Response to "Safe"

Hey Janelle!

So safe is about Alexandra, a girl whose mother has convinced her that all men are bad through her experiences with Alex’s father and the other lousy men that she dates. The conflict is that Alex doesn’t feel safe in her home now that she lives in her own home and her father breaks into her house, and violates her emotionally and physically. Alex’s change is most likely during her moment of getting up the courage to try to defend herself.
    I really enjoyed how you took on such a heavy topic, girl! It's a difficult thing to talk about effectively. Anyway, I thought your narrative voice worked well. It actually kind of freaked me out at points. Like just simply walking into a room of your house and realizing that your door is open and you are near positive you didn’t do it. I used to live alone and I know that panic-stricken paranoia feeling when you are by yourself. I also like the idea of her depending on her dog, Twinkle, for protection. It’s obviously unreliable although people consider getting guard dogs to serve as alarm system; this was a cool twist to the story.
    As far as suggestions go I think I’d like to see a scene of some kind where we are able to understand why Alex and Alex’s mom hate the dad so much. What happened in their relationship that was specific to them. You could play around with that--maybe it had to do with Alex before. He’s obviously a weirdo, but I’d like to know more. It would show us more personality from the mother, how she acts around the father, and where his motivation to break into his daughter’s house who’s in college when he hasn’t abused her before. In other words more showing than telling when it comes to the relationships in the story. I feel like I’ve been given a sense of who Alexandra is, but not necessarily enough to buy that her relationship with men has persisted in being so bad if something has necessarily happened traumatic to her yet.

Overall, Good job, looking forward to seeing where you take this one!