After we (my creative writing class) finished writing our rough drafts of our short stories, we shared them in a roundtable, meaning we all sat in a circle and read each of our stories aloud. After our stories had been read aloud, the classmates that hadn’t read the story gave feedback on the story of the student who read their story. This was helpful and also somewhat confidence-boosting.
Final draft of my story:
Eleanor watched the blade cut through the green icing, then the sweet yellow cake. She lifted the knife up with her spell, and placed it beside the cake on the oak coffee table. She then directed her finger at the cake slice and lifted her finger upwards. The slice rose with her finger. Eleanor pointed towards her now open mouth, and a bit of the cake went in. She took a bite, the cake moving back from her mouth to hover in the air. “Delicious…” she whispered, and continued to eat the rest of the cake slice. Now that she chewed the piece more thoroughly, it tasted a bit off. Her eyes glanced down at the now incomplete green-iced cake, at the black cursive letters scrolled on the surface with black icing. “Happy 17th birthday, Eleanor!” said the letters. She smiled a sad, pointy toothed grin. If only somebody else were here to say those words to her. But who would want to be here, with her? Here, in her sad little run-down cottage filled with bottled animal parts, strange plants, and creepy insects. Here, with her cauldron and twisted broom, complete with a lumpy dirt floor. And her, with her green, warty skin and her long nose. She glanced out her single window into her front yard, if you could even call it that. It was really just a clearing of dead grass. As she gazed out her window, she started to feel something. It started as a tingling sensation, which turned into convulsing shivers up and down her spine. It felt as if a million pins were pricking her skin, over and over again. Eleanor ran to the bathroom, her green feet kicking up dirt, and lifted her trembling gaze to her reflection in the mirror. “What?!” Some of her warts had disappeared, and continued to disappear, melting away into her skin. Not only that, but her green complexion was starting to fade, fast, into a pinkish-white color. A sharp pain shot through her nose. The flesh on the tip started to dissolve, melt away almost, until Eleanor’s nose was significantly shorter, and rounder, than before. She screamed. Upon opening her mouth, she had discovered that her teeth were no longer sharp points. Instead, they were most like small white rectangles, the only mildly sharp ones being her canines. All of the sudden, as quickly as the tinging, uncomfortable feeling came, it was gone. Eleanor gawked at her new appearance. She looked like one of those things that sometimes came trudging through her forest, chatting up an annoying storm. One of those things that marveled at her house, only to scream and run away when she showed her face. One of those pink, fleshy things… a human?!