Response to student journal, Week 7

Randie,
This draft owns a great deal of valuable language that I think you can gather for an even tighter revision. Some of the best, most interesting lines in the draft are: my family standing together like paper dolls, looking back, my father could never look us straight in the eye, Spike, the Boston Terrier, trying to escape my sister’s grasp, her eyes always droop at the sight of a camera, etc. I think that these lines are great and you could even condense them a little bit further. For example, “Remembering that chimera of my family standing together like the paper dolls I used to cut out of stationary paper, bits of our address still peeking out from their feet.” This is a huge sentence! What about: In the photo, my family stands together like a chair of paper dolls. I like the part about the address peeking out from under their feet, but I really think that may not fit. I like the idea of a chain of paper dolls, because it seems this family is connected (like all families), but brittle and easy to tear. Another suggestion for condensing would be for the line: Looking back at how my father could never look us straight in the eye, his back always turned from us. You have look twice in the line. You could have thinking back or just leave it out all together, because it is understood that the speaker is looking back by the sheer act of viewing an old photo. What if it where something like, My father never could look us in the eye, his back always turned from us in every memory. Great possibilities here.