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Romeo's Death by Bru Gravem
Link to Story.
Plot
Rory, we learn soon after the beginning of the story, has died, and Jess is left with the woman who was his girlfriend and their little girl. After Rory died, she was 6 months pregnant, and because of that, Jess had to stick around. It’s basically a reflection-ish piece—a short, one-shot fic explaining what is going on with Jess, his daughter Anna (named after Rory’s favorite book—Anna Karenina, I’m guessing? ;))…how Jess is coping with the fact that Rory has died, what he is thinking. He misses Rory, despite having a girlfriend, but loves his little girl. You explain how he doesn’t want to abandon Anna the way his father did him, how missing Rory is nearly killing him but he needs to be there for his daughter.
The fic ends with Jess at Rory’s grave, deciding that although he sometimes wishes he could die, he has a responsibility to his daughter. Concise, sweet, sad but hopeful.
It’s not unlike many other multi-chapter stories and one shots about Jess after Rory’s death…and I couldn’t help thinking maybe, you could have used an extra twist, something, something to make this stand out for itself. We see a lot of Jess after Rory’s somehow gone, especially when he has a child. However, reflection on how Jess feels, especially the part: He feels nothing –was very good. I liked that he hadn’t been married to Rory—for the fic itself, of course, not that I don’t want Jess to be happy ;)—because it was a new angle to Jess missing Rory. He knew no one thought of him when wrote this last words on her [Rory’s] grave, but he couldn’t agree more. The overall feeling of the fic came off exactly right, just painful enough (and as asinine as that kind of sounds, I promise I don’t mean it that way. It's a good thing).
Characterization
The idea of Jess feeling “nothing” now that Rory is gone, of him being torn between living for his daughter and dying because she’s gone, is very Jess. This indecisiveness, the un-surety. He doesn’t know what to do, he doesn’t entirely know how to deal with it.
At some points, though, I think Jess is a bit OOC… I like how you portrayed his apathy without Rory, but a couple parts seemed just a touch overboard, for Jess. The interaction between him and his daughter, for example, but it was so sweet. Jess in situations like these is very difficult to tackle, and you did a pretty good job. Maybe think, the way he reacted to the situations we’ve seen in later seasons (if you’ve seen them): end of season 3 and season 4. He tries to deny things, tries to be tough even if he isn’t always, even when he’s in a lot of pain.
But of course, we can have no idea really how Jess would deal with a death, especially Rory’s, and he’s grown up here, he has a kid. He’d have matured, definitely. It just seems to me there might be a bit more of an echo of the Jess we saw on the show.
Anna is portrayed well, although we only get the quick flash of what she’s like. She and her mother, Tricia, as original characters, obviously had quite an impact on Jess’ life, on what he’s feeling now and how he’s deciding to act, and I thought possibly they could have been developed a little more, a few more hints about what they were like, are like. But the tension between Jess and Tricia (and lack of tension between Jess and Anna) comes through very clearly.
Style/Flow
The style you use is pretty normal for a reflective one-shot like this, and it flows nicely: Jess waking up, delving into his thoughts, briefly showing his relationships to his daughter and her mother, ending with him at Rory’s grave. The switching you do between explaining what’s going on—he’s waking up, he’s getting dressed, he’s leaving for work—and his thoughts: He isn’t in the mood to eat. He actually never is in the mood for anything for a long time now. It’s been so long, but still he can’t let it go. He sees the days passing by, the hours ticking away and he breathes, he lives – there is nothing else to do. –is good, rather than abruptly going from him waking and dressing for work to how different his life is now that Rory is gone.
Structure/Grammar/Spelling
You mention that you don’t have a beta and that English isn’t your first language, and for that, it’s excellent. There are quite a few spelling errors, tense inconsistencies and grammar/a few punctuation problems, but it’s clear what you mean. These errors can be a distraction from the story, though—a beta reader is very helpful with this sort of thing. Also, I’d recommend proofreading your work a couple quick times before you post/send to beta—I noticed several spelling errors that I’m pretty positive are just typos, like here: you had to do something to make money. (The Word spell check is pure evil sometimes…not to be trusted, lol.)
If you have trouble finding a beta, you can check out Fundamental Things...Applied, a site about beta-ing and writing that offers a list of people who will beta (http://resources.gilmore-fiction.net/), or if you have an LJ and want to join the community, the livejournal community gg_fic also offers a beta list (http://www.livejournal.com/community/gg_fic/652.html).
There are a couple places where I think maybe you could have broken up your paragraphs for emphasis, like here: Except when he goes to the court, of course. No one ever saw this coming, him being a lawyer. But he had done it and all on his own. It was a part of growing up, you had to do somehting to make money. But that’s a personal choice. =)
Things to Work On
The little errors: spelling, punctuation, and tenses. Choosing tenses can be really difficult in fics, especially ones dealing with an event in the past like this story, and I imagine it’d be super difficult in a second language. I very highly recommend a beta reader—they’re always helpful—and the proofreading I mentioned.
Also, try branching out in your writing—you say this is the first time you’ve tried something like this, and it is great for your first, but some of it seems a bit clichéd. Think new, different, go crazy, put a twist on something. ;) You could try a different POV or a different style of writing a story, start off with a weird premise or develop original characters to deal with Jess, Rory, or whoever’s in your fic—there are a million possibilities.
The ideas you have are great; the concepts you put in this fic work really well. Just think about how you’re framing/writing these ideas to make your fic stand out.
Parts That Rocked Our Socks
There are some sentences here that really stick out. My personal favorites:
He sees the days passing by, the hours ticking away and he breathes, he lives – there is nothing else to do.
And when he thinks he is starting to forget about her, there is always Anna’s smile just in the next room to remind him.
And probably my favorite section…
She gets up from the couch and goes to him, tugging at his black pants, “What’s wrong daddy? You don’t look fine,” she tells him with a puzzled expression, pouting all the while with her big puppy eyes.
…
She giggles excited. She is the opposite of him, she is so full of life.
The summary, also, draws the reader in—a good summary is harder than it looks, and I like this one a lot.
Nice job.
Final Grade
B
Reviewed by:
collidingstars
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