When I first began brainstorming my story I had no idea what I was going to write about. After completing my first draft I was surprised with how one simple idea turned into a story I was actually proud of. Despite that, I was still nervous coming into the editing session. Even though I thought my story was great, other people may not.

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               The most important aspect of my story is the change in perspective from mother to baby, which is presented within the first two paragraphs through the use of italics for the baby’s perspective. It seemed as though most readers had trouble distinguishing the two different perspectives right away and only figured it out half way through. After reading it over, I agreed with my peers. It was hard to tell the difference between the two and seemed more like a dream sequence instead of a change in perspectives. So, I decided to change the first line of the story from “My day begins” to “My life begins.” This change was to distinguish the fact that it isn’t just someone’s ordinary day, but in fact the beginning of someone’s life, a baby being born. I think the element of not knowing who the characters are in the first paragraph led the reader to want to read on to figure out what’s going on.

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               Another important suggestion to my draft was that the perspective for the baby seemed too advanced. This is something many of peers pointed out. For example, how would a baby know what a tornado is like or what a football is like. I noticed I made this same mistake in both the first and third paragraph. However, I got great feedback on the fifth paragraph as I described what the baby was feeling and how she didn’t know why she was feeling this. So I tried to use those same techniques in my first and third paragraph. As I tried to fix this and describe the baby’s feelings rather than things the baby felt, my first paragraph ended up taking a turn and I completely rewrote it. I tried my best to change the descriptions to be more realistic for a baby, however, either way writing from a baby’s perspective can be quite difficult as we never truly know what a baby is thinking.

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               A few people made comments of how the story seems a bit all over the place and chaotic. But this was the point of the story. It was meant to capture how chaotic and hectic giving birth is for a mother and not knowing if her child is going to be okay. I didn’t change the chaotic and fast paced feel of my story because that’s what I want my readers to feel. I want them to feel the tension until the end of the story when the baby and mother connect for the first time. I want my readers to feel what the characters feel.

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              The last major comment that a lot of my peers suggested was to change the title. Formerly it was “It’s my mom,” which is the exact same line I use to end the story. I thought the repetition created an intense impact that connected the entire story together. But my peers disagreed, they thought the title actually gave away the story and provided too much information. This made me confused however, because on one end some people were stating that the plot is confusing as they don’t know which perspective belongs to whom, and whether or not it was a dream sequence or not, yet my title is too obvious and gives everything away. At first I was going to ignore the comments and leave the title. But the more I stared at the paper the more I decided I wanted to change it. My new title is “Life,” because this is a story about the beginning of one’s life.

 

               Overall, I really enjoyed this process and think that the feedback given has helped me reach the goals I needed to with my story.