Stories for the Fall 2020 Feedback Sessions
Group E
To avoid emailing stories back and forth, please upload on this page the story you wish to discuss this month.
Post your stories a minimum of one week in advance of the feedback session. Those seven days give you and your buddies time to read and provide helpful feedback on each others’ stories.
Instructions:
- Share your story in the comments section on this page. You can either copy and paste the text of your story in the comment box or click the paperclip icon to attach a PDF of your work. Note: it must be a PDF; Word documents are not accepted on the comment app.
- Print a copy of the Story Review Form (below) for each story your buddies share here.
- Read each story a couple of times.
- Complete the Story Review Form after your readings to organize your thoughts, suggestions, and questions.
- During the live Feedback meeting, you will share with your buddy what you wrote on the form, as well as anything new upon hearing their story read aloud.
- Email a copy of your completed Story Review Form to each buddy so they can keep a record of comments and suggestions related to their story.
If there are specific questions you’d like answered, or if you want your buddies to concentrate more heavily on a certain story device, e.g., dialogue, opening, title, etc., please include those requests in the comments when you attach your story. Ask for what you need to help you make your story the best it can be.
The Feedback Guidelines are available below to provide the framework of how Life Writers approaches giving and receiving feedback on written work, both via posts on the website and during feedback sessions.
Feedback Sessions
10/27 @ 6pm EDT
11/17 @ 6pm EDT
12/29 @ 6pm EDT
1 Comment
Terry Deer
This is the beginning of a short story that I started in longhand a year or so ago; I’m rewriting it as I copy it onto the computer, and working on the ending. Thank you for your feedback! Please tell me what worked in the story and whether there was anything that confused you.
Moss Dog
The door, a buttery yellow, matched the stained glass insert, which was of sunflowers. I pushed the doorbell button and listened to a faint change of bells ring within the house. Late afternoon sun warmed the porch chairs with their faded chintz cushions, and created oblong patches of light on the scrubbed wooden planks. Turning my back to the door, I breathed in the scent of rosemary and mint from the neat herb borders lining the brick walkway. The yard was orderly and peaceful, an island of smooth lawn and clipped shrubs set back from the road.
Behind me, the door opened and a woman said, “May I help you?” I glanced back at her and smiled. “What a lovely place you have, Mrs. Harper. You must enjoy gardening.”
“I do.” The clipped answer was just this side of chilly. Polite to strangers, but not friendly; I could work with that. I turned to face her and offered my warmest smile. “Forgive me; my name is Barbara Evans. I’m with the Orlando Sentinel. I’m doing a series on central Florida folklore.” I held out my business card.
She didn’t take it. If anything, her expression was more guarded than before she knew my purpose. “This’ll be about the moss dog, I guess?”
“Well, you’re the only one who’s seen it, from what I can tell.”
We stood there for a moment, locking eyes. Finally her mouth pursed. “Have a seat,” she said, gesturing to the chairs. “I’ll be right out. You want a glass of water?”
The door closed before I had time to thank her. The sunlight crept higher, driving up the shadow cast by the porch roof and striking sparks from the colored glass. It must have made a pretty pattern on the entryway floor.
By the time she came out of the house, carrying a tray with two glasses, I had settled into the farthest chair and had my notebook out. She sat heavily, took a sip from her iced tea, and gazed out across the tree line on the far side of the road. I waited.
“There’s others have seen it,” she told me. “I’m just the only one who was dumb enough to talk about it. They’ll say it’s not real, but they know better. You don’t believe, I can tell. But it’s October, the paper wants a Halloween story, I guess. I’ll tell you what I saw, just don’t use my name. It’s bad enough I get teased by the locals, without everyone in the state calling me an idiot.”
I didn’t reply. I’d traced the legend back a couple hundred years. The woman sitting across from me, solid and apparently sane, was the only living eyewitness to a thing that shouldn’t exist. She gave a sigh and shook her head.
“First thing you’ve got to know about the moss dog is, he’s a cold-blooded killer. The stories all start with a death, or they end with one.” I nodded; I knew. “So, when you picture it in your mind, it’s all claws and teeth. But that’s not what I saw, not at first anyway.”
Silence fell again. I watched the sun slip behind tall sand pines, easing down to the heavier shade of water oaks. She might have looked over at me, or at my card, lying on the little glass-topped table between us. I had chosen my look with care, to appear professional but not cold. For a different assignment, I would have pinned my hair up instead of pulling it back in a tail. I would have worn a suit instead of slacks and a sweater. For Grace Harper, I needed to look harmless and approachable. I wanted her story.
“I was walking home. There’s a little bar down the road aways, you must have passed it driving in.” I nodded. “I used to go there sometimes, it’s close and the folks are friendly. It’s been a few years. I stayed late and came home in the dark, but it was a full moon night, I could see my way, and there’s not much traffic. My Jimmy would tell you I had one too many, but it’s not so. I know what I saw.” She looked self-conscious, as if aware that those words had been used many times before, by people who only thought they knew.
“It looked like a big pile of Spanish moss that came down out of one of the trees. Ordinary as could be, just lying by the side of the road, until I came up to it, and then it rose up on four feet and looked at me. I thought at first it was a dog, but no dog has legs that long. The next thing I knew, I was ten feet up in that live oak, and me in a skirt.” She pointed to a venerable oak, thick branches brushing the ground, just beyond the driveway. “Moss dog’s a monster, but it’s still a dog, right? And dogs don’t climb trees.” She paused, glanced at me, as if we were in a play and she’d just fed me a cue.
“I take it this one did?” I asked.
“Like a monkey, but slow, taking its time. Hugging the trunk with those long legs. Fingers on its front feet, like a human, only with claws like a bear. That long, grey fur all over, blowing in the wind, and its face turned up toward me. Eyes flat as coins. Grinning at me. It could climb a hell of a lot better than I could, but it wasn’t in a hurry. It knew I wasn’t going anywhere.”
“What did you do?”
“I screamed for Jimmy. It’s a wonder he heard me over the TV, guess I can make enough noise when I have to. The porch light came on and when I looked down again, the moss dog was gone, like a shadow. And that’s what everyone tells me I saw, even Jimmy.”
“Why do you think the, uh, “moss dog” came after you?”
She shrugged. “To a hunter, everything looks like prey, I guess.” Her mouth closed like a trap on anything else she might have said. I looked down at my notes.
“You say others have seen this creature?”
The smile looked out of place on her narrow-eyed, suspicious face. “You’ll get no names from me, Ms. Evans, but I know who they are. The ones who don’t poke fun.”
“What about the deaths, Mrs. Harper?” I asked softly. Her brows pulled together into a crease and she shook her head at me, puzzled. “You said the stories all start with a death, or end with one. Who died?”
She rolled her eyes toward the porch ceiling, considering her answer.“There’s been a handful, over the years, I guess. People disappear, or a body turns up in the woods, and someone’ll say, ‘Oh, the moss dog got him.’ I don’t claim to know the truth of it. There was a girl from my high school class; she was supposed to go off to New York after graduation, some school up there, but she never made it and no one saw her again.”
I checked my notes. “That would be Teresa Highsmith?”
“Guess you know how to use Google, same as everyone else. Yeah, Reesa. We were friends. We hung out, her and me and Jimmy Harper.”
“Your husband.”
“Uh-huh. He was sweet on her back then, but it wouldn’t have made a difference if she’d lived. Reesa was going places. She wouldn’t have let Jimmy stop her. She wanted to be a journalist, like you, only on TV.”
“Do you think the “moss dog” killed her?” I asked.
“I never said so, that was other folk. If it was the moss dog, there should have been a body, or what was left of one. Like the baby …” her voice trailed off.
The sun was behind the trees now, and it was colder in the shade. I shivered. “Baby?”
“That’s not in your notes, I guess. I must have been about twelve. One of the local hunters found it. Just a little thing. At the time, it scared the fool out of me and my folks; they wouldn’t let me go out after dark for love nor money. Now, I think some local girl dumped it. That happens in the city, right? You find newborns in dumpsters.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I replied. “I’m not part of the crime bureau.”
“Well, they never found Reesa, dead or alive.”