” Carver includes Terri’s line “After he tries to dump on me” and notes that “she wasn’t smiling” (1). Lish cuts a number of lines similar to this, probably because they push the reader to view the relationship in a certain way. Lish’s choice is important, because the story gains so much power from its ambiguity. We question how the two marriages are actually progressing. At the climax of the story, the ambiguity and powerlessness grows so great that no one can summon the energy to turn on the light or get up to go to the restaurant. Carver’s last line, chosen by Lish in the edits, speaks to the powerful uncertainties we have in our hearts about love—and the damage that can occur when those are voiced.
I thought Nick was an interesting choice of narrator; I was given the impression that he was not the driving force of the conversation in this short story, but he brings an observer perspective to a dialogue that I thought primarily featured two other more colorful and vocal characters. This choice reminded me of Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, where we also have more of an observer’s perspective to learn about the world of Gatsby and Daisy. I also admire how the story is structured. Carver captures the essence of the conversation without painstakingly overwhelming us with detail. I noticed how he inserts paragraph breaks to indicate the flow of speaking and thought, allowing him to capture the genuine lulls and pauses found in typical conversation and further immersing us into the scene.
ReplyDeleteI found the edits, as previous posters have mentioned, very illuminating. In particular, the deletion of entire pages of writing reminded me of letting go of favorite moments or lines for the good of the story overall, something I’m sure we can all relate to as we work on polishing our drafts. This idea came keenly to mind in one of the edits that didn’t make its way to the final version, where they discuss The Library restaurant, which seems like such a wonderful detail that would strike all readers, but was ultimately removed from the story for reasons I imagine relating to continuity, flow, or pacing.
To me, the published version of the story was clearly edited to appeal to a wider audience. Apart from cutting out a lot of what many would consider depressing narrative, for example the last scene of the unedited version, the published version used several stylistic tools to immerse an impatient reader. First, the edits remove a bulk of the tangents that the characters go on as they drink more into the night (e.g. on page 28: "Shame on you," Laura said....). Second, there is less description that accompanies the dialogue, which serves to immerse the reader into the conversation more than the connections between the characters. This can be seen on the top of page 25: "I still feel sorry for him," Terri said. [She sipped her drink and gazed at Herb. Herb stared back.] Third, there were the standard edits where the author was encouraged to show more, tell less (e.g. middle of p25 when Terri describes how Ed didn't have anyone else).
ReplyDeleteWhile the two sections where the story was slashed helped focus the story, leaving the reader to linger on ideas such as "the man's heart was breaking because he couldn't turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife" and "I could hear the human noise we sat there making...", I felt the unedited ending was much more satisfactory. When first reading the published story, I felt that I had many questions left unanswered and did not like the lingering feeling of heartbeats. While the unedited version conveys a more pessimistic outlook on love, I felt that Carver answered a lot of questions that he had only raised in the published version. I thought there were so many more interesting ideas that Carver had, such as the idea of being too vulnerable and having no defenses, and how past memories of love are still present and can be "all too much." Being able to read the unedited version after the published version was valuable because it showed how there are tradeoffs in the editing process.
The change in title from “Beginners” to “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” shifted the way I approached the story and better captured the story’s main themes. I appreciated how the story had little narration because approaching the topic of love from a series of conversations better encapsulates the different types and degrees of love. Through the exchange of perspectives among the characters, we see that there is no universal definition of love and that talking about love is a difficult subject. With just the two couples in the story, we already see three different types of love: new-found love, longer relationships of love, and a second chance at love. And then through the characters’ own individual experiences, we see even more types of love – from irreplaceable love that consumes a person’s life (the old couple), to parental love (Mel and his children), to violent love (Terri’s first person).
ReplyDeleteOverall, I enjoyed how the edits made the story less explicit and more concise and subtle. Reading the concise edits reminded me of what we discussed in class about writing pages of dialogue and then cutting down to keep only the most salient parts of it. I noticed that before the edits, the characters’ dialogue were more similar to each others’ and even read sometimes like narration but after the edits, the characters, especially Mel, seemed to have dialogue that better reflected their personality quirks. For example, as Mel continued to drink, he began to talk more aggressively. Cutting out dialogue that restated what was said before gave more significance to the remaining sentences of dialogue, which seemed more understated and therefore open to readers’ interpretation. The change of names from Herb to Mel and Carl to Ed significantly altered my perceptions of the characters, especially since we are given very little of their physical descriptions until halfway through the story. Mel seemed more appropriate to me for the name of an alcoholic while Herb seemed too harmless of a name; likewise, the name Ed conveys more gruffness. Furthermore, cutting down the story on the elderly couple was likely a difficult choice for the author because the way Mel conveyed the story reflected much about his frustration as a character; however, I agreed that the back story was necessary to take out because it did not contribute to the story’s message on the different degrees of love. Lastly, I noticed that the editor cut out unnecessary descriptions of characters’ actions to direct more of readers’ focus to the dialogue, and I also noticed that several additions to the story involved descriptions of setting to ground the story.
In reading through the edits, I noticed two primary reasons for cuts: 1) redundancy and 2) backstory. The edits in regard to redundancy made me realize how well-chosen words can account for entire sentences. It also made me realize that repeating something in a slightly different way does not add something to your story, unless the redundancy itself is part of the purpose. I feel like I learned a lot from these edits.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the backstory, I - like MIchelle - would have preferred that much more be left in, specifically about Terri and Mel. I was quite dissatisfied at the end of the story, because I felt like the author had raised a lot of issues and not dealt with them. What point was he trying to make about abusive relationships? What point was he trying to make about drinking? At times, I thought the author was going trying to give enough hints to the reader that Mel and Terri's relationship was going to mirror the development between Terri and Ed's relationship. To raise such big societal issues, ones around which there are many misconceptions, and leave them unfinished almost made feels reckless. The backstory in the unedited version illuminated the effects of previous relationships on Terri and Ed's current relationship and gave a much more developed picture of the issues regarding abuse, depression, drinking, etc. I would have like the ending in the unedited version to be published.
One edit that I thought was particularly effective regarded the mini-story about the husband and wife in the car crash. In the original, I noticed that Carver actually named the husband and wife -- Henry and Anna Gates. By removing their names and referring to them only by their relationship titles, it actually made the story more relatable--instead of making it Henry and Anna's story, it meant that it could be anybody's story, any elderly couple who loved each other like they did. I would never have thought of that, but it was a really effective stylistic choice and ended up giving the story greater meaning.
ReplyDeleteThe second edit is larger and more thematic. Lish really refocuses the story to a conversation around love, instead of a conversation around beginnings. In some ways, I actually prefer the original theme, and the original ending. In some ways, "Beginnings" and "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" feel like two completely different stories -- the narrative/emotional arc is completely different, and the endings give the story a completely different feel. I agree with Michelle that "When We Talk About" raised a lot of questions that were only answered in "Beginnings" -- but maybe unanswered questions makes for more effective writing? I just really preferred the ending of "Beginnings" in a way, not so much all of the detailed backstories but the more thoughtful conclusions. The ending of "What We Talk About" felt abrupt, emotionally, when I first read it -- and that feeling made sense after I saw the edits. I don't mean to criticize the edits, but rather to show the way in which they completely reshaped the landscape of the story.
I want to agree with what most people have already said about the presence of backstory in the edited "Beginnings". Like Lindsay, I think that by including the names Henry and Anna Gates, it does make the overall story more about them as a couple and takes away from Mel's story and relationship. However, I enjoyed the edits backstory additions in terms of the ending that offered much explanation. In "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" the ending was extremely blunt almost. i wanted to know more, learn more from it. One thing I did take away from all three of the pieces however was the presence of alcoholism clearly present in Carver's life. As a reader, I could tell that the author must have personally struggled, or known someone to have struggled with the disease and had been greatly affected by it. It was clearly an issue that needed to be criticized and addressed.
ReplyDelete"Beginners" is about the people who are actually in love throughout all this storytelling and dialogue; "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" is about the dialogue (and, of course, the love). For me, the edits completely changed the theme of the story. I don't know if they made the story better, but they made it unique. Most stories linger on details and backstory because character and plot are driving the reader to read on. This story, edited, becomes philosophy, and it's waiting for the answer--what are they talking about?--that keeps the reader going.
ReplyDeleteAt the same time, the edits mostly show to me how strong Carver's own prose is. You don't need lines about anorexia when you've described an older, well-off woman as bone-thin. You know what that means already. You don't need to know exactly what an old man misses about seeing his wife, because simply not seeing her says it all.
In a similar vein as many of the previous posts, I found "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" to be very satisfying even with the cuts, except with conclusion at the end. Removing that entire last scene makes me feel unfulfilled after only reading the edited version. I don't feel as if I can really point to where the characters will end up after this dinner party ends, or how things have shifted. In general the group is just a bit more depressed and a bit more drunk. I think as Lindsey mentioned, the seem to work in tandem - one poising a question and the other proffering an answer.
ReplyDeleteI agree with many of the above comments that "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" removed a lot of the extraneous and explicit details and added subtly. I specifically agreed with the comment that it was kind of like writing pages of dialogue and removing some parts. From my perspective, I am someone who enjoys relating to the characters on an emotional level. At first, I thought that the emotional attachment would be removed with so much dialogue being cut, but I realized that the subtly said so much more, and was in fact more powerful for me. I think that while some parts were indeed extraneous, the edits did change my perception of some of the characters. For example, the narrator's extra lines "my dear sweet Laura" adds a little more emphasis on his admiration for his partner. Perhaps, it did show more affection towards Laura, but it was also in a sickening way, whereas the gentle hand holding was much more effective and expressed love in a subtle and sweet manner.
ReplyDeleteThese edits made me realize how much of a difference in perspective (via an editor) can enhance a story.