“This was my favorite,” he said into the silence. 
      I was still reeling from the picture flashing sat me from his computer screen.  I could see the hole where the bullet had entered the man’s Adam’s apple.  It must have traveled up the curve of the skull before exploding out of the man’s head because brains trailed a couple feet, carried by the impact of the shot.  The body looked broken, its legs angled unnaturally, uncomfortably, one arm flopped over the man’s chest, the other splayed to the side.  The eyes looked lifelessly toward the open, still blue sky while vibrant shades of red splattered the man’s clothes. 
     Was this really the same guy who told me he needed therapy in the middle of a conversation about the latest Shinedown album? Clearly he was right, but by the looks of it, he asserting his manhood and refusing to let humanity show.  She looked up at him and wondered why she was sitting there.  Standing up, she turned to leave.

My protagonist is at the raw age of 22 but was 17 when they enlisted and 21 when they deployed.  He grew up in small town Iowa with little to no parental guidance.  When his sister was home, she instilled her own version of discipline, but for the most part she was her best friends adopted sister.  While his family is nowhere near exemplary, he is more protective of them than he is of himself.  The only person allowed to criticize the situation is someone from the sister’s adopted family. 

As far as education goes, he doesn’t value “book smarts” but is incredible street savvy even if they won’t recognize it.  He did passably in school at best, but in the military, his superiors selected him for field paramedic and leadership positions.  The one thing he wasn’t prepared to deal with overseas was the psychological factors.  He barely passed his psych evaluation before deploying because in some ways he can’t stop thinking, yet he knows how to keep those thoughts to himself out of what he sees as self-defense.

He has had many sexual encounters, but only one real relationship.  However, he doesn’t recognize this because his parents never demonstrated a healthy relationship.  His father while harmless was an aggressive drunk, and his mother while a good person was eager to please every guy she ever dated.  In the same way his psychology didn’t prepare him for deployment, it also did not prepare him for the intimacy of telling someone everything or the companionship of being a team.  This lead him to be cheated on, stolen from, and elsewise mistreated by the people in his life and to push away anyone who wouldn’t do those things.

The culmination of all of this is the molded exterior that says things like “this was my favorite.”

The entire story came from the line “this was my favorite.” A couple weeks ago, that particular phrase what said to me, and for the most part, my discovery draft was me attempting to understand how someone could say that.  I am concerned that I am drawing too much from a specific instance.  While I am writing thoughts and experiences for someone else, I know better than anyone else why that phrase came out of his mouth.  The reason I wrote it as a short story was because I did not explicitly detail any of the instances or fire fights that I know happened.  On the other hand, I am considering changing my story completely because I am not sure what my goal is for the reader.

What would one day in your Ideal Life be like? What time would you get up? Where would you live? With whom would you live? What are your pets, your passions? Allow yourself to dream on the page . . .

                I would live in a cottage or farm style house on the outskirts of town, someplace where I would have lots of space but the neighbors could hear me scream if an axe murder decided to visit.  I would live with my three kids and someone I could trust, I would love, want to get to know better, but someone who returned the affection, and someone who could fight with me (which isn’t fun. Trust me on that one, and if not trust me, trust my mother, my friends, or my ex).  We would have a large dog, a St Bernard or a Huskie who would follow me around the house and plop its self on the floor while I went about my business.  There would be a trial with lots of trees right outside our yard where I could run in the mornings, probably just a short mile or two before I got ready for the day.  I hate waking up, but once I’m out of bed I find that I am actually a bit of a morning person.  I like how the sun rises and everything is quiet.  Then I could have a treadmill and multitask like I do now.  Read papers from my students (I’m an English education major) or read for fun while finishing my usual distance for the day.  I would be able to cook.  I would have a library/craft/project room, so I could work with my hands.

Go back to the eavesdropping exercise and the character sketch you did after it; using the same people and setting, write a new conversation for the characters, a conversation that reveals a conflict at the core of their relationship.

Facing each other under the bell tower shortly after eight o’ clock classes had started, the pair stared at each other in recognition.  Deliberately the boy pulled a pen out of his pocket and threw it as intensely and swiftly as a blade aimed for the expanse of forehead between the girl’s eyes.  She darted and spun to the side just in time for the unlikely weapon to wedge itself in the wall that had previously stood directly behind her.  It was a conversation without words, but both knew that they were the two students, opponents pitted against one another to determine which was worthy of the ninja suit.

Read and respond to “An Interview with My Husband,” given to you in class. Pay attention to the formalism of the piece: how does the piece borrow from/incorporate various forms of writing? What is the effect of using those forms in the story?

I thought it was an interesting use of form to record the conversations like an interview for most of the story.  The present conversation carries this vein of banter, but the content is pretty significant.  The bluntness of the interview style feels more revealing to the reader because it is set up as “objective”, merely a recording of events.  She does something similar with her memories.  It is still minimal as far as the dialogue is set up.  Without the brief narrative introducing the speaker’s reflections, the reader would still be able to tell the past tense because each participants name is preceded with “And”, but you are not given more specifics about how the speaker said something.  It relies heavily on what was said.