Reader Report for Me excerpt

There is a lot of work that needs to be done in future drafts to clarify the characters and
plot of this story. The chaos of the structure and the vagueness of the diction made it so that I
never got a grasp of the action. I couldn’t describe a single character because no one is really
introduced and given a specific personality, specific motivations and desires, or specific physical
traits. The setting is briefly laid out at the beginning of each section, but it does not feel
grounded. The world in which this story takes place is surreal and farcical with no sense of
authentic time or place. Like Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, it felt like an unrealistic
extrapolation of the current moment based on the author’s fears or fantasies more than a
thoughtful analysis of history and the world around them.
No one in the story struck me as a main character. There is a narrator, but without a
personality she falls flat as a protagonist. I could never figure out why she was doing anything
and what she hoped to achieve. I could never even really figure out if she was a man
crossdressing as a woman to infiltrate some kind of rebellion, a woman who felt transgender, or a
woman who just identified the ruthless and pragmatic parts of herself as masculine. This story
obviously has something it wants to say to the reader, but I couldn’t figure out what the message
was. The narrator must be the key to figuring out how the reader is supposed to feel about this
radically different and violent America, but I never got a clear picture of her in my mind.
Maybe the style of this was meant to be jarring and surreal. Maybe there is a post-modern
style that I’m not chic enough to understand. Maybe this is meant to be a poem, telling the whole
story in images with no need of a protagonist or concrete details. However, I suspect it is just
chaos, using violence to shock and disturb rather than to express or explain. I think that before
continuing the writing process or editing this draft further, some thoughtful reading would be
very helpful. Obviously, The Handmaid’s Tale is a similar novel (and possibly already an
inspiration), but I’m also going to recommend Half Life by Shelley Jackson and Invisible
Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk. These books have a similar surrealist or magical realist style and
center around themes of pursuing happiness with all the chips of society stacked against you,
which might be relevant to this manuscript.
I can tell that this story yearns to express something, and I hope that by examining some
other published work can clarify that vision and add fuel to the fire of creativity. Further drafts of
this work would benefit from a stronger sense of theme to drive the action and more practice in
the many skills of delivering that action clearly and vividly to the reader. As an exploration of a
topic, this has some potential to speak to an audience disillusioned with the current cultural
moment who may want to see their rage and disappointment played out by a narrator who has
nothing to lose. Keep reading, and keep writing!