What I tought about Tatters

With Tatters, what I was attempting to do was recreate the way information about an event travels on a small island. Primarily, gossip is low-tech. Word of mouth is still the main way people hear about other people. It’s how we “shoot the breeze” in a small place. However, I threw in the news report section of the story because that’s also another common way people hear about friends or family they have been out of touch with. The title comes from the tattered way different perspectives are sown together to tell the story of one event. This holds true no matter where you are. There are always more than one, two, or even three sides to any story. If that wasn’t already obvious, I wanted to make it clear to the reader. Especially in the case of small locations, gossip can reach pandemic proportions. I don’t think I need to mention how much damage gossip can cause.  I’ll consider “Tatters” a success if anyone reads it and goes, “I’m gonna cut back on talking negatively about others.”

There were two large influences on my writing. At the time I wrote “Tatters” I was also reading Gilman’s “Life in the Iron Mills.” I greatly admired the way she was able to so skillfully blend first, second, and third person perspectives into one narration. In fact, her story was so refined she put third person limited and omniscient point of view in the same work without the story coming off as poorly written. I attempted to accomplish a blending of views with “Tatters.” That is why I have sections of Ton’s first person perspective preceding and following the bar owner’s third person limited perspective. I was trying my best to fill all the roles. However, perhaps I too powerfully break the “fourth wall” with my use of the second person perspective in the bar owner’s pieces. For example, lines 65-68 just felt awkward in short story form. Perhaps they would be more appropriate within the context of a play.

The second influence was Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. Alexie’s work blew my mind with his use of white space to separate fantasy, reality, and time. With any other writer, white space was useless; with Alexie, white space was a vehicle between perspectives. He took what used to be a piece of paper and turned it into a piece of his story. I’ve never encountered that before and I was stunned when I finally did. I took that idea and ran with it for “Tatters.”

Besides white space, Alexie’s work also encouraged me to attempt to bring my island perspective to life. Alexie used his work to shine light on issues affecting modern Native Americans. I hope I can do the same with works like “Tatters.” In fact, “Tatters” is a springboard for an entire collection of stories I’d like to write about Garapan.
Something that concerns me about "Tatters" is the similarity between the unnamed bar owner and Ton. I feel that they often sound the same. Ton is supposed to be Chamorro, and I've included some Chamorro words in his dialogue, but I still feel his delivery resembles the unnamed bar owner too much. 

The biggest problem I had with “Tatters” is that I didn’t know how to conclude it properly. By the end of the story I’m not sure if readers sufficiently care about Ton's well being. Also, I question how fulfilled my readers are with the final section. My problems in "Tatters" are part of an overall problem I have with tension. I would love to write the kind of heart pumping tension Arthur Miller was capable of in The Crucible, but I still have trouble recognizing tension's building blocks. 

Score: 75%