Hazia’s Reflections

During my creative writing class yesterday, we discussed my short story: Chestnut Chocolate Mooncake. My instructor’s feedback was that the first scene could be trimmed down. Short stories should be ‘low fat’ if not ‘fat-free’. Anything that could be taken out without changing the story should be removed.

He also asked me to try out another ‘point of view (POV)’, instead of Chef Francois’. He asked to explore it from a minor character e.g. Chef Chen’s or a waiter’s POV. Interestingly, when I started it, I thought Chef Chen was the main character, only half way through I realised that the character that I’ve chosen  was the main one:)

When we’re more experienced, we can try telling a story from 2 POVs for effect e.g. a murder trial.

He also didn’t quite get the tension between Chef Francois and Max - the chef felt strongly against Max but the German guy was not affected by it. I told him that it was based on a true story and in real life, Max was like that - colourful but cold, almost heartless.

Another idea was to explore elaborating my main message deeper : the difference understanding of professionalism from Western versus Eastern perspective. I need to play around a bit to show series of disagreements between the 2 expats. Perhaps this would come out clearer if seen from an Asian’s POV.

Oh, my instructor has received 20 stories already from his current and former students. So, this will all go into a book, after editing of course. This is so exciting:D.

For extract of my story: http://haziamyperspective.blogs.friendster.com/hazias_perspective/2006/11/chestnut_chocol.html